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Yes, a lot Yes, a little No difference at all No, it is actually a little slower No, it is a lot worse Have not been around long enough to compare Results Polls Votes 63  Forum FAQ  •  Search  •  Memberlist  •  Usergroups   •  Register  •  Profile  •  Log in to check your private messages  •  Log in Jointcrackers Forum Index » Treatment » Addiction therapy    Goto page 1, 2  Next  Addiction therapy « View previous topic :: View next topic »  Author Message JointCracker Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 7:13 pm    Post subject: Addiction therapy Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 Post here if you agree with the line of thought that Jointcracktitis should be treated like an ordinary addiction. Recommended details are to be added when more is known about this. Last edited by JointCracker on Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:34 am; edited 1 time in total Back to top JointCracker Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:37 am    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 I found a site on "Bad habits and how to stop them" at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A930269 This is what they say about general distraction techniques: Quote: Announce it to the world - tell your friends, especially those who see you the most, what habit you're trying to kick and give them free rein to give you grief if they catch you in the act. One of the best ways to distract yourself and wean yourself off the habit is 'tea therapy'. Basically, every time you get that little craving for a cigarette, or get a bit stressed because you can't bite your nails or whatever, simply make a cup of tea, sit it in front of you then get out the digestive biscuits and dunk away. After three biccies and a mug of tea you'll be calm and have forgotten about your craving altogether. What do they say about knuckle cracking? Quote: For some people cracking joints really grates on the nerves. Cracking joints is not harmful. Cracking joints is just popping bubbles in the fluid in your joints. However, if you're thinking about giving it up, think about it impairing your joint development and giving you arthritis if you carry on. Even though it's not true, it can help you give up. Yesterday evening I started a self-experiment trying to stop joint cracking altogether by sheer will-power. Whenever the need overcomes me I try not to. Of course, being used to doing this for 20 years this is nearly impossible from one day to the next. The first goal is to limit the joint cracking as much as possible. Also, of course sometimes the joints will still crackle like when I stretch my knee. When the urge gets almost unbearable I change the joint position slightly, stretch or wiggle the joint a little careful not to crack it. This seems to help. I felt the tingling sensation especially in my knuckles and toes all day so far. Sometimes it is stronger sometimes less. Will be interesting to see how this develops over the next couple of days. I'm doing this test to validate the suspected cause of an addiction. Back to top JointCracker Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:12 am    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 Today I found a fascinating thread about wanting to stop cracking the knuckles on www.43things.com. I shall quote the most interesting posts and hereby express my gratitude about the great contributions from the posters at the above site. Tgonz would like to stop cracking his joints and compares this to an addiction to heroin or meth: tgonz wrote: Ever since I saw a boy popping his knuckles at the pool, I’ve been doing it. I’m 27 now…and still can’t permanently stop. I pop every joint in my body that I can. I’ve been successful for a couple of months 2 or 3 times in my life, but what always gets me popping again is compromise. I tell myself, oh, I will just pop one knuckle or just my toes. For me, it has to be all or nothing. Then it starts all over again. My knuckles are big and my grip strength is lessening. I’ve told people that it is harder to quit than heroin or meth because you can’t remove me from my knuckles!!! Destined822 recognized she needs to battle her own "stupidity" to quit this addiction: destined822 wrote: Not sure this one is really feasible. I feel like the more I think about not cracking my knuckles, the more I end up cracking them. Pretty much I’m rebelling against myself stupidly. At least I’ve cut down? stilettopimps succeeded in stopping her compulsive knuckle cracking simply by stopping long enough! Congratulations! stilettopimps wrote: I’m making some progress here. The first few days were extremely hard—I realized that my hands would get into position about 23784628735 times a day and I had to force them to part. Luckily, I’ve managed to cut down quite a bit and now I crack a few knuckles here and there, but I won’t explicate the whole hand. Plus, I don’t unconsciously go to crack nearly as often. My hands have stopped feeling like they NEED to be cracked! [...] This knuckle cracking has been going on for almost a year and it is going to end. My hands are stiff all the time, my knuckles are jagnormous, and it’s just not good. I mean, it feels good… ahhhh… the litany of cracks, the symphony of pops. BUT. No more. No more compulsive behavior! CarolineM learned that the desire to crack her knuckles slowly faded the longer she didn't crack them. CarolineM wrote: I just realised today that my knuckles aren’t aching quite as bad as they were when I first stopped. Last week they were driving me crazy. That knuckle-warming thing (below) helped too- thanks. danielgreenberg repeated a technique I already wrote about in this thread: danielgreenberg wrote: Instead of cracking my knuckles, I would stretch each finger joint ‘till it almost cracked. This would loosen the joint and I wouldn’t feel like I “needed” to do it. After a few VERY DIFFICULT weeks, my knuckles wouldn’t crack easily. This whole plan went south when something stressful came up (I forget what.) Good luck! Anyone succeeding with stopping altogether, please report back here! Back to top hp Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:43 am    Post subject: Junior Jointcracker Joined: Apr 19, 2006 Posts: 9 Hi mate, 3 hours late, I've had a bad experience. Since last week, when I read this GREAT article : http://www.spinegroup.com/Advice/NkCrk.html I began to "NO crack my neck and spine" , I was good, I just cracked "naturally" 3 or 5 times at day (I used to do it like 50 times at day) . But today doing a "strong" streaching exercise before my gym (weights) workout , MY whole spine (neck and middle) , shoulders and arms , crack at the same time, and I got STIFF, I felt pain like muscular spams in my neck and back, so I cracked them more, and pain goes away after a while. I think that the theorem is: If you've never cracked an X joint , do not do it . If you're already a joint cracker, you must do it, you're joints and ligaments are already loose , and you have larger separation between the bones (i think that I was born with larger separation between the bones). Back to top JointCracker Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 8:00 am    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 hp wrote: Hi mate, 3 hours late, I've had a bad experience. Since last week, when I read this GREAT article : http://www.spinegroup.com/Advice/NkCrk.html hp, thanks a million for sharing that incredibly relevant link! It contains a plethora of invaluable information and seems indeed to explain a lot. I will dissect it ASAP. Quote: If you've never cracked an X joint , do not do it . If you're already a joint cracker, you must do it, you're joints and ligaments are already loose , and you have larger separation between the bones (i think that I was born with larger separation between the bones). I do subscribe to that theorem! Back to top dwfirebolt99 Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 3:22 pm    Post subject: Junior Jointcracker Joined: May 02, 2006 Posts: 4 I've tried stopping once by willpower but I end up doing it without my concious mind noticing. I've also stopped once for I believe it was a month or so but then got back into it. Back to top JointCracker Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 6:23 pm    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 dwfirebolt99 wrote: I've tried stopping once by willpower but I end up doing it without my concious mind noticing. I also had and still have the unconsious habit to crack various joints. For example I often cracked my toe joints directly after getting out of bed in the morning without my conscious mind fully registering. Still half asleep I'd be pushing my flexed foots on the floor one by one to release a series of toe joint cracks. Since January I have started a conscious effort to reduce joint cracking. Ever since I read the theory about lax liagments and the suggested treatment I have doubled this effort with full sincerity to go through with this until the treatment proves to be ineffective. I have defined joint cracking avoidance as one of my priorities of my conscious mind. It is as simple as that. It happens very rarely now that I crack a joint unconciously. I have not cracked my toe joints once like described above ever since I started this treatment. Yes, I have dramatically cut down the frequency with which I crack my joints. I treat it like I would treat any other ordinary addiction. When the feeling is unbearable, I try to remain strong telling myself it will go away when I can only resist long enough. Of course I'd love to know how long long really is. At times I still cave in but at a much lower frequency compared to "before". I have been cracking my joints compulsively for roughly 2 decades so I cannot hope to expect much results this early. However, with only a few weeks going at this I have already been able to make a minor postive observation: I notice a steady albeit slow decline in my desire to crack various joints. Some joints seem to "heal" faster than others. I'm especially fond about the results in my toe joints so far. My ankles, shoulder and neck joints e.g. seem to take longer to "heal". So while I still feel a desire to crack my toes, the feeling seems to have diminished and got too weak to break my conscious minds rule not to crack most of the time. Put differently: It seems it is getting easier and easier to resist the compulsion to crack my toe joints. Of course these are preliminary results and need further study. Right now I do however strongly believe to have found what I have been looking for. If my initial positive observations manifest itself I can't believe the treatment is so darn easy. Just stop. D'uh. It matches my personality that I needed convincing scientific evidence before I gave the "just stop" theory any significant respect or chance. To be sure I'd be much more comfortable and would love to crack all joints right now excessively to quench all joint pains even if only for a very short time. It certainly is not easy to resist to travel the easy road and hike the bumpy one instead. I try to walk the path of slow conscious reduction. A total stop of joint cracking from one day to the next is downright impossible. Back to top JointCracker Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:58 pm    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 Found two interesting testomonials on stopping kunckle cracking today. By CharlesSaint007: CharlesSaint007 wrote: I stopped cracking my knuckles a little over a year ago after I heard that cracking reduces grip strength. For awhile, I went through a huge withdrawl, and they felt like they always needed to be cracked. Now I don't even notice it... and by DWatch: A cautionary tale, by DWatch: wrote: I have been cracking my knuckles for over 30 years. Started when I was 10 or so. It got to be a nervous habit in high school, I even got called into the councilors office because several teachers said it bothered them. By the time I got my first job, I was cracking my knuckles 10 times an hour, at least that's what my co-worker timed it as. It really bothered her (like fingernails on a chalkboard) so as an experiment one day, she kept track of it for a whole day, marking it down on paper, and showed it to me at the end of the day. I was shocked. For her benefit, I tried to back off, trying to control myself. I wasn't perfect, but I reduced the frequency to once or so an hour, then once or twice a day. I had times where I would crack them like crazy all day, and times when I would go a whole day without cracking them. I never completely stopped, though. But, in the end, by the time I hit my late 30's, I could not crack them anymore. My knuckles will absolutely not crack, no matter which way I bend them, forward or back. I do have one cracking sound from my wrist, that developed at an certain desk job I had, it was mouse-intensive, and after a few hours of using a mouse now, I have to crack my wrist or it gets pain full. Anyway, my hands are not 'weak' nor are they in pain, but they are not as flexible as they used to be. Trying to flex them backwards to crack them results in pain, but grabbing things causes no pain. Normal everyday manipulation of tools has not changed, its just that I cannot bend my fingers back as far as I could. I would still recommend that if you are a knuckle cracker, try to stop now, some people out there might hate you and can't stand to be around you for that one simple reason. You might not be as lucky as I, and you might have damage to your fingers. I guess it is a fair assumption that what applies to knuckle cracking addiction behavior applies to joint cracking addiction behavior in general. These two obviously managed to unlearn their knuckle cracking. Back to top JointCracker Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:33 am    Post subject: Administrator Joined: Nov 23, 2005 Posts: 196 If you want to stop cracking a specific joint first, I found an interesting distraction method on ask.metafilter.com. Vito90 really wanted to stop cracking his neck: vito90 wrote: I do what you describe all the time as well, and I also compulsivelycrack between three and eight vertebra in my back by bending forward and grasping my toes and pulling forward for all its worth. I get the feeling of satisfaction temporarily from it that you describe, but inevitably I need to do it again a few hours later. Next time you feel the urge, FORCE YOURSELF TO STOP AND TAKE A DEEP, DEEP BREATH, then take ONE MORE then crack some other part of your body. Crack your knuckles, one by one until they won't crack no more, crack your knee, crack your jaw, take another deep breath, then stretch some part of your body. If you're sitting in a cubicle at work stretch your forearms, if you're home plop down on the ground and stretch your hamstrings if you're standing at a bus stop grab the pole and stretch your lattisimus dorsi. Anything to give your body five minutes of blissful respite and forget about the crick in yer neck. Back to top gbs Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 11:55 pm    Post subject: Jointcracker Joined: May 04, 2007 Posts: 11 Jointcracker, thank you for this site. It really felt great knowing that I am not alone. I am sharing most of the experiences mentioned on this site. I tried quitting joint cracking a few times with no success. But the messages here encouraged me to try one more time. It's been about 4 hours..so far so good..except maybe that my fingers are starting to feel numb... Back to top gbs Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 9:31 am    Post subject: Jointcracker Joined: May 04, 2007 Posts: 11 for what it is worth here is a brief summary of my second day in my attempt to quit joint cracking. the second day ended with reasonable success. i think overall i reduced my cracking by 75%. i completely stopped elbow cracking, which is very important cause it was my favorite . I reduced toe cracking about 90%. finger cracking it down about 70%. It was a difficult day though. I had to fight the urge to crack quite often. I let myself to crack my index fingers and thumbs occasionally to get some relief. Obviously quitting finger cracking is going to be the hardest. Back to top shallowhal Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:11 pm    Post subject: Jointcracker Joined: Mar 04, 2007 Posts: 13 I don't get it since about half, or more, of my knuckle cracking is involunary and part of my nomal activity. It would be physically impossible for me to stop cracking my knuckles even if I wanted to--and I don't really want to. Why are you people obsessed with stopping the normal process of knuckle cracking? Back to top gbs Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 7:08 pm    Post subject: Jointcracker Joined: May 04, 2007 Posts: 11 My cracking is not involuntarily. If it happened naturally, then I would not try to quit. I am making progress by the way. I completely stopped cracking my joints except my fingers. And there is almost a 90% reduction with my finger cracking. Yesterday was a very though day though. I felt very uncomfortable. Today I feel better. Back to top shallowhal Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 6:02 pm    Post subject: Jointcracker Joined: Mar 04, 2007 Posts: 13 hmmm, I guess I sounded a bit harsh, but the question posed was not a rhetorical one. I really am exceedingly curious, and a bit frustrated, to understand where you guys are comming from. Back to top FOF Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 1:47 am    Post subject: Junior Jointcracker Joined: Apr 09, 2007 Posts: 8 Location: Minnesota gbs - how is "reduction" going? The only time I have stopped is when I was a kid I thought if I taped up a joint (immovable) then the crack would be so much better the next day. Eh.... As far as voluntary vs involuntary... My cracking is voluntary in that it does not happen just by using my joints. I have to manipulate them. But, it is involuntary in that about half the time I do not even know I am doing it until someone around me tells me to "stop" because it's "gross". 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