I am now over 150 days free from alcohol. I mostly feel good. Cravings sometimes, but this week is better than last week. I got this, at least for now.
Now when I assess my habits, I feel good about a lot of things. I work hard at my work-work. I take good care of my kids. I exercise every day. I do yoga. I walk. I eat almost exclusively vegan, for ethical reasons. I now dont drink. I dont smoke. I dont eat a lot of sugar. I drink one cup of coffee a day, no more. All good. But a big one I still want to work on is my urge to buy random stuff online, like clothes, even though I already have faaar too many clothes. I end up sending most of it back, and then I buy more. It definitely feels like an addictive behavior, and I want to stop it. I’ve read about, and watched documentaries about, minimalism, and I love the idea, but I’m nowhere near. I tell myself to stop, and I dont. If I can even just quit shopping on Amazon, that would be great. It would feel like getting rid of a compulsion and living a more authentic life. I have a hard time breaking the habit, so I am posting here to try to make myself accountable. Started a counter for it. Hope I can do it.
One of my quits, a lonnng time ago, lol, I became a huge shopping addict… You have to realize that the dopamine being released when you buy cloths is the same as a drug addiction and effects the same pleasure center in your brain.
So treating it like an addiction is very wise, because that’s what it is.
So do different things… On amazon delete all your financial information, so you have to redo it every time you want to buy something… Makes you think
Freeze your credit cards… In a Tupperware container,
Play games on the Internet, I love trivia games, or quizzes…
That is a couple of things…
It was funny, when I finally stopped shopping, I looked in my closet a year later, and I still had stuff with price tags on it, and I remember the ugliest pair of olive colored high heels EVER… I don’t even wear high heels, lol.
For big purchases now for me, I take 24 hours before I buy something (I loose interest real fast).
On the internet I ask myself before I hit the purchase button, do I really need this or want this…
Good luck…
Thank you so much. Really helpful. Yeah, it’s an addiction. It gives you a kind of high/ stoned/ brain dead pleasure. Yuck. I have a lot of clothes that are basically identical. What human needs 30 very similar black shirts? Nobody! But if there’s an item of clothing on sale, of a type I might wear, like yet another almost identical shirt, I find myself wanting to buy it, even if I already have 30 of basically the same thing and no space in closet. It is Crazy. I will definitely delete my card numbers, great idea.