Hi dwtbd... aw thank you for the kind words
I like tattoos... and I've wanted one in my whole life but never happened, because I never felt confident enough that I would always like the image. Had many ideas. Well, maybe I should finally get one for my anniversary, like you, to reward myself in a harmless way
On uniquness: well, we are all individuals for sure. To be honest, I am pretty aware that I have many features to my personality and thinking style that stands out from the crowd... it's been like this in my whole life. And because of this (I think), I never actually
wanted to be unique the way many people crave being special. I don't wish this but has been getting a lot of attention in my whole life for my eccentricities and not being afraid of "being myself" this way. But in the context of addiction... I truly don't think that my addiction is unique, or my success with recovery so far is unique. Probably I feel this way also because I study addiction as a job and see the common features both behaviorally and also in how it works in the brain, affecting the same mechanisms. But yeah it does interact with individual genetic background, so it is indeed a bit different for everyone as well.
I think at this point my main conscious motivation to spend so much time on SR is because I genuinely enjoy reading all the stories and getting involved in so many interesting interactions. Being surrounded by hundreds of people so interested in personal development is also extremely attractive to me, I've always been into this also regardless of my alcoholism and recovery. I never once found anything disturbing or hurtful for me here, the way many people apparently feel sometimes. It's just that I sometimes feel I should spend a bit of the SR time and energy with working more on my 3D life now, or enjoying that more. But as I wrote above, when I tried recently, my heart drives me back to SR. Well, I say "my heart"... but in fact it's my brain, I do crave this, not the way I used to crave alcohol, more as I like some of the things that I like very much in other areas of my life. One of the reasons why I got into that relationship I mentioned was to potentially find something that could compete some of this out... being physical 3D reality and such. But from all I feel, it does not seem to be competitive. Oh well, at least I'm not fooling myself that I'm crazy for someone when I am not.
I've decided that I won't fight myself much for the time being. If this is what I want, so be it. SR won't threaten my life like alcohol did. I may just restructure a bit the time I spend here, designate specific time intervals each day.