In this YouTube video Dr. Ashley Frazee, a board‑certified physician, shares her personal battle with a severe gambling addiction and outlines five concrete strategies that helped her quit. She begins by emphasizing the prevalence of compulsive behaviors and the daily reality of cravings. The first strategy is accountability—telling a trusted person, joining meetings, or finding a sponsor to halve the addiction’s power. The second is to channel the underlying drive into a creative obsession, which for her became producing YouTube videos that demand focus and energy. The third strategy is a dopamine‑replacement toolbox: daily cold plunges, intense exercise, novel challenges, deep social connections, sunlight exposure, and meditation, each described with personal experience and ranked by perceived value. The fourth strategy is helping others, which shifts focus outward and reinforces recovery. The fifth is building a protective daily routine that eliminates chaotic idle time, likened to “toddler‑proofing” the brain. Dr. Frazee reveals that her addiction was gambling, that she worked with a recovery coach, and that she now runs a direct primary‑care clinic in Mesa, Arizona. She invites viewers to watch a follow‑up video on supplements and prescription options for withdrawal symptoms and encourages comments sharing personal strategies.
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I'm a board-certified medical doctor, and I've also had the pleasure of battling an addiction. And quitting it cold turkey was almost harder than medical school. And to be honest, I still deal with cravings almost every single day. So why am I telling you this? Because almost half of adults struggle with some sort of compulsive behavior. For some, that's scrolling too much. For others like me, it can turn into a destructive addiction. And wherever you are on that spectrum, if you're stuck dealing with something that's hurting you or someone you love, I've got 5 practical tips to help you step out of the dark And these are actually things that I used personally to quit my addiction. And if you stick around to the end, I'll tell you what that was. But if you know me, you already know. This first one's arguably the most important, and that is have accountability. Tell someone, anyone who gets it, or at least who gets you. That might mean going to some sort of meetings like AA or NA and finding a recovery buddy or a sponsor. Or if you're not dealing with an actual addiction, just finding people who are dealing with what you're dealing with. And tell them, hey, I'm trying to quit this and I need your help being accountable. Share details of what's going on. And if it's something very vulnerable, I promise you that when you shine light on it, it will get easier to quit. It just does. When you say it out loud to someone else, you've already cut your addiction's power in half. Trust me, your addiction hates snitches, but that's why this works. Number 2, find out what drives you. Every addict has an engine inside of them. You've just been fueling yours with the wrong thing. Now take that drive, use that same drive and replace it with something else, with something creative. There's another video out there titled something like How to Quit Any Addiction, and that YouTuber shares that he had to become obsessed with something else— YouTube— in order to quit his video game addiction. And I arguably am doing the same exact thing. Honestly, making YouTube videos has been like a magic key that has allowed me to divert my attention to my old addiction. Whenever I get cravings to do the thing that I used to do, I start to think about what I can do to make another YouTube video. And making YouTube videos is ridiculously hard. It takes a lot of focus and a lot of energy, and you have to be a little obsessive about it in order to make it work. So it was perfect for me to be able to quit something that was also taking a lot of focus and time away from me. Pro tip, if it doesn't make your mom or your best friend at least mildly impressed, it's probably not the right replacement. It's gotta be something creative in nature, something that you can be proud of. Now that leads me my next tip, number 3, and that's find other things that give you hits of dopamine. Let's be real, quitting doesn't erase your brain's desire for dopamine. You can still feed it, but feed it the good stuff in the good ways. I actually do all of the things that I'm about to talk to you about, and I do them almost daily. I didn't realize that when I started doing these things that they were actually helping me drive myself away from an addiction, but as I realized it, it made so So much sense to me. And I'm going to rank these according to the value that they give me, but feel free to reorder these in any way you please. Number 1 for me, cold exposure. I cold plunge every single day. And guys, I can't tell you the amount of dopamine that I feel when I get out of that water. I actually start pacing around my backyard, like ready for the day, ready to conquer like anything that I want to do that day. And trust me, I know what it feels like to have dopamine hit that brain because when you take it away, I.e., when you quit an addiction, you immediately crave it. And then when you have a relapse, like almost every addict does at some point, you feel that dopamine hit you. And that's how I know what it feels like when I get out of the water in a cold plunge. I literally feel the way I felt when I was deep in an addiction, but in a better way, in a more positive way, a way that doesn't kind of go up and then crash. In fact, cold plunging has been proven to give you more dopamine than naturally you would get doing almost anything else besides drugs. Number 2, intense exercise. Make it a routine to get in some sort of intense exercise every day if you can. And routine is actually very helpful in an addict's lifestyle because when you have set things that you do every single day and those things are helping you produce dopamine, you leave less room for the addiction behavior to come back in. If you find something to do that gives you kind of a burst of exercise, it actually makes you feel quite a lot better. I feel way less anxious because it's a proven way to alleviate anxiety and give you dopamine. Number 3, novelty and challenge. Like for me, that's this YouTube, you know, I'm creating things. This is a very new thing for me still, and it's very hard. So find something that is new and challenging that you can do. And if it's something creative, that's a bonus. Number 4, deep social connection. Make sure that you're spending time with the people who mean the most to you and you've And if you don't have people like that in your life, you know, go back to number 1 and find somebody in some sort of group who can relate to you on this problem that you have and start making connections with them. If you already have a lot of family members or friends that you enjoy spending time with, just do it more. Number 5, sunlight if you can. I live in Arizona, I have an abundance of sunlight. I know that's not possible for everybody everywhere, but get as much sunlight as you can, spend as much time in it as you can. And number 6, meditation. If this is just simple breathing exercises before bed, or just trying to quiet your mind, it actually does produce dopamine in a way that can be very addictive. So I promise you, the more you do it, the more you'll want to do it. And that's kind of what dopamine does. All right, number 4, help other people. I don't care if it's helping somebody else in recovery from the thing that you're trying to recover from, volunteering at your church, or helping your kid build that Lego set that they've been asking you to help with. Helping others pulls you out of your own head. When you're needed by somebody else, it's harder to fall back into the trap. And honestly, if you can help save somebody else or help somebody do something else, suddenly saving yourself or helping yourself isn't as hard. Number 5, build a routine that protects you. Listen, addiction loves chaos. The more idle, unstructured time that you have, the more cravings creep in. So build a daily rhythm. Wake up at the same time, get some sunlight, exercise, cold exposure, plan your day. And even if you need that downtime, that relaxation time, use it for things that build you up, not tear you down. These guardrails make relapse way less likely. You know, basically think of it like toddler-proofing your own brain. Cravings can't break stuff if you lock the cabinets. And that's it. Those are the 5 things that helped pull me out of an addiction: accountability, drive, dopamine replacement, helping others, and routine. And as promised, if you really want to know what I was dealing with, it was a severe gambling addiction. And I can share that because it wasn't drugs or alcohol or any substance of any kind. I have the luxury of being able to share what I went through because I don't have to explain to the medical board that I was in treatment for something. But I did get into a kind of a recovery program with a coach who held my hand through the whole thing. And honestly, that was exactly what I needed. Quitting gambling has been one of the hardest but most worthwhile things I've ever done. And I can't say that I regret that I ever had the addiction in the first place because now I get to create great YouTube videos. I opened up my own medical clinic and I'm living a life that I feel really proud of. I hope that you can use these tips, and if you're curious for even more help with addiction or addiction withdrawal in specific, watch this video next where I talk about 3 supplements and 1 prescription that can help you with symptoms of withdrawal. And I'd love to hear your own strategies for quitting an addiction in the comments. You never know who might read your story and get the help they need. I'm Dr. Ashley Frazee. I run a direct primary care clinic in Mesa, Arizona. If you want to know more about direct primary care, there are some links in my description. You guys have a good day.
