btw yourhero this is what i meant about romanticized visions of horrendous problems.  you see these HUGE ARTISTS that you respect as human beings and on some level you view anything that you associate with them as a positive character trait, not a negative one.  frusciante himself said he was able to sink into addiction because it was something positive he associated with ROCK AND ROLL and never thought of it as a bad thing until he was too deep to get out.  you think of these amazing novelists in the past century who you kind of picture sitting around with a bottle of jack, writing works of genius, and none of it seems as horrifying as it actually is.  like you know alcoholism is bad but you still, on some level, view it as kind of like an ultimate goal.  ahh yes i wanna be the isolated alcoholic writer.  thats who i wanna be.  like you admire these people so much that you even have admiration for their flaws.  maybe even especially their flaws.

when i was younger, i used to sort of look at self-loathing intellectuals with a kind of senselessly rapt admiration.  i do not know why.  it just seemed COOL and ROMANTIC and GLAMOROUS to me.  media influence blah blah blah whatever i don't really wanna talk about this for too long but it made me think that was an acceptable or good way for a person to be and it was only by the time i arrived at my IDEAL GOAL of someone moderately intellectual who was also filled with a deep, abiding contempt for himself that i realized how tragically wrong i was about basically everything.  it is the most bitter feeling to acknowledge that your perception of these people and their problems and how awesome it made them was completely childish and in reality it was a horrible life that no one should really want.  like you become what you wanted to be but all you can really think is "why the fuck did i ever want this?"

I once saw police down bottles of whine (shot glass) for lunch every day in France and they weren't affected at all. Binging ain't popular over there apparently, which is new to me but then again them young folks arn't on the same level.

For some reason people around where I live try to coax me into Alchohol because in their opinion I'll get laid if I do, but then again i'm living in a rural area so i'm not used to how the way things work around here yet.

Caffeine, which I've been trying to cut down on for a real long time.

I like to chew tobacco, and i'm a sucker for trivia. Thems be my addictions.

I'm pretty good at managing my shit and generally make good choices in my life, but goddamn starting smoking is fucking retarded. I want to quit this shit but I keep falling off the goddamn wagon.

Anyone got any tips???

snus

it's not even close to being as hazardous to your health, it costs barely anything compared to cigarettes and while it does contain nicotine and tobacco, it doesn't contain any other shit that'll keep you addicted to cigarettes. so yeah, most people i know that have stopped using nicotine in total have gone through the way of snus, though some have also stopped at snus. since it's a lot healthier and cheaper it's better than smokin' tho imo (and i suppose in the US if that's where you live it should have a novelty factor as well 8) ).

Hmm. Nicotine, Caffeine (recovering), Marijuana (recovering).

Also porn, but i think of it as more of a healthy need. And my girlfriends tend to like it too, so it's all okay.

I have one other addiction, which is a more obscure one; I can't stop making lists, plans and concepts
for my music stuff. I don't rarely follow through with it, but the act of just working on possibilities is oddly
brilliant.