Skeptic Project

I wasn't as heavily into CTs as some here have been, and as it sounds like your friend is, but I did believe in them at one time. What started to get me out of them was something pretty small. I noticed in one documentary that one person who was talking on the screen was describing something different than the diagram he was holding in his hands which supposedly supported what he was saying. (This was a documentary about JFK and the subject involved his head wounds). I started checking some of the other claims of the documentary and found they were utterly false.

I think you're right that life begins to present other priorities, and once you get deeply involved in school, job, kids etc. suddenly you wake up one day and realize that the martial law Alex Jones predicted in 1998 hasn't happened yet, or that the North American Union isn't really happening. Then you start treating conspiracy-mongers with the skepticism they deserve, and ultimately through investigation you start to recognize patterns of deception in all CT'ers and their sources. Once you pick up that pattern you can distinguish something true from CT bullshit almost immediately.

The final step is when you start to get angry about CTs that you once believed in and angry at the people who sold them to you. When you start doing something about it, you become a debunker. :)

Well, I was never a full blown CT'er, but I was certainly on the fence for awhile. And I do mean that as actually being 'on the fence' and not 'on the fence but some of the planks broke and I landed on the CT side' like so many others who use the term mean... but I definitely lost a lot of sleep thinking about the possibility of camps and martial law.

I think the best way to break out of the CT mentality is to learn things and educate yourself through legitimate mediums. I think it's a sad but true reality that most folks (Americans especially) are pretty ignorant when it comes to things like history and politics and stuff like that, so when a CT makes a claim it usually goes unchallenged simply because other people don't have the necessary information to determine why that claim is wrong.

What really helped swayed me over to the non-CT though, was the fact that the conspiracy theorists had to constantly lie to get their point across. Sure there were some things that you could attribute to a government cover-up if you were paranoid enough about it, but some things were just undeniable lies. If your case is so sound, why the need to lie and distort facts? I saw no such intellectual dishonesty from the 'skeptical side'. On top of that were the countless failed predictions that CT'ers made.

Sites like this are also a great reference and filled with lots of information, but I think a "full recovery" can only come about once someone arms themselves with the tools to try and break down claims on their own. You may not be able to give a detailed analysis on every kooky claim out there, but you should be able to see why it's wrong (or rarely, why it's right!).

I purchased a tin foil hat and realised I didnt think any clearer with it on than I did with it off.
Et voila I was cured !!!!

Seriously though I just started talking to more skeptics and listening to the views of skeptics more carefully than I previously had. I got sick of worrying about whether CT's might be right and decided that I should be a man and stop pissing my pants about the boogie man and the dark and do some research into their ridiculous claims.