Like for every blog post, firstly please be sure to read blog info to understand my blog.

⏱️Overview

This post is about people’s addictions. First I write my definition and ways of getting rid of them. Later I’m listing many addictions with short info and my observations etc. I hope this could be helpful in identifying and reducing them.

⚖️My definition

There is an extensive page on wikipedia, seriously long and later medical. Surely there are other on internet.

I’m going to put my own, simpler definition here: everything can be an addiction, if it’s repeated too often and if it has a (significant) negative impact on health, cost (money) and time spent.

If you can stop doing something for any set time then you’re clearly not addicted to it. That’s time consuming to prove though. Also it is actually up to you to set the thresholds when something you do becomes an addiction for you. Unless of course if you don’t notice or care and someone close does or it becomes visible to most.

For me it should be everyone’s crucial goal to stop health impacting addictions first, reduce or drop money requiring addictions and have only hobbies. Best if those also don’t need money only time, and if they bring something useful for others (like writing a blog, sharing own art or meal recipes, developing open software or hardware, etc.).

👉How to get rid?

Let’s start with most important thing.
Well the first step is understanding that we have an addiction and finding motivation to get rid of it.
Sounds simple but it may be quite difficult. An addicted person will find any explanation to continue addiction, even very stupid ones. That’s not really their fault entirely, it’s how brain works because of addiction. Usually other person would know better if you’re addicted (if they’re not) because they can see your actions and the effect an addiction has over your life.

Here are my 3 ways of getting rid:

• Instantly💥
  Well it’s the best, and fastest way. If only all could be so simple:
  You read or hear about something and understand that you’re addicted. Possibly get knowledge about a better way too. And boom! you drop the worse way and never do it again. You’re not addicted and can spend more of (your) time and money on better purposes. Could also mean in more intelligent way.
• Over time⏳
  For more troubling addictions. You can make a plan and realize gradually. Each time you do something bad for you (addiction) you take note of it with date (possibly also time), e.g. in a calendar, or even on paper (so it won’t get lost or forgotten on phone). Then you can track how often it happens and how the frequency (e.g. daily or weekly occurrence value) progresses. Obviously it needs to decrease, best to zero. I’m pretty sure it may be not linear and some people won’t go to zero (or want to), depends on addiction and your final goal.
  It may be good to find a hobby or an activity that replaces an addiction. Just an idea but sometimes you can have a hole of time if you stop and e.g. can’t think of anything than your addiction (or some other). A hobby is meant to be creative (that’s what I believe) and have no negative impact, surely way less than an addiction.
• With other’s👥 or professional help🧑‍⚕️.
  Sadly some of world’s most heavy addictions (e.g. drugs, alcohol) are so severe that they need other people’s help. If your friends, family or other people can’t help or it’s not enough, then it’s time for some institution to take over. I don’t know if that’s paid but honestly at this point it should not matter. Certainly determination and will are needed as well to complete.

📝List intro

Following is my big list of addictions. There surely are more and it’s not the point to put everything possible or imaginable here.

The point is to give some examples and hints to check if maybe we are addicted to this.
Few first are quite obvious and well known, yet still exist and even consume some people’s lives. The reason they exists is obviously because they make so much profit for others (while making so much harm to those affected).

Others who are addicted (yet often won’t admit or get motivated to stop) are simply a walking and talking commercial for that addiction. Addictions also can be grouped, e.g. at parties you can find few at once. So yeah if you’d say you’re going there just to meet people, that is just fooling everyone including yourself.

It’s important to understand that various addictions have various impact. I’m trying to group my list by tiers, i.e. how severe addictions are or by topic. For example: internet and social media addictions (may seem fun and) clearly have less effect on health compared to drugs and alcohol. But those tiers are arbitrary and don’t matter too much, because when dealing with an addiction what matters most is person’s level of addiction to it, then its severity in general.

Another important thing to add here is: the younger we are trying / starting addiction the more severe it will be. I think a kid’s brain needs good examples (like creative hobbies) in early years not addicting distractions, often just fueling shitty businesses worldwide.

📄List

Tier 1 – severe health ❤️

Known as substance abuse. Here are some statistics. A well deserved reading.
This is the worst kind, with severe health impact, many lives lost and lots of money lost in total.
I’d say the easiest and best way for those freaking life stealers is to never even try them.

I have a family with closest relatives who don’t have any of those major addictions, therefore I had good advice and example when I was young. My uncle even tried smoking and alcohol and told me it’s not worth trying, his colleagues didn’t stop when he did and they lost more of their life (health, time and money) to those addictions.

My way of thinking for all listed in this tier: there are no reasons for doing any, it usually happens for people when they didn’t think of something better to do (more creative, productive etc) or just followed somebody’s annoying suggestion.

Nowadays I can tell with certainty that if your friends offer you or have any of addictions in this group (at least) then it’s a clear sign the issue is not with you but with them, in other words your friends aren’t the best simply and I’d rather get rid of them than to get an addiction. It’s common that people want to spend time with others having same activities so this also goes for their addictions. And if they want to connect or you spend time just because of an addiction then it may be just about that and nothing more.

Drugs 💊💉

For me it’s most obvious that they should not be legal or even exist. It’s not too difficult to see how many people have lost their life (or years of it) or even died because of overdose. Even popular actors/actresses lost to drugs.

Obviously drugs exist because they make many people huge profits, and many others less, but still profits, maybe bigger than alternatives.
If a person offers you drugs, they’re clearly either:

• making money from it (and don’t give a damn about your life, not now, neither future, that’s how biggest profits are made) or
• don’t know you better (or wish you worse life, possibly not knowing better themself).

Since people profiting the most from drugs get very rich, there is also a lot of corruption and bribing. And big cartels running it all and wasting lifes. If you ever got drugs, you were at the very far end of this all, fueling its profits.

Alcohol 🍺🍷

Many emojis for this already 🍺🍸🍷🍹🍶🍾. I wonder if they ever ban any, like the gun, very unlikely.
Another heavy topic. Again it’s even easier to see people who have lost their life (or years) to this addiction. Some became homeless, some lost jobs or simply forgot a better life without alcohol. Some alarming stats here.

Interestingly enough alcohol is at top of harm caused, and majority of it is harm to others. So why would you even drink it. Even if you can control it (and think it’s something) it still becomes a commercial for this huge addicting business and a risk for someone else to drink it.
Honestly the shear density of places with alcohol sold is scary. It’s not just alcohol shops (sometimes near even churches etc) it’s now every grocery shop and gas station, because for some it’s either a must or a why not buy and thus more profit for facility.
And for some even mentioning “drinking” (anything else) already instantly reminds of alcohol.

My definition

My definition of an alcoholic is quite simple: it’s a person who drinks alcohol. Period. But to make it more precise I add: if someone drank in previous year (365 days), and for best measure it is: yearly volume of pure alcohol consumed.

I know. Some people would instantly ask: what about wine (or other expensive stuff) for celebration, or a beer with friends? Surely not. I’m not even sorry.
Then lastly what about champagne🍾 for New Year’s Eve? Nope, sorry. But yes, if that’s the only thing left in year, then at this point it’s less about alcohol and more about buying (commercial stuff) and associating it for occasions.

📜My history

I remember when I ended elementary school and some time after, like 2 or 3 people from our old class asked me to drink with them or otherwise promoted alcohol. Funniest thing those guys were even the least liked / known by me. So clearly they were just addicted and wanting me to join. I also still remember once helping them after they visited our house after they drank in park, and one got sick. Those who knew me better didn’t even ask, they knew I won’t drink or even try. It was my close uncle who earlier told me it’s not worth even trying.

Smoking 🚬, vaping

Well I remember a friend on college who for long smoked everyday even at jobs later in life, he had to go out of the building for that too. Fortunately I think probably his wife or someone helped him to stop. Another example was my other uncle who didn’t stop smoking and even got lung cancer, I remember once a visit I quickly computed how much money he spent monthly for cigarettes, it was IIRC about 30% of his (retired) income, since he smoked already 20 per day or so. A less severe computation we did on college (while together on break): roughly money for smoking could buy you a used car every 3 years or so.

Smoking started literally ages before and I guess the whole business got more attention in 1960s or something when they made plenty commercials for it and movies showed it a lot (even old freaking cartoons for kids). It’s just later people started to realize those severe health consequences. But the business stayed, nobody earning such huge sums would like to stop right? I hope this sums it up. I’d say that naivety period is key in (huge) businesses, and no such company cares about humanity only profits.

As for vaping, here’s some website. For me it’s clearly another big profitable market, since cigarette packages got warnings about cancer, death, and there aren’t cigarette commercials anymore (except in movies still). Seems to be just a continuation of that stupidity, but for younger, likely more naive target audience.

Tier 2 – money wasters 💰

I’m trying to sort here by how much money can be lost, but for sure this isn’t set. Anybody can loose any amount on anything actually. Depends only on how much you have (borrow or steal too) and choose too loose instead of saving, investing or spending on something useful in life.

Gambling 🎰

More on wiki.
Honestly probably the biggest money waste possible. It certainly has changed numerous people’s life for worse or even ruined it. Yet all the stupid, blinking, primitive, gambling machines still exist. Not only that, there are cities like Las Vegas famous just for gambling. Also countless gambling websites or sport results booking and other ways you could loose your money. They even put it in modern video games (e.g. a longer video, how they even abuse minors for their profits).

Let me just make it clear one more time, all this exists only because they are making profits. Wouldn’t exist without profit, like any business. Some seriously gigantic, I mean if you could build a city on a desert mainly just for gambling.
The randomness part of gambling is somewhat continued in next chapter.

Lottery 🍀

Page on wiki.
I think people who gamble or take part in lotteries (or consider it) clearly don’t understand probability. Yet the constant commercial for country’s lottery still shows how many millions you can win. Somewhere I even saw that the probability for it is even less than getting hit by a meteorite or way lower than injuring yourself while getting/filling the ticket. Sure that is the most rare thing, so improbable that even if you’d participate daily, you won’t win during your life. But yeah that’s probability, someone will win during lifetime.

Of course that’d be the rarest win. What about those small prizes? Well let’s just say with certainty that this lottery business like every other wouldn’t exist if it didn’t make profit. So if you win that’s luck but next times you’d loose more than that.
And if somebody feels “luckier” then clearly they don’t think logically. The whole concept is based on pure randomness, whatever it wouldn’t be, it’s meant to be random. So in general whole people’s money put into it (lottery, gambling, bets whatever) will need to be 2 times or more than whole winning budget. That’s seems to be the rule of every business.

And lastly you don’t control your life (fully) if you do things at random (or depend on this).
Logically it’s a waste of money always, as you can invest it in your life better, even just by not spending it. For me there is no luck, it’s just people’s naivety or lack of understanding probability.

Buying 💵💳

Clearly for me the world’s commercial addiction is way too high. Here is consumerism wiki, another page and also history here.
There are countless shopping malls, big centers, online shops, etc. This has a global effect on people and on earth. The commercial garbage left from it is even noticeable from space in many places.

This topic is continued in separate buying page with my advice. The solution is to buy rationally.

Collecting 💿🦸

Doesn’t matter what it is: action figures, comics, music records, cars, books, magazines, newspapers, coins, figurines, post stamps, or any other thing from millions of choices really. Also in-game items or achievements are here to cash on. It is clearly an addiction and hence so many stupid products are made with so many variants. If they also combine this with gambling (i.e. you don’t know which variant you’ll get), then likely profits are multiplied.

For me collecting is also the opposite of a creative hobby. Clearly by collecting you simply get obsessed by something others have produced rather than creating something yourself. This is what I think OFC, having created so many projects.

Traveling ✈️🛳️

Plenty of emojis for this too 🏞️🏖️ 🚄🚌🛳️.
Yes, by many considered a hobby or interest. Given how much money this costs, especially when continuously done often (not just few times in lifetime) this can get into a very expensive addiction.

There is a way better way for traveling (since about 2012), a safe one, costing no money (except for internet) not needing to move even and only costing time. It’s by watching some of the countless videos on so many channels of people who were traveling and recording it.
I have a few playlists with some traveling videos I liked under nature section here.
Of course it’s not the same: you don’t smell or taste foreign food, don’t meet and talk with people, can’t get robbed, don’t experience crowded airplanes, etc. I’m sure there can be some alternatives found using internet too.

I did travel many times in the past, when younger, for holiday. I never actually paid fully for it, since my family was always sponsoring. And I’m glad this ended. I can say now the only logical way for travel is to change country or for job. I’m not even putting visiting others now, since you can do it cheaper with cameras and internet (if they can use that).

Tier 2 – bad food, health wasters

Sugar 🍬🍩🍰

Aka diabetes. It’s not just candy🍬, chocolate🍫, bars, donuts🍩, cookies🍪, cakes🍰, jams, it’s also flavored yogurts, ice creams🍦🍨, juices🧃 (not directly pressed) or countless drinks and simply anything that had even a tiny bit of sugar (e.g. 5g per 100g) added to it. Why? Because it’s addicting. So people not knowing the truth (or caring) fell for it, and again profits, big ones. Also since many were eating candy practically since kids, some people get addicted for life or just don’t get that: after some age we should just stop our addictions form children times.
BTW chocolate is a drug, e.g. here with all others, and there is also chocoholic term.
And recently it may not even be sugar just new chemicals acting like it.

Fast foods 🍔🍿🍕

For example: hot dogs🌭, hamburgers🍔, fries🍟, fancy popcorn🍿, takeout🥡 and even pasta🍝, pizza🍕 or whatever else they create in those fast food places. Stuff with sugar is covered above, but still these could have a bit added.

Let me just start that: fast food is not food (anymore). I surely won’t call it this way, just because you can eat it. It is so unhealthy and artificial nowadays that the only reason I’d still possibly eat it is to not die or pass out of hunger.
Clearly there aren’t many situations for this, one must simply have some proper food prepared, ingredients in fridge or visit grocery near (with a buying list made first, to focus and buy only what’s needed).

What to eat

There is also a more general food addiction.
One major problem for many people is obesity, looks to be most common in US. I believe this is partly a result of people not knowing what to eat, and in which proportions but also highly processed foods sold (and little of healthy ones). The examples (I know of so far) of healthy diets are: Mediterranean diet and Diabetes diet, Lchf diet.
As for vegetarian diet, here is a video explaining why it doesn’t work. I’m guessing it was a campaign for producers of supplements (like B12) needed for it, since vegetarians would need to buy them constantly and that’s big profits.
I recently found Lchf (low carb) diet (more info here or e.g. here) and I’m moving to it, since it seems carbs are main cause for many modern diseases. Which then are huge profits for doctors, hospitals and those giant medicine producers. After all, they profit when people are sick and pay for it, the more the better for them. It’s a sickening business.

Lastly there are also very needed documentations, very shocking too (I would not recommend watching this while young, as some views are very disturbing, yet are still done on Earth daily):
A Life on Our Planet (2020), Eating Our Way to Extinction (2021), and whole list here.

What would be the best alternative to grocery food? Well grow or raise it yourself, if you even own enough land. There isn’t much left or available nowadays sadly. Especially since cities are made so that you’d need to buy food (transported into city, surely good business). Eggs are good example of food that’s best acquired directly from people who have hens making eggs. Also village markets run by local people are better than shops. Thus most people in cities won’t even have access to healthy meat or eggs from countryside etc, only those mass produced and sold in groceries. Wich come from animals likely fed also by chemicals or anybiotics, eating unnatural foods and kept in bad conditions.

Medicine, supplements 💊

This topic is related to food, so I put it here.
I already wrote above, that it’s huge profits for companies if you buy their pills, medicine or supplements, and consume them daily. For example my mother (being over 70 years old) spends money for food and about 40% extra on her medicine (since many years). Consuming more than 8 different pills daily, few of them are resulting from previous bad doctors choices.

Generally for right, healthy diet it should not be needed to supplement or add any medicine. Sure, there are some needed for few people’s cases if they have a disease or condition genetically from parents, etc.
Nowadays there are lots of different diet supplements and tons of pills produced. Obviously for companies and all workers involved it’s their interest to sell you their products, even for lifetime. Anyone suggesting pills or supplements is wrong (and does it likely for profit), instead of right foods to eat instead and solving diet naturally.

Coffee ☕

I recommend reading about caffeine or just noticing it here among drugs.
Yes, I qualify this as an addiction too, if not medical then commercial. For me there are far more important things in life like sleeping well, for as many hours as my body needed. Sure I could sleep too long, but if I don’t sleep enough it simply means I need to sleep more to compensate and could sleep an hour or two in the day. This is natural for me.

I never drink coffee. Even if it has the effect of waking up or boosting focus, it later has the opposite effect. So for me it’s just an expensive consumable product, that has spread likely everywhere, even if it grows in not that many places.
Still there are people who drink it daily, and would qualify this as a daily routine or a necessity for work or life. Well another profit for companies.

Tier 3 – lesser money wasters

Fashion 👗

What is fashion? It may be surprising but it is a form of planned obsolescence. I.e. a way to modify products to make people believe they are “obsolete” so they buy (more) the newly produced. Well for me this is a crime against humanity, but unfortunately companies (likely all) use this as a rule or doing business. Since people’s brains understand art, not only logic, and so many people don’t follow only logic and even don’t buy rationally, the profits from fashion are huge and involve many collections, fashion shows, magazines etc (those too are addictions in this list even). Cloths can last 10 years easily even when used daily, maybe not socks or other heavy used pieces. I believe only in logical and practical ways and that is for me buying reasonably priced items with one color and when previous ones are worn off.

Cosmetics ⚗️

Let me just start that wild living people (certainly a minority) don’t need it. As well as people living in older times, especially not the rich elite. And for me also modern people don’t need it, yet there are tons of this crap.
It’s the population density and close presence of others that today almost requires hygiene. Continuing this with plenty of commercials, magazines and the self promotion nature of cosmetics, by fancy look or artificial smell (produced by some company) we get another huge profiting business. Those who were born in cities and had family constantly using cosmetics likely won’t even think of not buying them too.

To sum this up, for me this is like the most artificially created business. For contrast there is even a frugal way of using (IIRC) just baking soda to clean hair and self made apple cinder for conditioner because nothing else really matters. Adding all other substances in various proportions is just what companies create for variety and to sell something new so people would buy more, kind of like with fashion.

Makeup 💄

Then there is makeup, it already says it’s the stuff you make up, i.e. artificial, fancy, very commercial addition to nature. I can’t even with this.
Well maybe some people aren’t naturally very beautiful (or young anymore) and some makeup could make them prettier (only in eyes of others who value look or just watch too much fake beauty magazines, shows, etc). But on the other side we see people with excessive makeup, crazy, disgusting to look at and only signifying an addiction and obsession with fake look (obviously even more profits for companies, no seller would tell you to stop buying).
And the average? People spend too much time on their look and changing it and considerable sums on lots of products. Sure, for some it’s an investment or just their job.

This addiction is also easily spread since it’s so visible, after all people’s faces (most viewed when talking) are already makeup commercials. Same goes for nails actually, it’s further away but just a different place for other products.
Worse still, this goes lower in age too, as kids in schools see that and (IDK what for) get and apply it too, even make video tutorials.
Sure if we look at tribal people then this (IMO excessive craziness) already started ages ago, when people apparently didn’t have anything else to do with their time (and maybe used it for social stuff), while nowadays they clearly have too much money (and time) for this obsession.

Hair 💇🏽‍♂️, nail 💅🏼 salons, tattoos, etc

I’m combining here all body salons like barber, hairdresser, tattoo mani-pedi and other artificial “beauty” companies.

As for myself am a man who doesn’t care too much (sometimes at all) about my look. I started my long hair not long after I left elementary school so I was about 18. I have never been to a barber or even cut my hair since then. Now should I compute how much I have saved, I hope everyone can do this for themself. Needles to say, one stupid expense gone. Sure I may use more shampoo and I use conditioner but that’s not much with my frequency, I don’t need to buy any in a year (or so) if I get a big 1L pack.
Surely there is the other way of being bald or short haired and regularly using a machine to cut hair, likely by other person. Still way cheaper and no need to visit a barber.

I don’t use shaving cream, only a bit of soap, neither any electrical device here. I just the “one-time” use machines, each for a year or so. Yeah those 10x more overpriced plastic ones with probably added some crap into blades so they get blunt sooner. After all combined with the shitty commercials and telling you should throw them out after use (ridiculous) they are getting great profits for sure (naivety is driving this too).
But obviously fashion, consumerism and people’s addictions have created countless products and styles here (e.g. hair, facial hair, beard on wiki).

As for tattoos, yeah I never accepted those. Here is my thinking: human body is not place for art or any illustrations etc. Getting tattoos is not creative. That would only be, if you drew it yourself. And even for that there are way better ways (e.g. drawing, painting, or on PC using free software like GIMP, Krita with a pan tablet). Tattoos also remind me too much of gang members and prisoners.
As for piercings, shortly nope. It’s not creative and not very healthy either.
Surely both are old as humanity, and even more excessive in some tribes.

I will put well being, Spas, Massage💆 saloons etc here, close to next chapter as it is related. Well there is surely something good for your body in them but, like with all commercial services this has been blown out of proportions IMO. Sure, hydromassage is a medical thing, but Spas with hot tubs aren’t really that. Also massage is medial and proven to help, but well IMO it should be covered by country’s heath budget when applicable, not driving another costly business.

Restaurants🍽️, art galleries🖼️, city activities etc

Basically all city events and activities go here: restaurants🍽️, bars, coffee shops☕, museums🏛️, art galleries🖼️, theatres🎭, cinemas📽️, pubs🍹, clubs, stadiums🏟️, gyms🏋️, sport centers, etc.

I had a period when I enjoyed a city (Vienna), it was not too far from my country and not so dirty and poor looking compared to where I live. Surely I enjoyed the metro in Vienna and generally its buildings etc. Even graffiti back then, which I’d say today is excessive everywhere you look. I didn’t spend money except for metro etc and just traveled through city mainly, also many parks. Visited cinema few times. I also bought some electronics and my favorite trousers there.

But let’s get to the point. Being in city, and not in your home is expensive. Generally being home doesn’t cost you per hour, and parking in city or using busses etc all have an hourly cost. Naturally home utilities cost too, just like getting food. But this is something we can optimize.

Visiting a restaurant is for me one of the worst ways of eating. Here is why:

• It’s purely commercial, so you need to pay much more, after all everyone involved needs to have a job of it first.
• Then you learn nothing, surely not how it was made or even nutrition facts. After all teaching is the opposite of this business (or most in general).
• You get a menu, with not much clue what you’ll get (surely not a sample of taste first or a video of it or a list of other people’s ratings and comments).
  So I’d say: randomness here is also key for them to earn more. Like in most commercial offers you are presented with artificially made choices to distract you from far more important ones like: do I even need this or what I can do better at home instead?
• In cheap bars food is just not healthy enough. And in fancy, expensive restaurants you’d waste money on the freaking art aspect of food or luxury inside. Often being served there are too expensive, eatable, small art pieces not real meals. As if there was no other, far more important way to spend money, e.g. to improve people’s lives and living conditions especially in poor areas or less developed countries.

Well I’ll shorten for the rest. I have a similar opinion about all city activities. Art galleries, museums, etc. generally are not made to be free, they’re the oldest way of making money, per person, per visit. There is some of this stuff available online (or was during Covid), but I wouldn’t expect too much. After all these are in buildings in most costly locations too, so it has to bring a lot of profit. And lastly: only seeing is required, no thinking even, to get more viewers and visits. Clearly though pets won’t be allowed since those don’t have enough IQ and would drop or scratch everything anyway.

Tier 4 – life style, old time wasters⌛

TV 📺, Radio 📻

I still remember the days I watched TV. It was my addiction as a kid for sure, since there was no internet.
Same like for newspapers and magazines I call TV and radio just an old addiction for people who don’t know how to use internet properly. You can’t really choose what to watch on TV or radio, only can wait for something will be, you can not filter out commercials (the worst disturbance there is). Cannot pause, rewind, fast forward either.
But for older people it is clearly a cheaper and easier way of getting e.g. documentaries. The rest of common TV/radio program is (news, sports, politics) listed in next chapters. So I’ll continue there.

News 📰

There was this cool meme I saw lately with a news presenter and top line text: “breaking news” and bottom: “something irrelevant to your life just happened and now we’re going to blow it out of proportion..” (the later part is not even need: “for days to keep you distracted from what’s really going on”). It’s their business, to present random facts, short, not even fully covered, unrelated to you and from completely random places. Well yes, maybe 1% or so could bring some info, but if you need it, you can search for it on internet too with more focus and no ads. Or your coworkers will tell it anyway.

News are something that I can tell you, can be skipped entirely. One and only reason I still see people are interested in them is simply because this becomes the only topic they can talk about together usually, just like politics and sport. But wasted time getting to know stuff, that really has no impact on your life particularly, is significant.
Here is another post about it and long ago mmm wrote a lot about it too.

Sports 🏃⛹🏿‍♂️🏎️

Again lots of emojis 🏃⛹🏿‍♂️🤼🏈🏇🏽🏌🏿‍♂️🏎️🏟️.
Like above, I have very little interest in sports. Honestly I only like WRC and honestly this is something I caught on from my friend in high school, since he introduced me to it and later we also played WRC games on PC. I still occasionally watch some short videos from WRC, so I can’t say I’m completely devoid of sports addiction. But I can tell for sure that the whole concept seems to me very ancient from oldest times of humanity and yet still a huge business in world. I feels like we could do so much more intelligent, science driven things for our planet, if we didn’t waste so much resources on competitive phisycal activities. But once again, huge profits, commercials, only really needs to be watched so it likely will continue.

Politics ⚖️

Well politicians are just people having a lot of experience with lying publicly, what could I say more. Some even have less education than college graduates. Even entire countries can behave retarded. This and media can be bribed, basically bought to say whatever billionaires want profits next. Spending time seeking out truth, also filtered by News and media is just a waste and not possible anyway.

A video even stated that people chosen by random would do better job running a country. I agree too. But better if many people with experience would guide a country. Instead, the way of electing one politician or a party etc for some given, long time is just old and laughable way for me. Because of that they spend millions for self promotion, interviews, and commercials, being just garbage in city (later and during too).

The reason people are interested in politics is mostly to shape an opinion and vote, and secondly just to have something to talk about with others.
I don’t spend time on this at all, and I obviously don’t vote. Voting IMO is again for people not understanding probability and thinking that your 1 vote in tens of millions from other people will change anything at all. It will only change how much time you waste of your life. Sure this changes if tens of millions think like me. But after all the majority of people have the average 100 IQ and less.

Magazines, newspapers 📰

For me simply an ancient addiction for those who don’t have a PC with internet or smartphone.
They now waste trees, paint, other resources for machines to print them, etc. Obviously will have commercials, aren’t easy to search in them, sometimes have only a small interesting part, etc. I know even 2 people in close family with strong collection addiction. Paired with no ability to clean their homes this is just sad and pathetic.
Needles to mention these cost money so exist only for profits.

Tier 5 – life wasters

Pets 🐕🐈🐇

There are countless pet stores and pets available, even emojis 🐕🐩🐈🐁🐹🐇🐦🦜🦎🐠🕷️.
The freaking dogs population on earth is probably just as big as human population. Even if some people don’t have a dog, there are others who have more than one.
There is good post on mmm about this topic too, more friendly I guess, since so many dog owners.

Having pets for me is one of those things I’d accept only for people who are young, with severe disease or blind / disabled and need assistance. There are also service dogs simply because their smell is way more sensitive than ours, and dogs have been bred especially to be trained. But I’m pretty sure science could come up with some solutions too, more expensive but also more predictable. And breeding pets, dealing with health, producing all their food and toys etc is a big business too. Again not for you, but for profits from your naivety and addiction.

There is a saying that dog is human’s best friend. Nope, I can’t agree. I’d say it’s human’s most common slave, after cows, pigs, chicken, horses etc and most sadly humans too still. Only a human can be a friend. Obviously it’s not a certainty.
Other likely common saying is that dogs / pets are smart. Damn, what kind if intelligence definition is this using. There are cool videos about IQ for animals e.g. this. Dogs IQ is just 20% of human’s. Dogs are usually compared to (at most) 3 year old children, even crows are smarter compared to 7 year old kids. And seriously this shouldn’t matter since only people talk and can understand more. Even if a dog understands 20 or more words, it can’t talk.
Worse still, no animal seems to be aware of its own population, its breeding and enslavement by people. All being raised for food just accept their life. Yeah it’s not like cows, pigs or chickens could revolt. If we compare space which free animals roam it’s way bigger than for pets. Most pets are just kept in a small space and fed by owners to make them apparently happier, but cost a lot of money, time, and life style.

Religions ⛪🛐

Definitely a dangerous topic to discuss. I continue it in separate post here. Needless to say I see this as a big worldwide addiction too since thousands of years. Great wiki pages here: about atheism and arguments against the existence of God.

Having children 👶

There was a good mmm post about this topic with more detail.
Surely nature driven thing. After all, species survive due to this instinct. It’s likely the normal approach thought by most people that you need to have children. Obviously you don’t and you can do more for others with the time and money saved. Raising a child is in the top of cost needed (IIRC about 200 000 $), even above buying/building a house. While also very time consuming, let’s say spanning over 20 years.

I say the main problem with our world is overpopulation. There was a documentary that ultimately stated it (IMO), showing what humanity has already done to Earth, showing excessive farming, wasted lands, pollution and big garbage dumps.

There is a link between society’s intelligence and rate of procreation too. Also a funny parody movie Idiocracy somewhat relevant here. And the earlier you have a child the less you know about life and world. For example if I had a child when I was 20 and still stupid, it’d be less likely to raise that child well and intelligently. Yet so many people do it when young. Surely you could learn later and everybody is different. There are also books (mandatory reading I’d say) about raising children.

But I’ll try adding here that having child(ren) creates a gap of about 20 to 30 years when people need to learn almost everything and until then this just adds more stupidity and naivety to the world. But that’s just my opinion of course, since I’d rather continue learning myself instead of going back with my mind to child times and what would make kids happy nowadays.

Job 🧑‍💼👷🏾👮🧑🏼‍⚕️🏢

I’ll say it’s mainly about wokaholics, but also about work-life balance. There is a factor of how much of our life is spent on job (instead of hobbies or family). It varies from not enough caring and slacking at jobs for some (obviously bad for company) to devoting too much life and effort for job (with negative health impact too).

It’s a personal choice and matter. For me health should go always first. And most jobs after years cause health issues. I always believed a job is a way of getting money (and as such it’s only about that). I.e. a way of selling your life time for currency (to pay bills, food, etc). I could go further and call jobs the modern slavery system OFC including taxes etc. I’ll also add that jobs are somewhat like socks too. Firstly: sometimes you need to change them, especially if they stink (annoy) too much, bring you harm, get boring, give no experiences, aren’t well paid, cause health issues, etc. And secondly: you wear them for a purpose, it’s also possible to live without them.

Surely enough I knew people who were wokaholics. There is no need asking for their hobby or if they developed something interesting lately. For companies, especially bigger ones an employee is just a resource, companies will obviously benefit if you invest more than the basic hours you agreed. It could be overtime working, working on Saturdays, public holidays, holiday times, or just something simple like engaging in company’s promotion: on social media or their public events (e.g. in city). It’s up to you, and I highly recommend doing something else, completely not related to company (or workplace, work colleagues) in your free time. It’s about freeing mind, fully relaxing and not getting too addicted. If you can’t find anything, that’s a sign of job addiction for me.

Tier 5 – modern time wasters 🕗

Movies, series 📽️📺

There is no doubt I’ve lost a significant percentage of my life on this addiction. I have long list of movies I liked best and this is just a fraction (let’s say few %) or all I watched and wouldn’t need that. I still enjoy seeing a good movie (over 6 or 7/10 on imdb). I once believed I learn about life from movies, well now I’d say maybe a small amount true. But only because I wasn’t experiencing life with people, I was watching movies.

Since long I have a rule that I don’t watch series, ever. They’re just the “way too stretched” version with more going on (to keeping it longer) and making more profits than actually doing a meaningful and valuable story to show in a movie instead. No exceptions for me here.

I quite recommend checking imdb for rating (and like I do, having a minimal value, below which I don’t watch). Also reading people’s comments, parents guide (a shortcut of what’s bad in movie) and learning before watching anything. Being strict here will cost less time lost (and possibly money) and bring better experience. Just not at any given time, but only when there is something decent to watch.

In last years I have greately reduced my movie watching addiction by instead watching short movies telling flaws and errors in movies (like Everything Wrong With, Honest Trailers and Pitch Meetings), it has also opened my mind to seeing these.

Games 🎮🎲

Video games on PCs, consoles, smartphones, cabinets, as well the old sport games, cards or board games, etc.
I only recommend PCs here since you can do more on them: read, learn, draw, paint, write, develop (projects or hardware), program (software), etc.

Games provide either simple logic puzzles or interactive yet basic worlds with some rules. The visual aspects are colorful and they are quickly rewarding. This way games can create an addiction easily, instead of dealing with life problems instead. Also competitive and social aspects are key here.

I write more about this in post here, since I have played many and had an interest for many years.

Internet 🌎

Whatever big sites like: Imgur, Reddit, Youtube, Twitch, etc.
Surely lots of entertainment and fun can be found there, even educational post and videos.
But internet addiction is already a medical term e.g here.

How much time we spend on entertainment there summed up gets to a total percentage of life wasted. Surely entertainment is a nice way of spending time but for me it’s only because I don’t have the determination to develop my projects further or want to rest from it.
Still, once you start watching entertainment, even whole day can pass by easily just on that mainly. Not to mention that there is so much entertainment (movies, series, games etc) made that you could waste whole life watching just that.
One important way of dealing with this is keeping track of time spend on this daily and restricting it.

Social media 🗨️

Somewhat a continuation since you need internet. In older times telephones or letters were used. Nowadays it’s Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and many other websites where you can follow, watch or read other’s stuff. Not just your relatives, friends, also performers, companies, and rarely even trolls, bullies and psychopats.

The thing with all (and any of) these websites is that they don’t need much logic, just storage and basically all they sell and thrive upon is the stuff which people post there. Also they got laws protecting them.
For me that’s clearly the reason why I started my website. This way I can put all my stuff on my website (with CC license) rather than tiny fragments on major, company websites, and fuel their profits.

According to these stats, average internet user spends almost 7 hours online daily (4h on mobile). And daily 2h 24min on social media and messaging.
Well for me that’s insane. I can barely imagine what we could achieve if all that time was occupied with effort on developing something or investing into solving world problems. Well yeah we’d need social media to communicate though ?. But certainly one can use this time instead for anything else including creative hobbies, which are progressive (not consuming) and more rewarding in long run, rather than just being curious or following others.

And the worst example of what happened in bad social media: death. From those countless, retarded (mostly TikTok) trends and challenges. Clearly a promotion of platform, and a social thing (a virus at this point). Yet some were so brain-dead that it’s cringing to even hear about what people did for some popularity (e.g. piling teeth for look, destroying schools bathrooms, breaking into cars, etc) or by just following others.

Yeah: like, share, comment, follow, and don’t forget to subscribe is the freaking slogan in many videos.
My (unchanged in years) response is: firstly of don’t tell me what to do, secondly you forgot please, and thirdly you should write: you can (any of above). But obviously I recommend not doing any. Okay I got 10 youtube channels subscribed and I probably commented few times in life. I got better things to do in life.

I don’t have any facebook, twitter, reddit or other such accounts. Sure, maybe I should have one of each to promote StuntRally or this website, as nobody seems to search on internet that much, and greatly only follows suggestions or worse ads. I do have a github account though with many open source projects. I also check on our forum and for contributions. And my commit frequency, because I like to know if I’m in a creative gap and should do something I know and like best instead of just entertainment.

Books 📚

Well, don’t get me wrong. Books are still the old (dead tree🌳) way of getting knowledge. There are still many books incredibly useful for life in general (self improvement section). Too bad they aren’t free on blogs or websites.
But books can be addictive like all else. Even more if you combine this with collecting addiction or consumerism.

More importantly, if you don’t have a strong interest and focus, you could easily read too many books. Especially if you read books for entertainment (fictional, fantasy, novels, etc).
For me it’s not just that. Most likely any learning book will have much more in it than needed. Also books need time to make and (guessing it at 6-12 months) this makes them already not up to date when released. Reading all is not necessary but if you paid you could get into that pit of getting most of your purchase.

As for book flaws: you can’t just get a fragment from book mostly, change its font or background color and neither type a phrase for search results there. You can mostly in ebook readers or pdf viewers. Then if something new comes up (as always), well a new edition of same book happens which is just wasteful globally (and you can’t just update your book). Lastly no book will cover my specific use cases or software libraries I use.

Instead I recommend a better way through searching and learning from internet. It is my favorite way nowadays, especially from: wikipedia, websites like stackoverflow, forums, blogs, and even good tutorial video series on Youtube (we can skip or fast forward not needed parts). For IT and software matters I see this as the only way of knowing what I need. But it works not only for IT.
Surely finding right info needs practice. Also judging truth from so many lies and garbage commercial websites with small articles and few sections, ads and links placed all over them so you stay longer, less focused.

Tier 6 – the rest

Porn 🍑

There is an enormous amount of this already on internet (about 30% of it), any digital media or analog tapes, and also still on paper since the earliest days of it. Looking on wiki, it was also present in ancient times. Not that long ago it was still called obscene and not legal. But surely, nowadays it’s a huge profiting business, from well nothing intelligent I’d say, since only watching is required. The business is big, has many jobs, services and products. Only growing to cover more technology uses, latest including 3D, VR and AI.
I found websites saying this isn’t an addiction medically (also on wiki), but more a compulsion. So it shouldn’t be too difficult to stop. Just like with others in this tier I’ll add.
There are many websites (e.g. this or this) with reading that can help here. This is somewhat continuing to next chapter.

Masturbation, sex 💑🏩

I’m putting both in one chapter. Masturbation is (most likely) for one person, while sex and other related activities are involving 2 (or more) people.
It’s also believed to be healthy by medicine. Yet some religions or countries don’t tolerate it.
Well like most things this too can become an addiction with various effects on life. It can be healthy but obviously could be overdosed too, exhausting or just time wasting.

This one is tricky, because it is driven by our body’s chemistry. And without that we wouldn’t survive, so it’s also genetically driven, not logically. I’d say by instinct, species in nature focus on procreation when there aren’t any other matters or serious threats to life. So nature makes us horny by design. But it’s up to our brain and intelligence to control it. And if most animals copulate purely for the purpose of procreation then surely people have made a whole lot of accessories and activities around this. Some are of course just for profit, some people need it for job, others for pleasure, and some could be addicted. There are lots of people with life style driven by sex and some whose life got ruined or changed because of sex (too much or with some other person). So clearly it can be an addiction and it’s up to our brain to stop it when needed.
There is also whole group of people and websites no-fap for anti-masturbation movement.

Noise🔊, adrenaline, parties💃🕺, concerts🌃

I’m putting this all together. I don’t know the medical or psychological terms at all, just writing from my own experience and observations. There are many people who like noise, either by listening to loud music themself, or going to concerts, parties (also involving other addictions obviously), driving sport cars or motorbikes (this is combined with adrenaline) etc.

I had a short period of loud music, this was in early high school before I understood audio quality, audio effects, listened to many various instruments and their sound, and of course heard lots of music. It quickly became apparent for me that the loudness factor is the most basic and primitive one. Honestly. Hearing too loud has negative effect on health, probably also on nervous system, especially if you want to sleep and hear something you don’t want, loud or from afar.

As for concerts, I’ve never been to any. These have way too much noise levels, it’s a direct effect on hearing, there was somewhere a table with how many decibels can human be exposed to for how many hours. It’s applies for anything: headphones, speakers, concerts, noise from construction, city noise, etc. And simply put noise destroys health. So please be quiet, and discover more.
For me my PC was too noisy at first (requiring higher music volume), but once it got water cooling I could hear at lower volume and still get all the detail.

Fireworks, guns 🎆🎇🧨🔫

Well I can just qualify this to buying and noise addictions. Since it is like any other stupid, consumable product just made and sold for profits. I don’t get what is still in people who yearly spend a decent (or any sum at all) buying those. I mean one time use, flashy, loud, small explosives then used to disturb quiet. I’ve spend almost all New Year’s Eves with my family at home, and all the time outside were raging waves of fireworks. Meaning lots of money wasted just so you could do them yourself, when all I did is watch them from window. Obviously each country has a huge display of them each year, looks like a big commercial. Yes I know it’s celebration. I would justify quiet celebration for personal success and goals realized. The year will increase anyways, always without any human effort. And any other reason is just increasing the sales and profits. Lastly there are also all those dangerous misuses or “accidents” of them.

Same goes for guns. Seriously tons of them and ammo are produced in U.S. Even being in Europe I noticed a few people at work already getting addicted to guns.
What is a gun? It’s an effective tool for killing (or harming) people as well as animals. But obviously for producers it’s something they can sell for profit even for civilians, who will simply shoot basic paper targets. Sure it can be used for threats or defense but also for robberies, hijacking, murders, suicide etc. Having a gun, you increase the chance of any. Also guns can be used in shooting ranges for others to profit.

Cursing 🤬

Just a small addition to list. For me it was an issue when I was younger, but then I reduced it by a lot. I have a habit of not cursing at work or other public places at all. But I still curse alone too much probably or at home sometimes when angry.

I found somewhere that person’s intelligence can be measured by their vocabulary. Well clearly one could overflow vocabulary by reading too much and using too many words not understood by majority (which has sadly just 100 IQ). But the opposite is definitely true: if someone puts curse words in every sentence (or every 3rd word, or even one per day) then clearly they don’t know too many words, have poor vocabulary or don’t know (or want) to express themself better.

Laziness 🥱

Not sure if it qualifies here, but over years it can be affecting our life. I don’t have too much experience here but surely one could get bored by a job or life style, location, anything long. It’s likely best to change something once a long while to not get sucked into depression. Which would already be a health issue. I put it here since getting rid of this could be related to addictions, I mean other people’s help can be crucial. And after all: being too comfortable in life isn’t always the best way.

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⌛Conclusions

It’s a bit funny that most of these have even few emojis already available.

Sadly the way I see it: naivety, lack of knowledge or simply stupidity are the key driving factors for profits in companies (especially big ones, no exceptions). Most of these addictions exist, some even after centuries, only because they make so much profit for those companies or billionaires (ruling the world) who won’t give a damn about humanity, only about profits. And with that they can of course get their own expensive addictions too. There is like no limit on how much someone can have and spend on single home, yacht, supercar, jewelry, watch (who’d need that nowadays) or anything else really including weirdest things possible. And the more you have the more you can loose. I will add that all those big companies are either creating addictions or are resposible for keeping them.

Anyways, enough of the grim world view. I hope this page is helpful to anyone who wants to identify addictions, learn something about (at least my view), and to be better by getting rid of addiction(s). Maybe it’s not possible to have none, but at least we should aim for those having: less health impact, costing less money and lastly wasting less time of our lives.