Addiction: How to Stop “Quitting” and Fix What Made You Start

April 7, 2023—Trying to quit is admirable, but addiction will keep coming back if you don’t find the root cause of your problems.

From 2016–2019 I went through a personal Dark Age where I was chronically broke, depressed, and vying for the prestigious title of: “Human With Most Simultaneous Addictions.”

Around 11 am I would wake up, crack a bottle of Nutella, and spend the next twelve hours playing The Last of Us multiplayer until my fingers became unresponsive…

…at which point I would switch to binge-watching Lost, browsing porn, scrolling Reddit, and drinking/smoking myself into oblivion.

Naturally, this was unsustainable, and after hitting rock bottom I’d return to my freelance work, more disciplined than ever.

But after a week or a month I’d slip.

So eventually I started to think: “What’s the point?”

My life was an endless game of Whac-a-Mole, and every time I quit one addiction, two more would pop up to take its place.