1 Month Fully Addiction Free (nicotine, caffeine, porn, drugs/alcohol, sugar, social media) - some reflections

Yes, all of them. No caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, porn, social media, or sugar.

I literally took out a personal loan and quit my job in order to this, which I realize is a privilege, but it's the only way I was able to reduce my stress level enough to persevere. I just landed a new job and started Monday, so this second month will be the first real psychological test to see if I can continue with an added stressor. So what's my motivation? A pretty big one, and I don't think I would have been able to do this if I didn't feel like it was my last ditch effort to live a normal life.

Why I did it. I have been riddled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation for the majority of my life. I even went to inpatient treatment for a suicide attempt once. I had tried everything under the sun to get rid of my negativity; sobriety from alcohol (3 years), antidepressants, mood stabilizers, you name it. I would sometimes get a month or two of placebo effect, but nothing worked long term. I would always get depressed once more and usually do something impulsive to ruin all of my progress.

This was an experiment to see if the "normal" addictions that society sees as benign might be doing more harm than they would have us to believe. And my early conclusion is a resounding yes. The elimination of nicotine and caffeine have all but removed my suicidal thoughts and feelings of emptyness.

My focus has still not returned to normal, not sure it even will, hence why I'm writing this post instead of working lol. But I will check in each month to give an update on that. I'm willing to take this to the end, even if I get fired. There is nothing more important than not wanting to die.

Some notes:

- Nicotine was the hardest. But I did long hikes each day with my dogs and distracted myself with nature as much as possible.

- Caffeine is the second hardest. I slept like 12 hours a day for the first week, but it was ok, because I had no job.

- I had quit alcohol plenty of times before with long periods of sobriety, so this one was not too difficult for me thankfully.

- Porn was seemingly easy because I think the caffeine withdrawels decrease libido.

- I had already been keto for the majority of the year as another attempt to relieve depression, so sugar was easy as well (It was hard when I started keto though.)

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments!