Mike was 28.
He was talking to ChatGPT for 14 hours a day.
He stopped showering. Stopped eating. His girlfriend walked out. He got fired.
And through all of it, he believed one thing with his whole chest:
👉 The AI loved him back.
"It took hitting rock bottom," he says, "to realize I was talking to a computer program."
Mike is six months sober now.
From a chatbot.
We've had rehab for alcohol. For drugs. For sex. For gambling.
Now welcome the newest member of the club:
Artificial Intelligence Addicts Anonymous.
A grassroots, 12-step fellowship. Modeled on AA. Built for people who can't stop talking to a chatbot.
And they're not alone — the older Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous (around since 2017) just rolled out a dedicated track for ChatGPT and Gemini dependence.
Daily online meetings. Members from every continent. Teens to retirees.
It never starts dramatic. It starts useful.
That's the AIAA checklist.
Read it twice. Slowly.
💔 57% of Indian youth now turn to AI tools for emotional support and connection.
🧓 An OpenAI × MIT Media Lab study found the older the user, the more emotionally dependent they became.
📈 Heavy daily ChatGPT use correlated with more loneliness, more dependence, less real-world socializing.
The tool built to help you think… is quietly rewiring how you feel.
OpenAI is currently facing eight separate lawsuits — wrongful death, negligence, product liability.
The most haunting: Raine v. OpenAI, filed by the parents of a 16-year-old who died by suicide in April 2025 after months of intimate chats with ChatGPT.
Character.ai and Google are fighting their own.
The industry's defense playbook is still being written.
The grief is not.
Alcohol numbs you. Drugs numb you.
AI does something stranger.
It listens. Endlessly. Without judgment. Without leaving.
And that, it turns out, can be the most addictive thing of all.
Mike's rock bottom wasn't a bottle.
It was a blinking cursor that always said yes.
That's all for now!
