In the off-chance that anyone is looking at this thread seriously or any actual compulsive liars are reading through...I used to be a compulsive liar and it was one of the most emotionally damaging, isolating and destructive things I've experienced. Not because of any real outcome, really...i didn't get one over on anyone... And if I had it would have just been a moment of relief from pain... Not some kind of happiness or validation. A successful lie just constructed layers - LAYERS - of anxiety and self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy...which consumed my life. It started with some trauma when I was 5 and a set of lies I told there... And it went on until I was about 20 years old when some relatively serious shit went on in my life and I was forced to give up the ghost and say the words to a group of my friends that I was in fact a compulsive liar and had been lying. It was disastrous and embarrassing... But it was also like a weight was lifted. I mean really just like a light switch flipped - instead of continuing to run from the lies I just had to deal with it. I still look back on it sometimes with shame and embarrassment or some vain attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance about it... But the compulsion was just gone. I don't really lie anymore. The illusion that I have to keep up some false narrative is gone and I never want to deal with it again.

All that good stuff said, I don't...think I could have intellectualized the process of giving it up. But being confronted and having it all come crashing down broke through. That's not a recommendation to go out and find a compulsive liar and try to shame them into healing... It was a very destructive experience for me. But my point is just that compulsive lying can be a consuming thing and just as psychological destructive as any of the more 'glamorous' mental disorders. There's a lot of pain there.