Ever since summer break started I fr don't know what else to do. I am getting so sick of repeating the same thing over and over again like it's insane my screen time is reaching like 10 hours a day and I sleep like 11 hours a day. I can't go outside and I don't have any hobbies. PLZ I NEED ADVICE AP LOG SARA DIN KYA KARTE HAI???????
I dipped for numerous years and then smoked cigarettes and vaped for a couple years. All together probably 20 years. Now I’m quitting because I want to be healthier. Anyone have trouble with the first couple days or any recommendations? It’s been 24 hours and I just want to hit the vape
The other day i was listening to a podcast about addictions and an alcohol drinker mentioned how drinking made him feel.. he said “ you are just on stand by for years, time pases and you almost do not even notice”
I instantly thought about my doomscrolling, I feel the same. It numbs me…. Im not fully conscious, just permanently entertained.
While on a plane to Seattle from Paris (for work) I grabbed a book by Spanish philosopher (Ortega Y Gasset) and read for 8h non stop… from start to finish.
I was immersed in that book and I felt fully conscious, fully enjoying that book… my brain was content my attention was just in one place.
I don’t think I ever reached that state by doomscrolling.
I tried the main apps (Opal, Brainrot, ScreenZen, Brick, you name it) and I always seem to find a way around them and make them non effective.
Has anyone found a way out ?? Really curious
So I constantly share little things about my life with my friends, but the problem is that they never reply. I have been told that their lives are simply a lot busier than mine, and they pretty much made me feel like the "unemployed" friend of the group.
Now I, too, am busy; I do have a lot of projects to work on, and I share bits and pieces of that with them. I don't know if it is because it is the repeated content that stops them from engaging with my messages/ updates, but whatever their reasoning is, be it good or bad, I want to stop constantly sharing things with them because I know I will not get a reply, I will end up wasting my time by constantly reaching out to my phone and see if they have replied to me.
It is dopamine I am chasing here, constantly reaching for my phone, checking whether they have engaged or not. It’s bad. I want it to stop.
I recently deleted and deactivated all social media apps from my phone as part of a 6-month break to reset my mind and habits.
But I just rediscovered Reddit and now I’m a bit confused about whether it counts as “social media” in the same way.
I know it has communities, posts and comments but it feels more like a forum than Instagram style apps.
I’m trying to be intentional about this break, so I’m wondering:
Do you personally count Reddit as social media, or more like an information/forum platform?
And would using it break a digital detox for you?
i think my dopamine is fucked.. i don’t find shit funny anymore almost like the things i used to enjoy are boring asf and always feel judged.. how do i get out of this thing and actually become happy
been smoking/ having an edible pretty much every day since September 2024, went cold turkey June 1st this year. I know a week isn’t enough to get the full benefits of a tolerance break, but honestly, I don’t see the point in being sober right now. weed never interfered with work or college for me, doesn’t give me anxiety, and makes interacting with my parents so much easier. not having weed this week has just made me want to relapse in self harm more than anything
I don’t know why I’m evening posting, I guess hoping someone will either share their story of getting sober… or on the flip side agree with me that it’s just not worth being sober
I'm an introvert from Surat, and over the last few days I've been thinking a lot about who I am and who I want to become.
I realized that instead of trying to impress other people, I'd rather focus on impressing myself. So I've been spending more time doing the things I genuinely enjoy—playing chess, watching cricket, and going on late-night solo drives. Those quiet moments help me clear my mind.
As I've gained a little more life experience, I've started cutting down on distractions and focusing on becoming a better version of myself.
My day starts at 6 AM. I go for a 5 km walk, come home, take a shower, pray, have breakfast, and then spend some time reading. Today I came across a quote that really stuck with me:
"Discipline beats talent."
The older I get, the more I believe that's true.
I recently started trading with a capital of ₹1 lakh, and today I made a profit of ₹7,000. It's not life-changing money, but it felt rewarding because it reflected the effort I've been putting into learning and improving.
I'm also an engineering student, so a good part of my day goes into building my skills—learning DSA, web development, and other technical topics.
One of my favorite parts of the day is the evening. I sit on my balcony and watch the sunset. Seeing people rushing around with their own responsibilities reminds me to slow down and appreciate where I am in life.
At night, I spend time with my family, talk about our day, watch a movie or a series together, and then get some rest.
I'm far from perfect, and I still have a long way to go. But lately, I've felt something I haven't felt in a while—steady progress. Nothing dramatic, just small habits repeated every day.
As an introvert, I don't share much about my personal life, but I wanted to put this out there. Maybe someone else is on a similar journey.
Thanks for reading.
The main issue I struggle with is maintaining consistent progress and not falling back into cheap dopamine cycles. Something I do often is I will have a couple days of genuine progress where I avoid cheap dopamine, except for in short bursts, and don't fall into my binge cycles, which usually last 3 days. But then, like a domino things eventually fall back into place, and I return to my cheap dopamine hunt. The source of this, I believe, is brief little dopamine troughs I have towards the end of the day. At around 6:00pm, or towards nighttime if I hit the gym, my brain feels fatigued, not like tired fatigued, but like fatigued in a way that it avoids all high effort dopamine in search of cheap, low-effort dopamine. This begins my downfall, which I call a destruction period, lasting about 3 days, and the cycle repeats again and again.
I have low will power so I find it difficult to fight my brain in these situations, and even destruction period just reinforces my brain to crave these cheap dopamine sources. I've come up with some solutions, including letting my brain have a scheduled period of low-effort dopamine, but that just delays the destruction period instead of solving it. I realized that I likely cannot do this on my own, so I am inquiring for help from this subreddit. I really wanna lock in and focus on the 4 most important things in my life - gym, content creation, writing, and philosophy, but the dopamine cycle prevents me from doing so.
When in a long detox journey like this one, its very normal to feel tired, bored and craving to go back again, just for once maybe for a few minutes
And often that noise gets louder, the urge becomes irresistible, annoying and the only thing on your mind, you loose motivation, determination to carry on, and exhausted.
I get it, I feel it too, more often than you'd guess
Our mind is habitual to rewards, its fundamental, fighting it is stupid, leveraging it is smart.
Don't resist stimulation, Find a better, non addictive, maybe positive stimulation- Our receptors do not distinguish between reels and fun activities, they just detect the stimulus. If you're craving it choose the better option at hand, instead of scrolling, accessing cheap and easy working ways to get dopamine flow try-
you have options, just focus on choosing the better ones.
At last, we are not fighting, resisting stimulus. We are trying to be mindful of it.
Day 27 Progress
Phone Usage- 4h49m
Consumed Junk and little bit of shortform content but no doomscrolling
Deep work- 3h+/4h
NO deliberate boredom practised
I’m 13 days off THC, but I’m also almost a month off 7OH, down to 2.5g/day kratom leaf, deleted all Meta accounts (minus Messenger), and removed all the video games from my phone.
Just curious if anyone is quitting multiple things. It definitely makes isolating what symptom is related to what substance/behavior but I reckon it’s just my neurochemistry resetting given the sudden yoink of all my dopamine spikers.
Hold the Line!
still struggling to sit continuously for long hours without losing focus not being able to do so
Okay so here’s my story, I’ve successfully cut out all social media over the past year or so. It started with instagram then I moved to X then tiktok and a month ago on April 29th I finally took the leap and got rid of facebook. The only two apps I have left are discord and Snapchat, I use those two for talking to my irl friends in our group chats. This may be a little TMI but I recently cut out all adult content a little over a week ago and I’ve been working on desexualizing my brain. Here’s the issue though I haven’t hit a flatline and experienced the depression and anxiety stage I’ve actually done the opposite I feel so damn high and euphoric it’s scary I honestly feel as though I died in my sleep or something and I’m in heaven continuing my life or something lol. I wanted to ask if anyone has experienced this or has any advice. Thanks in advance 👍.
TLDR: Have limited overtly destructive habits but I still find myself self-sabotaging and chasing dopamine/pleasure/comfort and no hard work. Need to figure out how to start that I won't quit after 4 days. I know it is up to me but any advice is welcome.
My dopamine addiction started as a young teenager addicted to porn/jerking off and social media. For 10 years + my self esteem and motivation was systematically destroyed and I have lost all confidence in myself. Somehow I managed to graduate college, get a well paying remote job, and marry a beautiful woman, but despite these external successes I am an abject failure in all of my daily tasks. My apartment is constantly a mess, I feel like I am at the brink of loosing my job, and I am incapable of supporting my wife in her separate but equally challenging mental health struggle. My physical health is poor for a 25M, overweight, no sex drive despite normal T and no recent porn use, generally I don't eat well or take care of myself.
Currently I spend about 10 hours a day during time I should be working and doing chores playing internet games and social media on my laptop. I have restricted porn use but it required me getting rid of my smartphone and instead getting a Wisephone (dumb phone with slightly more features) but I have not been able to control my urges to bypass filters and use social media/games.
I feel like I have no self control, accountability, or follow through. I procrastinate everything to the last minute. Every time I try to implement one healthy habit it rarely lasts more than 2-3 days before I resort back. I am desperate to build some reliability and shake this self-sabotaging cycle.
Anyone have good recommendations for a software that will only let me check email/go to certain websites on my computer? I am beginning to consider trying to go completely offline except for my job but I am afraid that will only encourage misuse of company property as I do work from home and have little accountability.
Right now my brain is so fked up I can even type, I am UG first year student, I am an average student, but my life is worst and the reason is nothing other than myself. I am not gonna blame anyone other than me. I wasted my time and I wasted my life. I am addicted to this technology, I just want break from all this, but my brain constantly craves and give up easily, without any struggle. I dont know what to do, all this time I always someone to rant to and also guide me to, now there is no one. I cant rant to ppl about my problems bcos they have their own problem, some of them are have it worst than me. And nobody can guide since in school 99% ppl have the same path it was easy to guide, after joining ug, everyone looks alien to me and each of them have different lives. And man the guilt of not succeeding is to much, bcos I literally have everything and my father is working his ass off to provide for us, the worst part is not the failure or the fear of scolding for them, but breaking the belief they kept on me, they believe me some much and that even when I fked up something, they nvr scolds me they only advice me. God what happened to me, and the worst part is I have everything and can start whenever I want and change my life, but I cant. This all feels to heavy.
My brain is fogged rn, I wanna escape all these noises, I need some break from all these but ik I will never get that. I wish everything changes.
Is there any way to change? Or is this the true reality? Am I overreacting?
I really want to quit smoking, but I'm struggling.
I've managed to reduce the number of cigarettes I smoke, and for a day or two I feel confident that I'm finally getting control over it. But then the next day I end up smoking the same amount again, as if all the progress disappeared.
This cycle keeps repeating. Reduce for a few days, feel motivated, then fall back into old habits. It's frustrating because I genuinely want to quit, but I feel stuck.
Has anyone else gone through this? What helped you break the cycle and quit for good? Any advice would be appreciated.
Drinking coffee since my teens. Used nicotine since I was 22. I always check my phone. Only time I don’t bring my phone is when I’m at work. The phone is left in my bag.
Not much sugar, but I eat honey, few times if I go to cinema I buy real candys. And I use adhd medications. What will happen if I suddenly stop all of this?
I don't know if this is the right platform to share my thoughts, but here it goes.
Over the last few days, I've had too much free time, and I became addicted to Reddit, Discord, and all that NSFW content, leaks, MMS videos, and endless scrolling. But slowly, I realized that all of it is just a distraction. Before it's too late, I need to stop.
So I've decided to delete Reddit, Discord, and everything related to that kind of content.
For the next 21 days, I'm going to focus on myself—just me, my fitness, some good books, and becoming a little better every single day.
I just wanted to know what you guys think. And if you're reading this after June 5th, maybe I'm already gone... not from the world, just from these distractions and this version of myself.
Quote of the Day: "In this world, everything has a price, but not every price is written on the label."
I’ve been more than a month far from twitter (I was addicted to it since 2009) and somehow and finally feeling better and getting over the FOMO.
Beating a behavioural addiction is not easy when you’re constantly exposed to your phone and to the internet, but it is not impossible. The first days were awful for me, i struggled with withdrawal symptoms, but lately I’m being more “rational” about it.
At first i missed the attention, the interactions, the infinite scrolling of BS. Twitter is full of people trying to be edgy, rage bait, all types of discrimination and so on. I remember opening the app just to get mad at some crazy opinion from someone I don’t know and taking things too personal. I used to get into arguments and I could spend my day just like that.
Lately I catch myself avoiding any type of “controversial” opinions on here or instagram, I just ignore them and try to find content related to my new hobbies. I’m trying to use the internet in a better way. Not gonna lie, I miss my twitter friends. But I’m not gonna relapse. I want to improve myself and deleting twitter has helped me a lot, my mood is better and I have time to do more useful things.
I know I still have a long way ahead, but I’m celebrating any small progress to keep the motivation.
Social media addiction is no joke, it affects you directly in your inside. Your self esteem is almost non existent, you can’t stop comparing yourself to others, you lose the ability to socialise in real life, you can’t accept others’ opinions and that just turns you into a frustrated individual.
I got a phone relatively late, my first smartphone I got at 11 but my parents realised I had no interest and ended up losing it or just not using it at all. At 14 I finally had a use for it and wanted one. But up until then I was happy out with an ipod all I needed was headphones music and a camera I loved taking pictures and listening to music. I felt like my brain was fantastic without a phone I'd listen to music play guitar read write and create and I started again just switching off my phone and enjoying life but I missed important emails or calls. How do you even step away from them because now it feels impossible and half the jobs I'm looking at want social media experience which I have I am good at creating but I rarely post anything because I feel no need to share my life with people who aren't in it idk I feel uncomfortable in the social media world. I get so vexed when people are on their phones all day in college or on busses its just such a waste of time. Flying through content that you won't even remember. Okay rant over im 23 and apparently have the mind set of an old man peace out ✌️