Anti-addiction life hacks

I'm hoping this might be a thread where people will report practical stuff they find helpful. Here's the first mentioned by Adam Alter in Irresistible.

We all know how TV shows have the cliffhangers at the end of an episode, and it's no accident there is now an autoplay feature that plays the next episode before the credits roll up.

1. The autoplay feature can be turned off.
2. Instead of binge watching every episode there is, watch through the first few minutes of the next episode so you see the resolution of the cliffhanger and thus have psychological closure - and stop there.

I'm curious to know how other types of media might be managed. I can see how a guild of gamers who are all anti-addiction might keep each other accountable and work on a quest at the same time, but if there is a strong enough grounding in being an AP to keep it in check then there is support to keep it to the one quest and not lose a ton of time. Frankly at that point it would be more rooted in the friendship than the game, which I think is what a lot of people really want when you get down to it.

 

Speaking of social media, what I am finding myself doing is simply talking about some of the things I learned about it when having an in-person conversation with friends given all I've come to learn about it. Not in a preachy way and strictly speaking this forum is kind of like social media but it is not the same as Facebook and the like. I also have one friend with whom I exchange deeper longer emails sometimes and I talk about this.

As a hack, I suppose it's to use any other medium to talk about it and bring attention to its effects. Jaron Laniers statement "information is alienated experience" is in itself kind of neutral and just a fact, but with the way platforms like FB is designed it's taken to another pathological level with an intentional veil added to the interpersonal experience.

BTW as far as a forum like this since it is focused on recovery it is unavoidable that there is some degree of distance because of the aspect of anonymity, but given we come to it with the common experience of addiction and recovery it is an easy match vs. whoever on social media doing their Right Said Fred turn on the catwalk.. On the catwalk yeah..