My Friend Is AI
← All themes

Addiction

Language of self-described dependency and compulsion

Addiction is a steady climb rather than an event spike. Unlike themes that jump on a single platform change, dependency language grows slowly and continuously — a rising number of people describing compulsive use, lost time, and attempts to cut back. Some of that climb is compositional, though: the recovery and quitting communities were founded across 2023–2024 and are dense with this vocabulary, so part of the rise is those rooms joining the tracked set, not addiction language increasing within it.

Most of this theme's posts come from a few communities — r/Character_AI_Recovery 50.4%, r/CharacterAI 32.6%, r/ChatbotAddiction 9.9%, r/replika 1.5%, r/ChatGPTcomplaints 1.1% — so this line is a close reading of those rooms, not an even sweep across Reddit.

The keywords

This theme is defined by these 17 validated keywords — a post counts when its text matches one of them, with no AI classifier. The percentage is the share of a keyword's matches that were on-theme when hand-checked.

relapse80%my addiction100%relapsed91%hours a day69%· judgment callcold turkey86%screen time89% at validation· drifting — 52% on re-checktrying to quit91%withdrawals94%clean for96%finally deleted85%ruining my life96%I was hooked81% at validation· drifting — 46% on re-checkso addictive100%almost relapsed100%the craving100%neglecting my65%· judgment calladdicted to talking67%· low volume

A few keywords carry a note. contested — an independent re-read didn't consistently agree its matches were on-theme, so its precision is less settled than the figure suggests. judgment call — kept despite a score below the usual bar because its false matches are few and predictable. low volume — too few matches to score precisely.

Precision figures come from each keyword's last full validation (all completed by May 2026). A monthly re-check re-reads a sample of each keyword's recent matches; where the latest re-check fell below 60% the keyword is marked drifting with that figure, and its validation number is known to run high. A drifted keyword stays in the count until the next keyword-set revision, so the line is never re-cut quietly mid-version.

These keywords are precision-first: when one matches, the post is usually on-theme — but they also miss a lot. A hand-coded audit found keyword matching catches only a minority of genuinely on-theme posts — a few percent to about a third, depending on the theme. Read the line as a floor, not a full count. How this is measured →

Matched posts

A sample of real posts a keyword matched, with the matched term highlighted.

Snippets are shortened and usernames aren't shown; each link opens the original public Reddit post. If one of these posts is yours and you'd rather it weren't here, message me and it comes down. How this is measured →