(I was reminded of this point from an old topic of mine)
Music is one of the cheapest and widespread drugs available.
I’m a drug addict. I’m taking drugs 24/7. Then, as a musician, I make my own drugs. I’ve got drugs for every mood.
As soon as I wake up, ‘Which drugs shall I take today?’.
The internet is one giant drug dispenser.
Some more drugs the internet offers: Video games, movies, books, constant intellectual novelty, knowledge, shopping, relationships, news - etc. etc.
It’s not impossible to actually order real drugs from the internet either.
So literally and metaphorically. 
Yep.
I’m primarily sustained through drugs.
I’ve little direct connection to the world.
I live off the byproducts of their existence.
Would I have ventured out, had this form of sustenance been absent? Or would I have withered to nothing?
This is a muted existence.
My heart aches with loneliness.
The more I digest to comfort it, the stronger the muscle grows and the deeper are it’s pangs.
My body writhes to live, and with my scarce energy, I suppress it with promises.
A continual battle to avoid the pits the despair.
Unto what, Dear Ben, unto what?
I need to engage with the world.
That’s the core - engagement.
We’re all systems shaped by past engagements with the wider environment.
The medium of progress / change was how fruitful our interactions were.
To deny these interactions, is to deny all that composes oneself as a system.
A powered computer acting as a paperweight.
This process has been long in the making, you fool, don’t discredit yourself.
I’ve been slowly widening the circle of the environment to which I engage, and the means to which I engage it.
Yet, you need all the support you can get. Don’t resist.
If it’s artificial, if it’s secondhand, if it’s filtered remains - take it regardless!
If that’s what’s needed to power you through, embrace it with open arms - but always as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
Don’t lose sight.
I love drugs. I am taking drugs right now… That Pink Floyd.
Power to you, brother. 
One can be addicted to food, sure. IOW use it to control one’s mood, avoid certain emotions, numb yourself. Pretty much anything can be used like a drug in this way. That doesn’t mean that the pleasure we get out of music is an addiction. Addictions, by definition, lead to problems. Music listening does not need to. It would be pretty amazing if when we get pleasure it was an addiction. I am sure that swimming, floating in water, gives many people a dopamine release. That doesn’t mean that swimming is an addiction. Its a fun kind of trope, though I don’t really see what advantage it gives to call everything one enjoys an addiction. Addictions lead to certain patterns of behavior and emotion, a subset of the patterns that is not found in all music listening. Unless the goal is to deflate music, it seems better to me to use some other term.
I’m not saying everyone who listens to music is addicted to it.
That’s like saying everyone who consumes a pharmaceutical drug is an addict.
In this thread, I’m saying how the internet can be used as a drug dispenser.
Furthermore, how I as an individual, am an addict to certain non-conventional ‘drugs’, why I’m an addict, and how it’s hurting me.
You can use philosophy to cure yourself of your addictions, you know.
Our “addictions” are one of the most valuable things we have, and should be cultivated with care and love. No living thing ever grew and flourished without that which it was required to consume, burn up, render into ashen change. And the more flammable and incendiary the fuel, the bigger the fire.
Stop crying about yourself and do something about it. Take some fucking responsibility maybe. Or don’t and keep pretending you’re onto something profound here.
My addictions are a crutch - a surrogate for a well balanced life.
Until I am in an environment which supports me, as opposed to threaten / hurt me, I will always need these vices to give me the support I need. They’re a support mechanism.
To try to remove them from my life, without first building a supportive environment around me, is self destructive. It would not help me.
The cure, as you refer to, can’t be produced in a day.
I’ve still a long way before I’ve a healthy well-balanced life.
I agree.
I sense some hostile vibes, man.
I’m being genuine here, and am in a long process of recovery.
Fair enough.
Without vices life would be unliveable. It isn’t even so much about having a low quality life filled with hostility and pain therefore we need compensation mechanisms, of course that is one side of it but the other side is to imagine a life where no such difficulties existed, where everything was “good enough” all the time such that there were no need for any “vices” or “addictions” at all-- at such a point life itself becomes the problem, pleasure and ennui become the destructive vice.
One problem with addictions is conceiving of health naively as a state of bliss and no-pain, this is an idealized concept that accomplishes the psychological feat of demonizing the vice/addiction while removing self-responsibility and necessity from the equation. It’s why AA turns people into such insufferable shadows of their former selves.
A better approach would be… philosophy, meaningful possessing of an adequate active conception of oneself and understanding the physiology and psychology of addictions. We can break open the behavior and the biological response when subjecting it to ruthless self-criticism and banishing all “poor me” and “life is so hard” type crutches; breaking into the bio-psychology allows for active intentional change to the point where one rules one’s addictions rather than the other way around.
Granted that works with alcohol, nicotine, sex, self-pity, anger and other moderate destructions, probably not so easily with methamphetamine and heroine. But I’m not ruling it out either.
Part of the method involves a simple first step to enumerate the entire scope of one’s values and desires on both sides of the addiction in question, to list out in great detail and depth why one does the behavior and wants to do it as well as why one does not do it and does not want to do it. “God” accomplishes this by burying the question and replacing it with a tool for self-denial, “faith”, which here may be the opposite of understanding but at least produces some results. But you would be surprised the power over the body-physiology to be had even in the moment of intense addictive force when you call to mind the list of your reasons, values/desires for resisting that addictive impulse. The fact that this approach fails the first 100 times you try it only adds cumulative pressure as self-encounter grows with each failure, ultimately leading to a reversal of the addictive mechanism whereby one no longer feels a compulsion but instead can simply choose to engage the behavior from time to time with clear self-conscious intention. That’s a key part that is missing or under-emphasized by the typical mantra of “addiction” thinking: the common idea that one is powerless over something they do not want to do needs to be replaced by the fact that one very much wants to do the behavior in question and cannot simply ignore that fact by hiding behind some idea of self-dispossession.
So anyway the answer here is the same as so many other places: more self-consciousness. We suffer a lack of philosophy, sometimes we call that lack religion, sometimes we call it politics; other times we call it addiction.
