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Comment by glitchcrab | Hacker News Reader

In the same way that an alcoholic can just stop drinking and then they're no longer an alcoholic, right? That's not how addiction works.

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Habitual addiction and chemical addiction are not the same things. Cutting Facebook cold turkey has few if any of the side effects cutting alcohol cold turkey has.

It has the effect of the existential dread of being alone with your thoughts.

That has nothing to do with addiction.

I disagree, i think it’s the basis of a lot of addiction.

There is psychological addiction and chemical addiction. Both suck, and you are likely better off gradually decreasing the activity/drug in both cases, but there is a real difference that in the latter case you must gradually decrease it, else you will have very severe side-effects, for example with alcohol it is called delirium tremens.

Of course it has. Just because it isn't directly based in a physiological reaction doesn't make it less real. And it is in general a mistake to make a clear distinction between what is mind and what is matter. They are the same.

True. Planned impediments can help, just like making sure alcohol never enters your front door.

I've used my phone's parental features to limit usage of social apps to one hour. It's protected by a somewhat randomly chosen PIN that I don't memorize but store in my password manager. If I want to override the time limit, I have to go and look up the PIN. Most of the time... too hard, move on to something more productive.

Do alcoholics overcome addiction with “Time well spent” metrics?

Probably not. But what about "I felt well in my body after getting drunk" metric?

Perhaps alcohol is a bad example because you can quit it completely. That's not really the case with something like a smart phone, so perhaps the better comparison is food. You can't stop eating food completely if you struggle with addiction, but you can learn healthier habits.

You can buy a non-smart phone though.

Even worse, it's more like "if you don't want to drink, just don't be around alcohol! Just stop meeting people!"

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