Reddit mentions of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits

I have had my own struggles with a large variety of addictive behaviors.

I have also spent a very long time learning about how to help people w addictive behaviors.

My guess is, as I see this a lot with a broad variety of people, that you have never given meditation/mindfulness a real shot. The fact that you conflate them with asmr and warm milk isn't helping your case.

for meditation to work, it requires deliberate, consistent practice over extended periods of time. daily practice.

The addicted brain makes us believe that we need our vices/other drugs and that nothing else will do. This, I believe, is mostly a trick our reward-obsessed neural circuitry is playing on us.

This book by Jud Brewer completely blew my mind about all of this. This book about habits is also awesome and super relevant.

I'm not pretending like meditation and deliberate habit change are easy or magic, but with time they are enormously helpful for virtually everyone, in my experience/opinion, and that of many people with a lot more experience than I have.

And you were asking for something that provides a nice, euphoric calm without ataxia. I can't think of a better answer than meditation. The coolest thing about meditation is that it works better the more you do it.. which is quite the opposite of most psychotropic chemicals.

You can keep meandering down the poison path, friend, but I doubt you'll find what you're looking for there. Might want to trust those of us who've walked further down that path already and found it quite lacking.

good luck out there