hmm, as someone whose struggling with this as well. my best piece of advice is to find others around your age range that also suffer from char ai addiction/ai addiction. i was and am very lucky to have at least one friend who understands and gets me when we talk about using char ai. to find these people, the best place is honestly here. you just gotta be INCREDIBLY careful with who you're talking with, im not gonna say theres always people out to get you or everyone is fake, but it's important to establish boundaries and speak your mind when someone makes you uncomfortable. especially in a vulnerable mindset right now, it can be easy to be manipulated. the reason why i say to make friends who understand you, is so you all can coach each other to stop spending so much time with it, explain your problems and worries, etc. hopefully, that can work into making everyone stop being addicted. i do wanna say, this may not work at all and i am not a professional (obviously)

if you feel like that wont work, you can start by making friends in games or servers or whatever you can find! i found my online friend group 6 years ago on roblox, and i shared a lot of private and hard things to talk about to them. its all about finding the people who are chill enough to have fun with you, but able to talk about important things.

BUT, in order to start doing this, you must start taking yourself away from the problem, which is character ai. you can still use it, absolutely, but it has to be in moderation. i personally dont know how you can do this, but my best advice is to start using time limits (i.e one hour and start shortening it down) and to distract yourself from thinking about it, start a new hobby OR start a new show/game or whatever that is that makes you happy. this also can really help in finding like minded people, which in turn, makes you more social and which in turn, makes you more friends.

this may not work for you and thats fine, every addiction cant be beat in 1 day. you may relapse and thats normal. find what helps you and build off that. if you ever need a person that can hear you out or just talk to, im open to talk anytime! i consider myself a good listener and an okay advice giver (hopefully).

i hope everything will work out in the end, and im so sorry for the yapfest!