Hey guys, welcome to the channel. This is Erik Johnson. I want to talk about my addictions, all the addictions I’ve acquired over the years and how I got rid of them one by one, towards the very end. And so, this is my story. These are the addictions I had, and why I was running for myself. Here’s My Autism Addictions and How I Quit Them.
So, when I was eight years old, I started rocking back and forth on the floor. When I was watching TV with my parents, I believe that I did that because I didn’t feel safe. And I believe that it was called stimming, which a lot of autistic children do. It’s basically self stimulation. So I rocked back and forth to soothe myself because I felt like I was in an unsafe environment.
So I started rocking every day from then on, and I recently quit that after doing it for 40 years. I’m 48 now. I started rocking when I was eight, and that’s been the biggest addiction that I’ve been able to quit and I’ll tell you how I did it.
So I rocked every night, and my schoolwork was, I was neglecting my schoolwork, I just wanted to be a rock and roll star. When I was 12 years old. I was tapping on my mom’s furniture so much that she was like, let’s just get you a drum set, I loved it. I loved tapping and humming and playing with her wooden spoons, in the kitchen so that’s another stimming behavior.
But I turned that into a musical talent by getting a drum set when I was 12. I also discovered hard rock. I remember driving home from school with my mom and hearing an Iron Maiden song on the radio for the first time. And I felt like I had discovered some kind of, you know, genre that I’ve never heard before and it just rocked my world, literally, and excuse the pun.
But I was in love with music from day one, and I chose it to escape my reality as well so I started, I was rocking and now I was listening to hard rock with headphones after dinner until bedtime every night. I started getting D’s and F’s in school. And, you know, it wasn’t a good thing.
When I was 16, I started drinking coffee with friends and started smoking cigarettes. So now I have up to four addictions, I have music, because it is an escape, and it did give me a dopamine high because I would turn it up really loud, to where I was getting goosebumps and adrenaline. And so that was definitely an addiction for me. And so now I had cigarettes, coffee rocking and music.
So, I started drinking coffee while playing Nintendo with my friends, smoking cigarettes. And then, my friends were like hanging up naked girls on their, you know their parents didn’t bog us. And so they had like naked girl pictures on their walls and their rooms. And so girls started to become an attraction. And, you know, but I didn’t have girlfriends. In high school I was just really quiet and weird and awkward.
More Autism Addictions
Moving on. Probably my next addiction, was actually when I was 20 I became a full blown alcoholic, that’s when I really started to drink. It was like magic to me. Okay. Oh yeah, So backup is I discovered alcohol at the end of my 16th year. I drank wine colors, and it felt like magic.
It was like a magic carpet ride I remember going to a dance, high school dance and drinking wine coolers in the field, out in the field and then coming back into the dance and feeling all courageous and confident. I asked a girl to dance, my friends were making fun of me while I danced with her. And I just loved alcohol, it was just, it was like a magical world I had confidence, all the stress and anxiety lifted off my shoulders, and it was phenomenal.
But then, so when I was 20, that’s when alcohol became a problem I started getting drunk like five nights a week. I started to be hung over every morning. I was smoking cigarettes. They tasted gross in the morning and I felt dirty. And then I stopped talking to my parents and I had a lot of rage, I was an angry young man, I was lost, I was confused. I didn’t like my dad at all because he was mean.
And from then on, I also. At that time I got addicted to porn. And I was experimenting with other drugs LSD and cocaine and stuff like that. And then I basically from then on I was just a wreck. I was a wreck and, you know, I had like eight addictions at that point, and didn’t know what to do with myself. And, you know, the alcohol basically wrecked my life. You know 10 hours a day now I was getting wasted twice a day I was getting drunk twice a day. I had a heart attack when I was 32 from alcohol and it was destroying my life. I was living in a converted school bus. I was flipping burgers for a living.
Finally, when I was 36, I just had enough and I quit. I tried quitting alcohol like 100 times. and I would last one day, and I lasted up to 20 months and I just couldn’t I’d always relapse. And then when I was 36, I was like I’m finally done, because I was shamed by a girlfriend’s friend who basically made me feel like just a loser, and that’s what it took for me to finally quit alcohol.
And so I basically left that girlfriend. I walked back to my home, I was living with her, and I was done, I got two jobs to stay busy. And for a treat, at the end of the night of work I would get peanut m&ms, that was my treat. I was still smoking cigarettes, then eventually I quit cigarettes two years later, by drinking tea and working out. And so basically I was replacing addictions with healthier things.
You really want to have to do it, you know this is all or nothing. And you, you’ll know when you’re ready to quit an addiction. So then I quit cigarettes. And then I stopped the porn. And then I quit sugar and I switched to stevia. I stopped listening to heavy music because that was, that was a trigger to start doing other things to relapse.
So I changed to trance music or soft jazz. And then eventually I stopped rocking just this January 1st. I was like I’m done, I quit one other time for a month, I couldn’t do it. This time, I was like I gotta do it because I’m tired of feeling anxious. I’m tired of rocking 14 hours a day.
And so basically you have to be ready to quit all your autism addictions. And you should replace your addiction with something that’s healthy that still gives you a sense of reward. And I’ll get into that with other videos I just wanted to share with you all the addictions I’ve had over the years. Some were 16 years old, all the way up to rocking and rocking and music or four year addictions, so hang in there. It will get a lot better.
Just work on the easiest addiction and work your way up to the biggest addiction. I was writing for myself. I didn’t want to face myself. I had been writing since I was eight years old. And now I’m sitting still, and I’m letting that inner child come out and it’s scary. It is scary, it has been hiding with addictions for 40 years that the inner child is coming out. I am doing inner child hypnosis. I am doing mantras, to keep that child safe so he can finally integrate with the adult Erik.
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