I wasn’t going to entertain your comment with a response but you sure baited me good with that last one.

You don’t believe in science.

Yeah you’re right, I don’t “believe in science”, because I’m not a religious dipshit who swapped one worship for another, I believe that the scientific method is the best we have for determining truth, but it is not set in stone, and it is a method - not a bible of things that definitely exist, only what can be demonstrated, which tends to change. There is no god, prophet, or a holy book in research.

is literally the scientific study of the mind and behavior.

At present, the evidence seems to demonstrate a vast number of foundational papers of the entire field of psychology are blatantly unreproducible to any satisfactory standard where their results could be taken as assumptions for further research.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

I’m not an expert by any means, this is not my field of research, nor am I going to take the time to cite primary sources because frankly I don’t care that much about this subject matter for a Lemmy comment, but you need to re-examine your relationship with the scientific method, because it will not give you the religious comfort of “belief” that you imply you seek.

That’s right where addiction lands…

No, it does not, because addiction defined by it’s purely physical, observable effects is a real and definite thing, not only do we have empirical evidence of specific effects but a theory with predictive power as to the mechanics of specific chemical imbalances in the body created by specific substances.

Addiction as defined by the field of psychology is as broad as any hack-fraud wants it to be because the whole field has extremely dodgy foundations that allow for ever-broader definitions that no longer make sense and much worse yet - they harm people who are actually suffering if not also the people who seek answers from it such as yourself.

It’s no different than teenagers cosplaying disability or neurodivergence for attention.

Have some fucking shame.

There is nothing wrong with therapy. There is nothing wrong with feng-shui either. It’s not exactly scientific, but that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. You want to roleplay an addict? Go for it.

But don’t claim your experiences are anything like actual addiction.

Flying in the face of medical science

Of course I’m flying in the face of medical science. And if you swap “addiction” as defined by “psychology” for “hysteria” or “Social Darwinism” or any other idea proven false, I would do so as well.

Yes. It’s like gatekeeping the term cancer because I think people who don’t have cancer shouldn’t claim they have cancer because they sorta maybe feel like they do. They have problems, to be sure, but not that problem.

I had “”““addictions””“” aplenty to all sorts of things and negative habits of all kinds, it is simply an entirely different thing and should not be labeled as addiction because it is just not the same thing, and words have meanings outside of the psychology world.

Psychology

Most of the psychology world has nothing to do with addiction (a societal and physical problem) and is a pseudo-scientific scam invented by the medical complex operating under the premise of capitalist realism and that if you just deluded yourself into believing things are okay, they will be okay, but they are not, and in reality most unhappiness is due to poor material circumstances.

You mistake jest for hate, I pity you, boring man. I have no more to give you but my pity. Cheer up, boring man.

I’ve been addicted to multiple drugs multiple times, including multiple at once.

The reason it was difficult to stop was because I physically could not function without them due to a chemical imbalance created by their consumption. I took them to cope with being fired, and potentially deported back to a transphobic country from a job I couldn’t stand, yet had to stay in for a year on barely living wage, and as harm reduction for the bottles of alcohol I used to down every day.

I think I got a pretty good idea actually.

If you want to stop, then figure out how to stop, then do that, and then you stop. That’s all there is to it really.

The truth is if you’re struggling with the first, it’s because you have no reason to stop, or the reason you have isn’t good enough. At that point you won’t be able to start or stop anything, no matter whether it’s a soft habit like picking your nose or being psychologically addicted to any other sort of dopamine.

With the second, that’s the physical addiction part, and it can get pretty complicated.

The reason I stopped was because I had to stop to not die and I wanted to live to finish transitioning, because I hated gender dysphoria and wanted to live to see the disorder perish in a very personal and petty way for how much of my childhood it fucked up. I now have.

The hardest part about the second aspect - the logistics of quitting after finding a reason to do so wasn’t the psychobabble unscientific “muh willpower” christian work ethic capitalist bootstrap mumbo jumbo, it was finding decent information on how to taper to minimize the severity of withdrawals and seizures and the fact I had to continue to resort to illegal uncontrolled means of acquiring medication for managing my taper to avoid seizures, collapsing and smashing my skull open to amusement of fellow man condemned to the morning commute.

Similarly with amphetamine I still had to go to work, which unfortunately at the time required me to be awake, yet no medical professional will tell you what will work - pounding monsters and vaping like it’s the goddamn industrial revolution.

Polluting the term addiction - the struggle of those who’s chemical imbalance due to substance abuse has their very body turn against them in cruel and unusual ways with the experience of someone who spends too much on avocado toast is watering down and cheapening the seriousness of the problem.

It was difficult finding information on how to unclench my jaw at night, whether I’m going too fast or too slow and looking for the best sources, knowing full well that the violence monopolists and their lapdog pharmabro complex filled with religious nutjobs (UK, so not trumpists) and nurses recommending bleach enemas would do everything they could to stop me if I so much as peeped about my struggles and the rest, brainwashed as they are would go off about self-helpyourself-to-my-pyramid-scheme guru book on amazon dot com or resort to quiet condemnation and pride that they made the right™️ decisions.

What helped me was DNMs, drug forums, suicide forums (they defended the argument for suicide badly and were therefore lame) and crypto enthusiasts.

Ultimately with addiction it comes down to two things:

1. Do you have a good reason to quit?
2. Do you know what you need to do and how to (logistically) do it?

If either of these are a no, you will fail. The first is hard to find in our fucked world so I don’t blame anyone, and it won’t get any easier until the world we live in is worth engaging in with more than the comfort of chilling out an amph sesh with some kpins and a dihydrocodeine or ten.

Aww, first day on the internet? I’m sorry, it is indeed most rude of me, how did I not consider my manners when countering misinformation that so strongly feels like racist propaganda! Hope you can accept this bottle of brandy my jolly governor, this is in most sincere apology!

Can be addictive psychologically, so can masturbation or anything else. The answer is to just stop. Whole different ballgame from actual physucal addiction.

Hateful? Of who? Telegram? Are you responding to the wrong comment? I was simply correcting the mistake (or spin) in the OP

This is insane. My career started three years ago. I’m Gen-Z. Never used YouTube for learning. We get it dude you like videos, most don’t and don’t learn that way. Videos are mostly for ads and grifting

Yup, but that’s not the same. Alcohol withdrawals can kill you. Nicotine/Opioid/Benzo withdrawals can seriously hurt you. With weed or tiktok? It’s just hard.

Re-read your own quote:

Previously, the pair founded the Russian social network VK, which they left in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government.

VK was founded by private entrepreneur Durov in Russia, no relation to government at all, and was later taken over by the government in 2013.

Telegram which is entirely unrelated to VK has no connection to Russia at all, and was never based in it, it’s inception was a direct response to the Russian government’s authoritarianism.

Neither of these are “Russia-founded”, while forgivable to say this for VK as it is very much government run, Telegram has no relation to Russia and it’s raison d’etre is explicitly anti-Russian gov’t.

Nah it’s all algorithms now I’m sorry :(

Russia-founded

Western brainrot at all time high this morning I see

Are you implying that Facebook et al do not optimise for engagement? What do they optimise for then?

Yeah what’s engagement? Interactions. The winning move is not to play the game. I’ve yet to hear reasons why this is more difficult than e.g. stopping littering on the street or eating junk food.

Ah yes what the world needs right now - even more scam peddlers. I for one thank our corporate overlords for deciding for us. A waste of natural resources in scale second only to the data-harvesting-marketing ouroboros

RIP

Facebook doesn’t cause physical dependency on a chemical like opioids or even benzos. Being “”“addicted”“” to Facebook is like being “”“addicted”“” to weed.

So just leave the platform

Algorithms will show you what you like and what others like you like. That’s it. I got Muslim dating apps all day every day because I lived in London, but I never clicked, so it went away. It didn’t convert me to islam, just like seeing a church outside didn’t make me Christian because I’m semi-capable of at least some thought and not purely instinctual animalistic behaviour as you imply is the case for those who are led by algorithms.

As I said before, the internet is simply airing out our dirty laundry. Humans are bloodthirsty ghouls most of the time and will believe whatever it takes to justify killing each other.

In the context of WW2 for instance Hitler is the “bad guy”, but compared to some of the shit Churchill got up to for instance with the Bengali, he seemed fairly civilised, and even that would’ve seemed soft compared to Stalin’s purges and the Holodomor, but say what you will - none of them had Jim Crow laws.

Im not trying to say all are equal, but more that it’s not at all surprising so many seem downright evil

That’s true, and you can make Windows XP look like '98, but is it really what retro enthusiasts would want?