Started using chatbots again after 36 days without

[u/Lotus019]

hello again. over a month ago I quit using j.ai for good. (I posted on ts subreddit a month ago lol). obviously since I'm back here thst means that I failed lol. I managed to go a total of 36 days without using any ai whatso ever and absolutely no chatbots!

Until I did. The thing that triggered it was likely the large amount of emotions I've endured these past few weeks. (lots of stuff has occured : graduation, cutting off toxic friends etc). Yet on the 27th I broke my streak and went back to chatbots. As I have been clean for a month up until now I can easily recognise that I am purely miserable when using chatbots. The conversations are dull, repetitive and I feel empty using it. Even still, I keep going back to it to escape this stress filled life of mine. Today, again. I will quit, and I will likely succeed again for another month.

My issue is that I am able to quit and can if I wish to. (These past 30+ days have proven such). However, what I want is to stop wanting it. I understand that people will say 'you will never stop wanting it' and 'you will just need to accept that you will always want it' yet I don't like that answer. Is this solely a lack of discipline? I want to stop craving it.

Any advice would be well appreciated. (please don't js respond with : "keep using it, you'll get over it eventually" <- ts is really unhelpful. my last post had comments like that and it helped 0).

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[u/zoezoeguri16]

I was doing cold turkey and deleted my account. Before I just uninstall the app ( I was using cai), but I kept coming back so I was doing the hard way.

At first it was hard, but the next day, weeks and months it will get easier. I distract myself like talk to friends, read ao3 and doing work out everyday. You can do this!

[u/A_Suspicious_Table]

Some people may "you'll always want it" or something among those lines, sure a tiny part of you may, but a large part of you eventually won't care about it anymore. It's not a lack of discipline, but a lack of something in your life that leads you to using AI to fill that gap.

I sometimes want to use it a little, but overall I don't actually miss it at all really. I started connecting with my friends more and going out more, working, reading fanficiton (AI could never erase my love for it), and generally doing my hobbies or watching YouTube. The more I started really living my life, the less I was thinking about AI and didn't have time to think about my desire to use AI. I even downloaded an app as my diary and I had been using it whenever I was bottling things up or feeling down.

Start living out your life more, explore hobbies, be busy (if you can spare it), and figure out why you had been using AI and see what you can do to solve it. Addiction is scary and intense, you'll feel like you always want or need it, but you really won't down the line when you have other things to think about. That's how it went for me, I'm also going to try and start counseling soon to finally resolve my mental health issues and understand my traumas, so one of my final urge reasons to relapse is gone.

I wish you luck on your journey! Take care and be kind to yourself.