How to quit when you have a pack ripping addiction
I've opened hundreds of packs over the last year - huge quantities of every set from Paradox Rift to present - and lost thousands of dollars doing so. I have never once hit the main chase I was looking for from any of those sets. I've opened countless packs looking for Bubble Mew, 151 Charizard, Cassiopeia, Terapagos, Greninja, Latias and Pikachu. I could probably have bought every one of those singles for substantially less than I've spent on cards this year.
At least once a week I find myself spending money I don't have on packs, often 50-100 dollars at a time, often pulling absolutely nothing. I tell myself I'm going to stop, this is a waste of money and not worth it, but then I come to this subreddit and see post after post of people hitting chases. "First booster pack I've bought in 10 years!" and they get the card I've spent literally thousands of dollars trying to hit. I see enough of those posts and convince myself I'm going to win with the next packs I buy and the cycle starts over. I've sunk so much money into my "collection" and have nothing to show for it except a binder full of mostly worthless illustration rares and full arts.
Surging Sparks and Prismatic has been a wake up call for me. It was one thing to rip packs when I could pick up a Booster Box of the latest set at $95, but paying well over MSRP for the latest sets is a lot harder to justify for me. I've already sunk a ton of money into Surging Sparks, but haven't managed to get any Prismatic preorders locked down yet. Part of me wants to keep trying, to hunt packs and pay inflated prices and try to rip as much of that set as I can looking for the chases. Another part of me wants to quit now before I spend any more money. But it's so difficult to stop, and the FOMO really gets to me with the hype around the set.
So here's my question for the sub. I'm sure some of you here are degenerate gamblers like myself. Once you recognize you have a problem, HOW do you get yourself to stop?
EDIT: Thanks everyone for all the advice. I wasn't expecting this post to blow up as much as it did.
I'm going to step away from Pokémon stuff on social media and try to just go cold turkey from buying packs for a couple months. If that doesn't work (it might be hard with Prismatic), I also like the idea of just buying my chase card to get rid of the urge to rip the set. I'm still spending money but at least it'll save me a lot in the long run, and at least I'll have the card I want.