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This is a question Addicted

Cigarettes, gambling, porn and booze. What's your addiction? How low have you sunk and how have you tried to beat it?

Thanks to big-girl's-blouse for the suggestion

(, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 16:42)
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Chocolate
After I found out that it was causing migraines, it had to go.

I used to eat around 2 kilos of it a week, and it's now 6 years since i've had any.

Not funny.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 10:21, 3 replies)
This is so lame as addictions go... but...
Sugar.

I just cannot get myself off the stuff. When I was younger and having piano lessons after school, I'd bunk them and spend the money on sweets, chocolates and ice creams, then eat the lot on my way home.

Throughout Uni I lived on a diet of mint choc chip ice cream and coca cola.

Now, this year I've been attempting to shift some of the weight I've obviously accumulated through this secret glucose habit. I've done pretty well, and am nearly at a normal, healthy weight. But what have I not managed to drop from my diet? Yup, sugar.

The real low is that someone's left a lone Orange Creme from a box of Quality Street on the pavement outside our house. It's been there for three weeks, in the rain and filth. Every time I walk past it, I want to eat the thing.

Click 'I Like This' if you think I should sink to the absolute nadir of human sugar cravings.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 10:06, Reply)

Apart from the EVERY weekend, Friday and Saturday alcohol binge that has spellbinded me for the last 6 years...... (I think Cirhossis is surely on the way)

Downloading music. I hope no music execs are reading this because I just can't help it.

I trawl through allmusic.com searching for the best artists across all genres. I check all the discographies making sure I'm only downloading the best albums.

The worst thing is...

The only reason I do this is so that in the pub when people discuss music I can say "I've got that!" And look all smug and smarmy as I have a better music collection than eeeeeveryone else.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 10:01, 3 replies)
Findus crispy pancakes
1am at the Tugnut house can turn into a Burroughs nightmare if the freezer refuses to give up its sweet delights.

Skip the doner kebabs kids, this is the golden hit.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 10:00, 5 replies)
Trying not to be addicted...
At the moment, it's mainly booze, fags, tea and toast because that is as far as I will let it go.

I often worry that if I left my self control at home I would end up getting addicted to something that would be my demise. Every few years I will get this restless feeling that nothing is ever enough, I'll get an overwhelming urge to overindulge in all the things I shouldn't. Can't sleep, can't eat and I wonder; how long can I repress this curiosity....
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:56, 2 replies)
Gossip...
I'm like an old woman. I actually caught myself moaning to someone the other day that no one at our company does anything really scandalous any more, and it's got boring.

I'm even slightly enjoying the credit crunch because redundancies give me something to natter about.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:49, Reply)
Little bits of colourful joy
I love the small brightly coloured little sugar pills of joy or as more commonly know to the general public M&Ms

I frequently overdose on a family size bag, have tried every kind I can get my hands on peanut butter, wild cherry, mint the works. I can taste the difference between French, American English and Hong Kong varieties. I have even gone as far as framing the packaging as a shrine to my colourful love. I have absolutely no intention of stopping my sugar fueled rampage.

-First post after lurking for many many moons.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:45, Reply)
I'm addicted to brake fluid,
but do feel that I could stop at any time.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:42, 4 replies)
marmite
Fucking love the stuff to distraction - marmite on my toast, marmite on my chips, marmite straight out of the pot, marmite in my tea, marmite on my girlfriend. You get the idea.

Problem is I have a severe yeast allergy, and I puff up like a purple engorged michelin man on sight of the stuff.

I Just. Can't. Help myself.

They say you either love marmite or you hate it. Problem is that marmite seems to hate me.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:37, 2 replies)
Cigarettes.
Rollies to be precise, and there is one thing worse for a nicotine addict than running out of baccy when the shops are closed... Running out of papers when the shops are closed! All that lovely lovely baccy and you have to improvise with a bus ticket or receit - and that tastes foul beyond beleif.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:31, 9 replies)
GTA4 on PS3
Playing online in free mode. I cant get enough of hiding in corners picking suckers off with the sniper rifle..

Comes to the point now where i surf the net at work looking for pointers and as soon as i am home the tv and PS3 gets switched first.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:30, Reply)
Minesweeper

(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:27, 6 replies)
The Crooked Jades
An absolutely overwhelming 'alt-americana-noir' band from San Francisco....i have been listening to them almost on loop for the past 2.5 years...to the exclusion of almost all other music. Incredible stuff.

The idiots in my work will start rattling their gums about the latest band they might be into in....and as usual it's the same old, played out, done to death, nothing to see here, we sound like every cunt else, disposable guitar band SHITE...... I alternate between smug internal grin and hair pulling frustration............... fuckem, fuck em all.

When they played Ireland a few months back and I could not go, i was beside myself and had to up the volume on my mp3 player until i could no longer hear myself sobbing....
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:11, 7 replies)
Twix
It's a rather lame one, but for a good 2 years when I had to walk to work I used to get a twix every morning, then every morning and evening and then one at lunch too. I especially liked the one at lunch because it would accompany a hot beverage, I would eat the caramel and chocolate then dip the biscuit in my tea...

I know it was an addiction because I couldn't wait to get to the shop, and when I moved on got a car etc for a couple of weeks I would find myself craving them.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:01, 2 replies)
Addiction.....
Well I would say I have a few addictions.

1, FACEBOOK!!! I cannot stop looking at the damm thing, Please someone help me. I go to work and have it open on my PC all day and the slightest invite or comment will be responded to within 60 seconds and gets dragged out for as long as posible, I drive home from work which takes 15mins to get on my PC and Facebook! Ahhh I see myself doing it and scream but I cannot stop even when I am in another country I will be on it even if its via 3G on my mobile and costing a fortune :( (Last holiday bill for a week was £200)

HELP ME !!!!!!!

2. As Homer Simpson would say Alcomahole, I do not drink during the week so never on a School night but I go through the week and go ah Im going to have a weekend off but end up getting home on Friday evening and its like insta find people go out and get drunk. This has to happen each weekend even if 4hours before I said no!!! I sware my liver has tried to escape on more than one occasion.

3. Pron! Im not going to say that I don't have an addiction, 1TB of the stuff says otherwise! I really need to get a real life women before my eyes melt and my hands fall off!

4. Coke (a Cola) Cannot stop drinking the stuff about 2litres a day. I managed a whole 4-5 weeks without it before starting again reacently. A few years ago I gave up all fizzy drinks for over a year but somehow just cannot shake the habbit.

5. B3TA, Cannot stop looking at that site!
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:58, 2 replies)
Weed.
One joint before bed, every day.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:54, 2 replies)
Stuff im addicted to
Pepsi and coke i go through the stuff like drinking i need at least one 1.5 liter bottle a day.Really fuxes up the bowel movements
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:52, Reply)
Hi, my name is MissButterfly
and I'm addicted to the internet. I just can't get enough of reading news, facebook, twitter, forums and my blog.

I need help :s
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:45, Reply)
Vices
I suppose the lowest point on the whole smoking thing was being impoverished and forced to smoke roll-ups.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no baccy-snob, but the point is this-

During times of economic stress (and there were many in the dim & distant past) or if the shops were shut, the addiction didn't understand, it still screamed to your brain to be fed.

So the only option was to get a fag paper, dig around in an ash tray full to Royle-family proportions, and empty out the remaining unsmoked baccy from a selction of butts to create a roll-up.

Roll-ups per se are fine, it's just THOSE roll-ups....

(actually, if you are smoking roll-ups as a rule, then creating emergency ones from other rollies is not as disgusting as doing it from ordinary fags.)

Happily, I've been nicotine free for very nearly 2 years, so "yay me" & all that bollocks.

Being an addictive sort, my nicotine replacement therapy has been pornography. But modern day grot doesn't float the boat, it is the moustache & bush-fest that is the 1970s.

Real women. Gets my salute, as it were.

Length? Doesn't matter, it's mine & I'll wash it as fast as I like.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:43, Reply)
2p bets
It took a very good mate of mine to bet me 2p that I couldn't go a week without partaking of bolivian marching powder at work. At this point I realised it was time to do something about it so I moved to Singapore the next month. That's the place where you get sent to the hangman for more than a 3.5 grams of cannabis and more than quarter of a gram of sniff. It was one way to solve the issue I suppose!
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:10, 1 reply)
Killing.
Only 5.5Bn more to do.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 8:09, Reply)
Liberal American Political Blogs
It's weird, I have little to no interest in British politics but I spend a minimum of an hour a day reading Eschaton, Washington Monthly, Think Progress, MotherJones, Talking Points Memo etc etc.

It just seems more exciting I guess, what with them having genuine nutters in government.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 7:34, Reply)
Water
I was addicted to not showering. Thankfully, I got over the habit and have been clean for nearly a year now.

Well, at least it wasn't a pun

EDIT: Damn, Legless got there first
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 7:24, Reply)
Biting fingernails.
My own and other peoples. I stalk them until they are alone. I snatch them up and keep them in a cage in my basement. I feed them nothing but calcium pills. I slowly knaw on the nails until they have none left.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 6:57, 2 replies)
Quake
.
I don't play online games any more. Too addictive.

The main game I was addicted to was Quake, specifically the mod Quakeworld. Man those were great days.

It started when I was working for a large insurance company in South London. We were the first company to allow people to buy their insurance on the Internet and I was the guy who'd put together all of the web servers, load balancers and other shit. Because of this we had a fat 2 meg pipe to the Internet.

Now these days, 2 meg sounds like bugger all but these were the days of dialup when most people were still on 28 or 56k modems. 2 meg was a monstrous amount of bandwidth back then. But it wasn't enough for what we wanted.

Us Quake players in the office didn't want to share our bandwidth with people buying fucking car insurance. We wanted our own pipe. So we went and bought another 2 meg and explained to the company grown-ups that it was for redundancy. If the main link fell over the we could fail-over to this new link. All that was true but the real purpose was to play Quake.

There were about 10 of us in the company who were Quake fanatics and we formed our own Clan with our own uniforms. Most other clans had names like:

"Death Stalkers!
"The Knights Of Dark Reknown"
"Blade Kissers"

and they all had jazzed up fancy skins with lots of sharp bits and skulls.

Not us.

We were Clan Fluffy - Death In A Fur Coat. Our uniforms were big pink fluffy coats and sunglasses. Every other clan in the universe hated us for not taking it seriously.

We'd be sitting in the office late at night, headphones connected through our own phone system so we could talk to each other and co-ordinate our attacks and defence. We'd all report in from our workstations that we were ready to go and we'd simultaneously connect to the same server. 10 geeks in pink fluffy jackets would drop into a Quakeworld server and unleash hell on the other players.

For the first 30 seconds there'd be absolute carnage as we fragged our way across the map and then the squeals would appear, flashing across our screens as the other players registered that we were on their server.

"It's Clan Fluffy!!!"
"Get the pink bastards!!"
"Everyone play together - truce. Get the pink cunts"

But it was never any use. We had virtually zero lag due to our massive bandwidth and our headset communication was an order of magnitude more efficient at co-ordination than texting commands as they they had to do. Even on a virtually full server - 50 of them versus ten of us it was always carnage.

I must have wasted thousands of good drinking hours playing that game.

Man those were good days. I still miss them but I can't afford the time anymore to get involved in online playing. It would suck the rest of my life away. But I don't regret it.

Cheers - "Death In A Fur Coat!"
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 6:53, 6 replies)
Not my story, but someone I'm very close to.
As you all know by now, I'm dating a guy 25 years my senior.
He has 2 kids, one is 23, the other turned 21 on Friday.

His daughter is the one that turned 21.

3 years ago, she started "experimenting" with weed and speed. She got addicted to crystal meth. She stole around $15,000 from her mom and dad. No matter what any of us tried to do for her (this is before "us") and for the family, the nature of addiction doesn't allow for a user to admit they have a problem until they're either a) hitting rock bottom on the streets or b) incarcerated. This also goes for the family.

2 years ago, this beautiful, vibrant girl that I knew since she was 14 turned into a lying, theiving little slutbag who would do anything for her next fix.
So much so, that she was the "getaway" driver in a house robbery and was subsequently caught and thrown in jail. Her dad got a good lawyer, so instead of 6 years in State Prison she got 2 years in the County Jail and 3 years probation.

But it doesn't end there. In July last year, her mom who had valiantly battled cancer for 6 years finally succumbed to MRSA. It happened within 36 hours from when she was hospitalized to the time she passed away. Meanwhile, the girl was still in jail.

Her dad called the jail to ask if he could get an emergency visit, and they said no. They said the warden could tell her mom had gone. Obviously, this wasn't an option, so he had to go to jail 2 days later and tell her over the phone.

No matter how much people have fucked up, to have to tell your daughter her mom is dead.....it made me shudder then, and it makes me shudder more so now.

She was due to get out in January this year ('08), but she was allowed early release on house arrest and an ankle monitor on compassionate grounds. She got lucky.

Since then, she's violated her probation once and was subsequently incarcerated again for 90 days. She continues to lie and be a slut, but she's no longer tweaking and she doesn't steal.

I've since got together romantically with her dad, and that's been hard for her, but we've started to become good friends. She knows that I know she lies (caught her out a million times and called her on it) but she also has no adult female influence in her life. And I hope that one day she'll realize that I've been the only person there for her since she got out of jail.

I'm not trying to be her mom, I'm not trying to even be any kind of stepmum. I'm just trying to be a friend that's not a stoner or a fuckup.

We bonded this last few days in Vegas (we took her for her 21st, and none of her "friends" would come with) and she told me "I love you, you're a great friend and you rock".

Made me smile.

She's in full time college now and I just hope that one day she can get on track, and get a job, and not have the stigma of "convicted drug felon" on her, 'cos she is a good kid.

Length - almost 2 years in county.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 6:33, 6 replies)
Nutella
I'm usually a moral and honest person, but when it comes to Nutella I turn into a looting bandit. I'm the sort of person who takes found lost property into the police station. But I have, on several occasions eaten all of my flatmates Nutella. I have had to ask them to hide it from me so I'm not tempted. My idea of purgatory would be a jar of Nutella dangling from a string, it's rich hazelnut goodness just a bit too high for me to reach.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 5:49, Reply)
Apologies for length and lack of himmous.
I’m 21 years old, and until recently had been a 25-a-day smoker for almost four years. I’d dabbled with quitting, sometimes giving up for a week while using patches. I spent about 2 years on and off using patches about once a week. However, I’d always slip up and be back on the smokes soon enough. Unfortunately often not before scouring the garden or driveway for last week's butts if the shop was closed.

Recently I was lying in bed, pondering the question of why some people, such as my father (30 years a smoker), had no trouble quitting overnight with the birth/conception of a child, while others find it impossible. I realised the following:

a) That everyone I know who has quit easily has not used patches, but has had a reason to not smoke. Kids, etc.

b) These people never ‘fought the battle of quitting’ with Nicotine Replacement Therapy or anything.

c) These people claimed to never suffer from serious cravings.

The realisation I arrived at is that the people who’ve been successful have not ‘quit’ but said to themselves “from now on, I’m a non-smoker” and removed any question of slipping up. It happens automatically when a good reason comes along, but anyone can be that decisive. Given the fact that they were all resigned to being a non-smoker there was no period of quitting or battle, at least psychologically.

The point about the gum/patches is that they symbolize a recognition on your part that you are incapable of quitting on your own. I must stress that they work perfectly to eliminate the physical need for nicotine, but they don’t let you become strong on your own. Every time I used them, it’d work until I’d get drunk or run out of patches, at which point I would have no reason to feel strong enough to hold back. If you’re resolved from the start, the battle is already won. In this way, it isn’t the point when someone offers you a cigarette that is the critical point, it is the rationale behind the decision to quit.

This brings me to my final point, regarding the cravings. They’re really not as bad as they feel. I know that sounds insane but for me at least the vast majority of the anxiety and craving was anticipation of withdrawal rather than withdrawal itself. You get sweaty palms and shakes from the very thought of running out of smokes, but if you’ve accepted that there aren’t any more cigarettes to come, it is much, much easier. Over the last few weeks, which has been the first time in 3 ¾ years I’ve smoked less than 175 cigarettes a week, I’ve endured cravings similar to what I’d have on a normal day, maybe on a train and unable to smoke for an hour or two. If you see these as attrition to a finite amount of cravings, that is slowly chipped away, it really isn’t one hundredth as bad as the anticipation of withdrawal.

I could never be one of those preachy ex smokers who try to change people against their will, because I recognize that attacking a part of someone’s life is completely unproductive. Example: A foreigner has a go at your country of origin, pointing out very valid shortcomings and errors in governance. Do you say “Yes- thank you for pointing out the error of my ways. I will endeavour to remedy these problems because it is the right thing to do” -or- “Piss off wanker, look at where you’re from, you can’t judge me.” Attacking people just makes them stick by ‘their’ attacked feature more strongly, as agreeing with an attacker (even if they are right) is an unacceptable concession for most people. In short, I’m not writing this to pressure people to quit but more because it’s what I would have appreciated reading some time ago. I started smoking with friends who would have 4 or 5 on a Saturday night, and I got much more addicted than the friends who still smoke the same amount. I’ll probably still have the occasional one on a night out, but so long as I don’t ever feel compelled to buy a pack again, I’m happy. No lie, I woke up the morning after realising all this and just didn’t feel the need to go buy a pack, and haven’t since.

Now it’s just time to work on the addictions to caffeine, opium and high class escorts...

Length? More than 13 grand on the bastards in the last 3 years.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 4:36, 5 replies)
Sadly.....
Despite a reasonable IQ, a disdain for modern trends and a healthy social life, I am addicted to bebo.

I check it every day, religiously, poring over page views and comments.

I keep a blog there that I'm SURE no-one reads, and generally wish I could just give it up.

If you want to see my ugly bonce, add mason-murphy at the end of the bebo url. Prove it's not just me.

Is it just me?
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 3:56, 3 replies)
I have a gambling addiction
Fortunately poker is a profitable way of dealing with it.
(, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 3:43, 1 reply)

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