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I once heard that autistic people struggle or cannot form habits. I have also heard that ADHD folk find novelty to be a motivator. I have an odd relationship with routine. I need it but struggle to put it in place. I don't think I have true habits, though I need the comfort of consistency. I always considered myself my own best friend and my own worse enemy in this regard. Because my habits and addictions are always there, but ever changing. So I do form addictions on a constant basis, but then shed them fairly soon, replacing them with the newest dopamine rush activity. Binge reading for a month. Book after book after book, reading until my eyes blur and my brain becomes muddled. Or knitting round after round until my body hurts and my fingers become sore. Baking bread after bread, until my freezer is full of goodies. I don't know if what I do is a healthy way to cope or if I'm frittering my energy on some unattainable something.

I remember when I was in college, I became addicted to smoking, and that addiction was an escape from the withdrawal symptoms of a broken relationship. It also calmed me after the SA happened. I remember burning my stomach during my work breaks, during long-winded 3AM conversations with fellow young tortured artists, or just because I was bored, or sad, or lonely. I got to the point where I was smoking one pack a day, appetite ruined and always smoky mouthed. I didn't immediately reject alcohol, but had started a gradual process to feel fear when I drank. Cigarettes were harmful, but no one can use me for their pleasure and my faculties were intact at all times. Having control over my brain has been a compulsion I've felt now for a long time, always rejecting the softness that alcohol gave to my inhibitions.

I do not smoke at all anymore. I got... bored. I remember in my 20s, I lived in an adorable little studio apartment that I had decorated with floral prints and mountains of pillows to cozy up in. I remember one day, which I assume was early in the year, as it was a rare cold day in South Florida. I opened the door of my apartment and lit a cigarette. And I said to myself “What the fuck are you doing? This is boring." I then stamped the cigarette with my shoe, and never ever smoked again. I had not one feeling of withdrawal or desire to have another. I just got bored, felt the “habit" wasn't serving me, and never felt an interest again. This is good I think, but also bad. I often worry about things like that. Worry that I simply replace one addiction with another, that I don't solve my core issues, that I'm fated to forever be filling a hole in my soul. And that my soul is too greedy and ravenous to fill with any one thing.

At first, addiction is maintained by pleasure, but the intensity of the pleasure gradually diminishes and the addiction is then maintained by the avoidance of pain.
– Frank Tallis