Thanks for the well wishes. I'm holding off on dropping caffeine for at least a week, but this morning marked my last cigarette. My girlfriend knows what's going on, and we are working out schedules to mostly avoid eachother until the withdrawals are over. I just wanted to drop a sincere thank you before my vocabulary deminishes and my brain don't think good.

Thanks for the encouragement. It looks like I'm dropping the nicotine tomorrow due to lack of funds, and caffeine will follow shortly after if I don't find some honest work on the quick. I'm not bummed out about it, but I know the next few days won't be fun. We'll see what happens.

It's free and easily accessible, so you don't have to provide payment information or have your email spammed to death. Avoiding the streaming sites means not worrying about possible tracking or invasive cookies. I'm overly cautious, but it works if the music your finding is acceptable to your tastes. Listening to random currated music shows is akin to music discovery on a site like Pandora, but most importantly without the endless commercials and ad spam.

Had to stop an reflect this a bit, how weird it is to first hear about a person on the day they die. "At least he died doing what he loved." Seems appropriate, but I don't know that for sure - and for me it's hard to muster up emotion for someone I'll never know or have a conversation with. I'm happy that someone bothered to chase a dream, and I hope his end was somewhat peaceful or at least quick.

Thank you, I'm just approaching this without a filter for good or ill - leaning toward good.

I'm still using soda to avoid the caffeine headache, and should just give it up along with smoking. None of my usual excuses hold up because I'm currently unemployed and have nothing but free time. In my head I'm thinking "Fuck it! We'll do it live" and drop them both right now. Doubt sinks in, I get hostile to those around me, and in a few days I'm chugging coffee and chain-vaping. That's how it usually goes, time and time again.

I always wondered where the withdrawal anger was coming from, and just within the last few weeks I think I found the answer to that through comedian Bill Burr on his podcast. When your the type of person that primary relies on your brain to survive in the world, when that mechanism isn't functioning at 100% you feel extremely vulnerable, and that sounds like a reasonable answer to me. Maybe, having gained that knowledge, why not make another go of it?

I managed to win over cocaine, opioids, and alcohol in my turbulent PTSD driven 20's. A combination of pot and psilocybin saved my life, and really mellowed me out once I hit my 30's. The opioid epidemic claimed my mother, and I now have more dead friends than living ones. Even if it's down to caffein and nicotine, I'm striving to be free of all addictions down to pot and video games, and stick to long walks and meditation.

I'm hoping that sharing all that in a somewhat public place will give me that extra nudge to give it a try. I think my signing up here, was to see if I could let my guard down and be vulnerable around others. If that holds up, maybe I can quit smoking without being an absolute dick to those around me. I feel a sense of shame posting this, but logically if this in some way leads to dropping another addiction - it would be stupid not to follow through.

Congrats to everyone here who managed to quit anything at all. It's a human skill some take for granted, and I marvel at anyone who can pull it off.

https://djpod.com/darkambientmusic/dark-ambient-music-ep08-ethereal-and-avantgarde

I limit myself to podcasts for privacy reasons, and mostly listen to random ambient in the background while I write. This particular episode has been looping for a few weeks, and contains a mistitled Steven Roach song that I can't seem to find anywhere on the internet. Whoever created the podcast seems to have given up after 8 episodes, adding to a long list of abandoned podcasts that I still listen to on a regular basis.

I was looking for a non-toxic community, on a platform that didn't shove advertising down my throat. I feel like I stumbled upon an oasis here, so I'm just going to awkwardly jump in and try to find a good conversation.