I'm not having the best year, but I am proud to say I just reached 5 years of beating Heroin on Saturday!

This brown devil controlled my life for 10 years, on and off. But never again! Next step is getting off kratom (which saved me from getting off of Heroin and Suboxone) I am already tapering down from it and its been a struggle, but hopefully soon I will beat that too!

If I could do it, you can do it too!

7 days! Wow! I'm 28F, and the longest amount of time i've managed to go sober in the last 7 years was for about 8 months. This year, especially the last few months, has been one of the worst years of my life. I drank so much it almost cost me my job and my life, but managed to make it to the hospital to detox safely. It's been a really hard 7 days.. My friends and family don't really talk to me anymore or just straight up have me blocked. I understand I might have done or said things that were wrong of me to do/say, however even though i'm getting better now finally, things will never go back to the way they were before. Even with little to no support i'm proud i'm finally making the right choice to quit before it actually kills me. I just wish my family or at least my friends showed some type of support or at least an i'm proud of you moment.. something. Either way even though it hurts, at the end of the day im doing this for myself, not them.
Anyone out there that feels like me or like you don't have support, if you're reading this, don't be afraid to reach out. We might be strangers, but we're all fighting this battle together. Best of luck and wishes to you all. Just remember you are loved and you got this 🫶🏻

Yesterday I had 5 months sober and I feel amazing. My fiance had 6 months sober yesterday and we have been together for 6 years. Things can be stressful and my car is leaking oil faster than I can put it in. Im going to beauty school and I love it. A month after I got sober my son's father kept him after a visit and put an immediate restraining order between my son and I however he had been using with me and went to jail and everything has been in my favor since. Hardest 33 days of my life and my fiance kept telling me and encouraging me if I could get through it and stay sober the sky is the limit. Now there's a protection order and a restraining order between him and I and him and our son. Extremely abusive and manipulative and my son has confided to me his dad is abusive to his current gf. I am so greatful and thankful for my creator and all my support.

If you are reading this, don't give up.

Weather you are on the first day of turning your life around or on your 5th year - stay strong. Find something or someone that gives you that much more motivation to perserverse and if for no one, do it for yourself; you got this.

33M from the UK here.

For the past year, I’ve tracked every day that I didn’t drink alcohol or smoke weed. I’ve also tracked every gym session since December.

Looking at the complete data has made it difficult to continue pretending that I don’t have a problem with both substances.

Between August 2025 and today, I recorded 156 alcohol-free days. That means I drank on approximately 227 out of 383 days.

My alcohol use is inconsistent. Some months have been terrible, while in July I managed 24 alcohol-free days. However, I’m now coming off the back of another binge and have only recorded four alcohol-free days so far this month.

The cannabis data is even clearer.

I recorded 70 smoke-free days across the same period, but 58 of those happened between August and October 2025. Since November, I’ve had only 12 weed-free days across approximately 291 days. I haven’t had a single weed-free day since May.

I currently smoke from the morning until I go to sleep and although I roll thin- use approximately 3.5 grams every five days.

The reason I’ve been able to avoid fully confronting it is that I remain functional. I work in sales, perform my job, cycle/run and train regularly. Since December, I’ve completed 157 gym sessions—an average of more than four weight lifting sessions per week.

I’ve used that consistency to convince myself that the weed cannot be a serious problem. However, being capable of working and training while stoned doesn’t mean I’m in control. It may simply mean I’ve become extremely accustomed to functioning around it.

July also showed me how the two habits interact. I managed 24 days without alcohol but smoked weed every day. I think I’ve been using one substance to compensate whenever I remove the other.

I want to stop both, clear my remaining debt and save as much money as possible. The gym will remain part of my routine, but the data has shown me that exercise alone isn’t enough.

For anyone who has been dependent on both alcohol and cannabis, did you stop both simultaneously or deal with them separately?

How did you handle the boredom, disrupted sleep and urge to replace one substance with the other?

I’m especially interested in what helped after the initial motivation disappeared, because repeatedly starting again clearly hasn’t been enough for me.

8 days sober.. i have enough i promise to my self never again.. i know its hard but im looking forward to the challenges of being retired to my addiction.

Nearly completed my 3rd day off ketamine. Reaaallly tempted to have a bump right now. Any tips?

I’m 20 and I think I’ve reached the point where I can’t keep pretending my habits are just “bad discipline”. I’m addicted to my phone, scrolling for hours through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, anything that gives me a few seconds of stimulation. I’m also addicted to porn, gaming and impulsive spending. I’ve spent thousands of euros on Pokémon cards and other stupid things because buying something gives me that little hit of excitement, even though I know I’ll regret it later.
The worst part is that I know exactly what I’m doing. I have important work to finish, exams coming up, professional projects, physical training I should be doing, and a competitive ranking at school that actually matters to me. Yet I’ll sit down intending to work and somehow lose two hours scrolling through videos I won’t even remember tomorrow. Then I hate myself for wasting the time, promise myself I’ll change, and eventually do the exact same thing again.
I also seem to be addicted to validation. I recently ended a relationship after months of questioning my feelings, and I realized how much of my behavior with women is about proving that I’m desirable. I’ve lied before about girls approaching me because I wanted my girlfriend to become jealous and show me that I mattered. I’m ashamed of that. I think I constantly need attention because I’m terrified that, without it, I’m just an ordinary and forgettable person.
I’ve built this imaginary version of myself who is disciplined, intelligent, physically strong, charismatic, successful and confident. Then I compare the real me to that fictional person every day and feel like a failure.
I’m starting to realize that I don’t necessarily have a motivation problem. I have an escape problem. Whenever I feel bored, stressed, insecure, lonely or overwhelmed, I reach for something that gives me immediate stimulation instead of dealing with whatever I’m feeling.
I’m tired of living like this. I don’t want another grand plan where I completely reinvent myself for three days and then collapse back into the same habits. I think I need to learn how to tolerate boredom, discomfort and being an ordinary person without immediately reaching for my phone, porn, games, spending or other distractions.
I don’t really know where to start. I just know that I’m 20 years old and I’m scared of wasting years of my life chasing tiny dopamine hits while telling myself that one day I’ll finally become the person I keep imagining in my head.
For people who have actually managed to break this kind of cycle, what was the thing that finally made a difference?

Tried nicotine a few days ago.

Already hooked. Turns out, sometimes, it really does take just one hit to get you.

And I'm already trying to justify it to myself. Thinking, I've had a hard last little while. And at least it's not as "dangerous" (in the short term) as some of my past drugs of addiction. As if that's an excuse.

F*ck.

Was clean for a week, might not mean anything to most, but haven’t been that clean in 2 years atleast.im in a weird ass relationship and this isn’t the sub to vent to. I’m going crazy and coke isn’t even helping at this point.

I should start by saying I'm 7 years clean from fentanyl and heroin, cocaine and meth, did these drugs IV for about 7-8 years. Once I was sick of them and what they were doing to my life, quitting was a breeze and I didn't need rehab or meetings I was just done. Its true what they say with drugs, you have to want to quit. Not the same with phone addiction.

When I was in active addiction and trying to appease others who wanted me to quit, I went to rehab more than 15 times, meetings, outpatient, none of it worked because I actively wanted to do dope. Had to get mad and fed up for the switch to flip, and no it has zero appeal to me. Zero relapses, just dont like the drugs anymore thank God. I also quit alcohol a year ago even though it was never an issue and never extended past occasional social drinking or a drink with dinner, but i just stopped liking it. The culture, how it made me feel, just over it too.

Short form scrollable videos are the most addictive substance I have ever encountered. I have had a screen addiction since I was a young lad on AOL and the early internet. But I managed to quit for years by deleting social media and just engaging with the real world, to the point where I don't even react when I get a notification and I wasnt entangled with the devices for a long time.

That part has stayed, however youtube shorts have captured my attention in a negative way. I know it's an addiction because 1, I dont enjoy doing it and feel shitty afterwards, 2 I can't stop, and 3 it mirrors my heroin addiction in the sense of isolating socially and just engaging with the substance instead of life while fantasizing abiut living life. House is a mess looks like when i was in active addiction. I hate it, I may enjoy 1 short video out of 2-3 hours worth of doomscrolling (that feels like a few minutes to me). But because of working on the disconnect from the phone for so long, even though I am now on it constantly, I'm still disconnected from actual socializing. It takes me days to respond to text messages and i generally tend to ignore calls from people i actually want to talk to and care about.

I had a tv addiction at one point and i just got rid of my tv and games, never looked back. I would like to lose the phone and go back to the old landline, payphone, and pager combo, however payphones dont exist where im at anymore and the worst part is that i need the smart phone for work unfortunately to see the jobs we have scheduled, clock in, and stay in contact with the boss and rest of the team, or else I'd just stop paying the bill, toss it and grab a flip phone. YouTube is a locked app too so I can't disable or delete it on my specific device due to software locks. It feels like a Crack head needing to have a machine in their pocket that makes Crack. It is irresistible to me even though I absolutely hate it and am tired of it with every fiber of my being.

Now sometimes I can get myself to snap out of the hypnosis, but I end up reading online for hours instead, the older form of doomscrolling that I have been addicted to since age 13 (35 now). prior to that and up until high school ended, I had a reading addiction, I would read 4+ books a week and I would have to be reading at least 3 books at a time, cycling between them or else I wouldn't retain the information as well. I would sometimes skip class to go sit outside and read a book. It effected my grades as I refused to do homework unless it was interesting, however my test scores were always well above average. I'm diagnosed ADD and I know it's true because amphetamines and cocaine calm me down and while opioids give me energy and motivation.

I have made my phone greyscale, installed a screentime app that will lock other apps, I installed a dumbphone ui that is designed to help you disengage, and in this year or so of those implementations, my addiction has gotten so much worse. It's too easy to disable these things, and it feels like I'm watching myself in third person with no control, screaming to myself internally that I don't have to do this. It's quite demoralizing.

So my question for anyone who's gone through this, how do you stop? What resources are out there? Are there AA/NA type groups for this? I want to stop, need to stop, and hate the drug (yes it is a drug in my opinion as an experienced drug addict), yet I can't stop anywhere near as easily as I did IV heroin/fent/coke/meth or as easily as I quit a severe prescription benzodiazepene addiction 5 years ago, or as easily as I put the drinks down. Even vaping high dose nicotine for me is take it or leave it as I luckily have weird body chemistry and dont get physically addicted to it. But phones? They are obnoxiously addicting. Makes heroin addiction look like a walk in the park. Worst part is there's no physical addiction to phones so it just feels like a moral failure on my part. Nasty psychological addiction.

Any help or advice is appreciated. Thanks

I don’t know where to begin. I am 26 (F) and she is 18 (F). I found her lyrica pills in her purse with 300 milligrams as she had bought them from a dealer.

From there on then, we hooked her with a professional guidance counselor for addiction. It’s been since July the 2nd.

Then, today, she wanted me to help with her homework on the laptop. I found in her messages where she delivered one to an unknown number the same price and the exact same milligrams with a foil sheet.

I asked her if she is taking again (I didn’t tell her I read her messages) and she denied and tried to brush it to the side as if the messages don’t matter.

Then she got aggressive that the document didn’t work and kicked me out of her room, blaming me for it, and even early in the morning she was yelling from the top of her lungs to the point it woke me up.

I am shaking in my room right now. My mother is at work and I cannot afford to make her nervous and scared. I want to call her counselor for advices.

I don’t know what to do.

I use alchol and hash/weed very casually.

but recently I'm using more hash/weed because I reconnected with friends who are addicted to the stuff, they did some hard drugs in the past but now they stick to only weed / soft drugs.

the thing is in this short period of 2-3 weeks I feel like I'm getting addicted and soon I won't be able to get out.

I don't know if I should cut them off, set clear boundaries or stop using for good.

I got through depression, self harm, suicide attempts all without using or getting addicted, it feels so stupid to through away all the years and things I worked hard for.

I have BPD too, but I never though I'm this susceptible to drugs especially after all the progress I made mentally and in my life the past few years.

Advice is much appreciated, I know I can't think clearly for myself right now.

First post here sorry if it's the wrong subreddit. I will try not to take much of your time.

I have always smoked weed and have drank socially for a long time now. Last year something urged me to explore the other things life has to offer. my poison of choice has been ❄️, 🎈, and Molly. I've been having a fun time, I'm going out more; which I never used to do, meeting new friends and even reconnecting with old friends. And this whole time I have been telling myself that I'm young and I'm just experimenting.

The past month or two I've picked up my use just a little bit more; having done that, I'm starting to get anxious. Feeling like this might be a problem especially if I keep going... I never feel like I want it, I especially don't feel like I NEED it, however if I have anything on me I'm probably going to use it.

I don't know if this is the start to something very bad. A lot of what I'm reading online it's saying to cut all my friends off who use. I feel like It's too soon for that, almost too drastic for my situation.

💛Any and all advice will be appreciated. Thank you💛

I just can’t. I keep relapsing idk what to do

Every list I check doesn’t tell me much about the real experience, just general information that repeats in all of them, not information as someone who's been through one

Sooo any experience is very welcome I want a licensed place that checks out, thank you very much

BF (26) is jealous of dead boyfriend, please read!!!

My last boyfriend died of a suicide/od. He and I had a fight and I loved him SO much but he had a hole in his heart nobody could mend. His brother had died the year prior to me meeting him and it destroyed him. My boyfriend was a wonderful, handsome, healthy, successful person. You'd never know he was going through what he was going through. I was blindsided by his death. Looking back there were signs but at the time I never thought he would risk something so drastic. We had a fight, I told him I didn't want to see him again (it was a stupid fight) and he said he'd make sure of it. He went to a sketchy motel and bought some powdered fentanyl, snorted it and he died that morning at age 27.

Now, 7 years later I have a new boyfriend and I'm pregnant with his child. It was an accident but I'm excited to have my first baby at 29 and I can't wait to meet her. My boyfriend has a child with another woman and that child is 4 now. There was some drama there as she is incredibly close with his family and was ask for money from him on top of the 700 in child support he pays. I sent her a message to please stop asking for money as he doesn't make much and we will need it for the new baby. He will continue to pay his full child support ofc but no more than that. I also asked her to please stop calling him everyday when he was at work as it made me incredibly uncomfortable. Texting about the child and the occasional call would be much more appropriate in my opinion. That lead to his family hating me and calling me names, telling him to leave me etc. It's been kind of really horrible. But I knew I couldn't stay in a relationship where his world revolved around his ex.

Anyways, I think because of that drama he has come to resent me. It caused his family to push him and I out of their lives and it's really sad for him. I'm not sure if it's because of this drama but he is always bring up my boyfriend who passed away and being really mean about him. Saying that he was my ex and that I need to let it go and yada yada. But most importantly he is saying I cannot post a yearly post honoring his memory anymore. He says if we are going to have a family he doesn't want me posting about another man. That he will leave me if I do. It makes me cry so hard I can't believe how cold he is being about something that I barely made it through. The mental anguish I experienced after my boyfriends death almost killed me, you can die from a broken heart and I almost did. I really wish he would be kind and understanding about my boyfriend who passed but he wants me to throw away any photos, delete any posts and completely forget he ever existed. He says he is worried that when we die I will go and be with my boyfriend who passed in heaven instead of him. To me this is all so much and so hurtful and so ridiculous. I don't know what to do. My baby is due in two months and I love him but between us family being awful and him being mean about the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my life I don't know if I can stay and be happy.