[HN Gopher] I quit - Peak indifference, big tobacco
___________________________________________________________________
I quit - Peak indifference, big tobacco
Author : Arubis
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-09-21 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doctorow.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (doctorow.medium.com)
| gumby wrote:
| Wow, I had not known this:
|
| > As Tim Harford documents in his brilliant 2021 book The Data
| Detective, the 1954 classic "How to Lie With Statistics" was
| authored by a payrolled shill for Big Tobacco, Darrell Huff,
| whose planned (and never realized) followup was to be called "How
| to Lie With Smoking Statistics." Huff's work wasn't just about
| debunking bad stats: it was also about casting doubt upon the
| statistical evidence linking tobacco with cancer.
| umvi wrote:
| > you disagree on whether there is such a thing as truth, and, if
| there is, how it can be known
|
| People will only believe information to be true if it comes from
| a source they trust. And when a source of information becomes
| politicized, then suddenly only half of the population will
| believe information from it, while the other half will be
| suspicious and distrusting of it.
| mcguire wrote:
| The neat part is that you do not have to be part of the source
| of information in order to politicize the source of
| information.
| dhosek wrote:
| I never understood how anyone under the age of 50 could take up
| smoking. It's been abundantly clear since I was a kid that
| smoking would kill you slowly and painfully and we had numerous
| presentations at my grade school in the 70s to that effect. And
| yet there was a crowd of teenagers at my high school in the
| designated smoking area in the outside space between D and F
| halls (the location seems ironic in retrospect).
| dsclough wrote:
| The "ima be dead by im 30" mentality is common. I've smoked my
| fair share of cigarettes but never found nicotine addictive.
| Lots of people just dont care about themselves.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Don't expect to dead at 30, but don't expect to be in any
| position in life where I would care either way.
|
| FWIW I picked up smoking hanging in certain social circles.
| It was kind of just a thing other people I was hanging out
| with did.
| tonymet wrote:
| Let me help your intuition. Think of all the bad habits you
| have that other people wish you didn't.
|
| Everyone has a vice. smokers are just easy targets.
| dleslie wrote:
| Do you drink alcohol, regularly? It's also very likely killing
| you slowly, and leading to a diminished quality of your later
| years.
|
| People smoke for similar reasons to why people drink: it's
| social, there's a (pleasing to some) chemical component, it's
| habitual, and so on. For many, it's the cheapest way to manage
| to self-source some quick relief in their day.
| lordlic wrote:
| I understand why people take up smoking but I don't understand
| why people expect credit for breaking out of it. Addiction is
| an ugly thing and seeing a public personality parlay their
| experience into an excuse to write a blog post is pretty
| distasteful to me. Just quietly stop; not everything has to be
| an event in the history of internet culture.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Just quietly ignore it and move on; not everyone needs to
| hear about what you find distasteful.
| gumby wrote:
| How soon until someone can write the same article about the oil
| companies? Whenever that it it's not soon enough.
| jerhewet wrote:
| I'm 65, and started smoking when I was 14.
|
| I will not quit smoking. Ever. I enjoy my cigarettes (10 a day),
| and I'm careful not to smoke around anyone that will take
| offense.
|
| I honestly don't give a shit if your prejudices and bigotry make
| it hard for you to accept my decision to keep smoking. If your
| world view is that narrow I won't lose even a minute of sleep
| over it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You consider belief in peer reviewed science and universally
| accepted empirically tested medical research "prejudices and
| bigotry", so you play the victim of science and medicine, yet
| you don't consider yourself the victim of corporate sponsored
| tobacco addiction and self-inflicted lung cancer and heart
| disease, who will lose a hell of a lot more than a minute of
| life over it. Ok, boomer.
| chiph wrote:
| Those smokers that live to 85 or 90? They're the edge cases.
|
| Most do not make it that far, like my grandfather. He smoked
| Chesterfields, just like the ad with Ronald Reagan in Cory's
| article, only the unfiltered kind.
| paulpauper wrote:
| unfiltered may be safer because smokers do not inhale as deep
| caturopath wrote:
| Demanded I sign in to read the article, but it worked in a
| Private Window.
| mcguire wrote:
| I do have to admit, he has a way with words.
|
| " _It's how homeopaths, anti-vaxers, eugenicists, raw milk
| pushers and other members of the Paltrow-Industrial Complex
| played the BBC and other sober-sided media outlets, demanding
| that they be given airtime to rebut scientists' careful,
| empirical claims with junk they made up on the spot._ "
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| "but I also know that keeping an open mind doesn't require that
| you open so wide that your brains fall out."
| swayvil wrote:
| FTA
|
| >Denialism over masks, vaccines, opioids, problem gambling and
| gun proliferation all follow the same playbook, often because the
| same handful of profiteering firms are behind them.
|
| Before we start congratulating each other for being such smart
| fellows, let's all keep in mind that it works both ways.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| People who label themselves as skeptics are often the most
| blind to their poorly supported beliefs but that sure doesn't
| stop them from using the skeptic label as proof of their
| correctness.
| version_five wrote:
| I smoked for 15 years, and it's been 10 since I quit. I'm glad I
| did. That said, I hate it when I hear the "don't make the same
| mistake I did" stuff from ex smokers, especially ones who
| obviously enjoyed smoking and for whom it was a big part or their
| identity - certainly this was true for me, and it appears that
| way for CD.
|
| Keeping on the theme of "science denial" - it reminds me a lot of
| the developed world lecturing developing countries about
| pollution. Yes, from the hindsight of maturity and comfort it's a
| bad idea, but when you have other immediate concerns, the
| calculus is very different.
|
| Smoking is unhealthy, but people have to make their own mistakes.
| a-dub wrote:
| > Importantly, it helped me overcome my fear that if I quit
| smoking, I wouldn't be able to write anymore, since I'd always
| done the two activities together (today I tell writing students
| not to smoke at all, but if they must, not to smoke while
| writing, lest they prolong their addiction to protect their
| artistic production).
|
| this.
|
| psychological nicotine addiction has the uncanny ability to find
| the tiniest smidge of what-you-thought-was-dealt-with impostor
| syndrome buried deep within your soul, poke it with a stick and
| then chase you around with it with threats of total ruin, hoping
| you'll give in.
|
| there's a famous book by allan carr called "the easyway to stop
| smoking." it can be a little silly at times, but it did have one
| idea i liked that basically boiled down to anthropomorphizing
| your nicotine addiction, imagining refusal to smoke as a way of
| starving it and then basking in the schadenfreude as it dies a
| slow, painful death.
| delsarto wrote:
| John Safran has just released a book Puff Piece about the
| incredible way Philip Morris has rebranded as a "health
| enterprise" and released the "heatstick" with their "vaping" IQOS
| platform (quotes are intentional, because as the books shows,
| words mean nothing!)
|
| https://johnsafran.com/
|
| The podcast below sums it up perfectly:
|
| _Three years ago, tobacco giant Philip Morris announced they
| were moving away from cigarettes and that they were campaigning
| to "unsmoke the world".
|
| They said they would offer people a better alternative to the
| cigarette, a device that would give you your nicotine fix from a
| "HeatStick".
|
| Author and documentary maker John Safran discovered the HeatStick
| is made primarily from tobacco, and that it still generates
| carcinogenic tar.
|
| John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-smoking"
| initiatives all over the world.
|
| They look just like conventional Quit programs, but they are
| designed to shift people onto this new device._
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/john-saf...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Private advertisements that pretend to be public service health
| announcements seem particularly evil!
| casefields wrote:
| >John soon found that Philip Morris were financing "anti-
| smoking" initiatives all over the world.
|
| They are literally obligated to fund them according to the
| Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
| delsarto wrote:
| In a big picture sense they've managed to reverse engineer
| this from a message of "quit" (i.e. do not ingest anything,
| which is what basically all health-based quit campaigns are
| about) to "stop smoking" where their IQOS system, which uses
| non-combustable tobacco-in-a-cylindrical-package-with-a-
| filter tip "HeatSticks" is "not smoking".
| robbedpeter wrote:
| What's being discussed here is not real "quit smoking"
| campaigns but "get addicted to our shiny new thing" campaigns
| disguised as such. The anti vape campaigns and reporting in
| recent years has been heavily influenced by Philip-Morris and
| their iqos strategy, which is to get people to switch to non-
| combusted tobacco sticks instead of alternative methods of
| delivery.
|
| Vapes have turned out more or less ok, with a negligible
| impact on health and lung capacity. Chronic nicotine has its
| own impact, certain flavorings are problematic, but it's
| orders of magnitude better than smoking. There's no
| indication that iqos is any better, but it's certainly far
| more expensive.
|
| IQOS by Philip Morris is the latest cynical plot to get
| people hooked and extract endless streams of cash. Vape is
| cheaper, iqos far more expensive.
|
| It's an interesting bellwether for news organizations. If
| they run anti-vape, PM has their hooks in.
| throwaway-Dkd4 wrote:
| Will we eventually end up with this same sentiment but for
| cannabis? Something which is gaining widespread acceptance and
| becoming a regular part of every-day life, at least in some parts
| of the world. Is it "smoking" that's bad or "smoking cigarettes"
|
| I started smoking occasionally before the pandemic. Since the
| pandemic my usage as increased to nightly. It has without
| question helped me manage my anxiety levels (and isn't the only
| tool I've used along the way) but I'm not sure which is the
| lesser evil. At this point I teeter between wanting to stop and
| really appreciating the help. I convince myself I'm at least a
| little safer by using a vaporizer (flower, not oil based) and
| keeping the temps below 400.
| dbt00 wrote:
| That was always my dad's pitch to me. Don't give those fuckers
| one thin dime. I casually smoked cigarettes in college, but never
| seriously and every time I bought a pack I looked at the logo on
| the back and reminded myself that I hated those fuckers and I
| wasn't going to keep doing it. I quit before my first kid was
| born.
|
| My grandfather had lung cancer twice. He quit smoking after the
| first time. His wife couldn't. She spent 10 years in long, slow
| COPD decline after he passed.
|
| Don't fucking do it. And don't buy fucking nicotine vapes,
| either. Fuck those assholes.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I've seen a few posts around saying vapes are about to be
| banned here in Australia. Have no idea if its true or not.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Get a dry herb vaporizer and vape loose leaf tobacco. Takes a
| while to find the combination of temperature and herb that
| doesn't taste like shit, and it's also not the same as a real
| cigarette but it does the thing.
|
| You also inhale less matter than with an ecig, so I think it
| may end up being healthier... but I'm like, the only person I
| know that does this daily so science may never know.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Totally with you, my intuition is loose leaf pure tobacco
| is much less harmful and for a while when I still smoked I
| couldn't stand regular cigarettes, also preferred rolling
| my own, both for the gesture and the taste.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| Nicotine vapes have been banned for about a year here, the
| stupid fucks in government just love to funnel cash to big
| tobacco.
|
| Nicotine is as harmful as caffeine, no more, no less.
| Nobody's going around campaigning against Big Espresso.
| Rooki wrote:
| Still available with a prescription:
| https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/vapers-
| told...
| neartheplain wrote:
| What are the negative health effects of nicotine versus, for
| example, caffeine? I've always wondered how much "healthier"
| vaping really is compared to cigars and cigarettes, but I
| wouldn't know how to make an evidence-based argument. Googled
| it a few times with mixed results.
| nradov wrote:
| Dr. Peter Attia has a podcast with detailed medical
| information on the effects of nicotine.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/
| [deleted]
| wincy wrote:
| It's not super helpful for aiding concentration. I tried it
| for a few months this year in my 30s, thinking it'd help with
| my ADHD. Never been a smoker. It didn't help. Also any time I
| had it on me I'd find myself absentmindedly puffing on it. If
| you really are into nootropics just be real and get an
| Adderall prescription.
| retrac wrote:
| Pure nicotine seems to be harmless except in overdose, the
| main side effect being a compulsive need to consume more
| nicotine. Whether the delivery mechanism in vaping, year
| after year, is harmless, is a different question.
| Anecdotally, I used a nicotine vape to quit smoking -- and
| they're wonderful for that -- but when I quit that as well,
| my chest went through a phase where it cleared out all manner
| of gunk not unlike when I quit smoking cigarettes.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Pure nicotine seems to be harmless except in overdose
|
| I think there's also some sort of negative cardiovascular
| symptoms, but I would be unsurprised if caffeine had its
| own.
| type0 wrote:
| Cardiovascular effects of nicotine are probably more
| dangerous than potential carcinogenic nature of smoking.
|
| edit: smoking is carcinogenic, but how much of it is
| because of nicotine I wouldn't know; a smoker might not
| live long enough to find out at what age the cancer
| develops if he drops dead because of the heart infarct.
| Veen wrote:
| This is contrary to everything I have read about the
| health impact of nicotine. Do you have suitable
| references to back up these claims?
| [deleted]
| liamwire wrote:
| I cannot imagine sincerely believing a statement that is
| so blatantly wrong. Moreover, there's nothing
| 'potentially' carcinogenic about smoking, it is a known
| carcinogen.
| loeg wrote:
| > Cardiovascular effects of nicotine are probably more
| dangerous than potential carcinogenic nature of smoking.
|
| Have any evidence to support this novel claim?
| loeg wrote:
| It's hard to separate the impacts of plain nicotine from
| the impact of cigarettes because the literature is almost
| entirely focused on smokers, and scientific writing
| sometimes conflates the two. That said,
|
| > Nicotine constricts blood vessels, including those in
| the skin and coronary blood vessels, but dilates blood
| vessels in skeletal muscle. Vasoconstriction of the skin
| results in reduced skin blood flow and reduced fingertip
| skin temperature.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958544/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I don't know the health effects of pure nicotine (say, in
| liquid form) vs caffeine, but one is certainly much more
| addictive than the other.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#sn2
|
| The vapes don't have the MAOIs, which could also be why my
| brother didn't find them very satisfying (apart from the
| THC vapes).
| loeg wrote:
| > I don't know the health effects of pure nicotine (say, in
| liquid form) vs caffeine, but one is certainly much more
| addictive than the other.
|
| Which one did you have in mind, and why do you say
| certainly?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Nicotine is more addictive than caffeine. I'm not going
| to find peer-reviewed, double-blind studies to back up my
| claim. I'm going to go with the anecdotes I've heard for
| decades and from personal experience.
| loeg wrote:
| I'm not going to argue with your opinion -- but I suspect
| you are conflating tobacco (usually smoked) with
| nicotine.
| buescher wrote:
| Ironically, given that the data on tobacco use and COVID gives
| the medical establishment fits, now may not be the best time to
| quit. Not an argument for starting, of course.
| flerchin wrote:
| What is this? You think smokers beat the 'rona?
| buescher wrote:
| Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it
| and they will die and you will live forever if you don't
| smoke. Is it a happy story now?
|
| Please don't accuse me of "thinking" anything I didn't say.
|
| In the meantime, there are clinical trials going on now for
| the use of nicotine to prevent COVID:
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410
| _kst_ wrote:
| "Oh yes, smoking is very bad and only very bad people do it
| and they will die and you will live forever if you don't
| smoke. Is it a happy story now? Please don't accuse me of
| "thinking" anything I didn't say."
|
| Nobody accused you of any of that.
| buescher wrote:
| I didn't say smokers "beat the 'rona" and I'm not arguing
| for the virtue of smoking. I also do think the moral tone
| in "what is this?" is childish and inappropriately
| peckish.
| criddell wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to like nicotine, there are no
| good reasons to get it through smoking.
| 1986 wrote:
| There were some studies that observed a low prevalence of
| current smokers hospitalized for Covid, compared to smoking
| rates in the population, and hypothesized that nicotine might
| be having a beneficial effect. On the other hand, it
| obviously stands to reason that having stronger lungs would
| be better for outcomes of a respiratory disease. I'm pretty
| sure there's been no definitive research findings one way or
| the other.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It could be related to smokers spending more relative time
| outside, since covid-19 seemed to not do well in fresh air
| and sunlight (significantly faster oxidation and high
| susceptibility to uv.) Some newer variants seem to be
| surviving outdoors a little better, but we'll need months
| to see reliable data.
|
| It could also be related to buildup from smoking coating
| the lungs and reducing the available points of infection,
| which in not sure you want. All that black tar and crud...
| I'd rather get covid.
| buescher wrote:
| It also stands to reason that not developing a respiratory
| illness at all is better than having a better outcome when
| you do. Note that data that doesn't "stand to reason" is
| super interesting as science. There are a lot of such
| studies now; the Nature article cited above has a whole
| list of them. The authors' argument of "the myth" is
| basically "smoking is still bad because smokers have worse
| outcomes if they're hospitalized for COVID, also smoking is
| bad, mkay" which is just avoiding the point.
|
| You and they are right that it is not clear whether smokers
| have an overall benefit or not with regards to the whole
| chain of causality from contracting COVID to
| hospitalization to "worse outcomes"
| handrous wrote:
| > The authors' argument of "the myth" is basically
| "smoking is still bad because smokers have worse outcomes
| if they're hospitalized for COVID, also smoking is bad,
| mkay" which is just avoiding the point.
|
| The author engages the data directly, as well as broader
| context about smoking and infectious disease. Now, they
| may be lying by either commission or omission, for all I
| know, but the above does not accurately characterize the
| piece.
| buescher wrote:
| They give two methodological nitpicks, which is not
| really "engaging the data directly". One is basically,
| there are other paradoxical results in with this
| paradoxical result, so obviously this paradoxical result
| can't be true! Really, even in the COPD patients they saw
| the same result, which means it's obviously wrong. Right?
| Right?
|
| The other one is fair enough: self-reporting has its
| limits. But what are they really?
|
| Let's do the thought experiment: if the converse result
| were being reported, i.e. non-smokers were having worse
| outcomes than expected, but growing evidence showed
| smokers developed serious cases more frequently than non-
| smokers, would that article be any different? I think you
| could just write it paint-by-numbers. Also, kids, don't
| start smoking no matter how cool you think it is, mkay?
| Sevii wrote:
| Might have been a weight issue since smokers are usually
| 10-15 lbs lighter.
| _kst_ wrote:
| No, that appears to be a myth.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41533-021-00223-1
|
| > To date, there is no strong evidence (i.e., evidence based on
| causal research) that smokers are protected against SARS-CoV-2
| infection. Moreover, there is growing evidence that smokers
| have worse outcomes after contracting the virus than non-
| smokers.
| buescher wrote:
| That's an example of the "fits". Lots of data, replicated
| across the world, but plainly it suggests something
| unacceptable so it is not evidence.
| rackjack wrote:
| Can you provide some links to the data?
|
| edit: Oh, I see the link you posted below.
|
| edit: That's a link to an ongoing clinical study, no
| published data yet. Can you provide some links to the data?
| buescher wrote:
| Read the Nature article; it cites a large number of
| studies and dismisses them.
| nradov wrote:
| There was at least one study in France showing that smokers
| had a lower risk from COVID-19. (I'm not recommending
| smoking.)
|
| https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article/23/8/1398/6073671
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I "gave up smoking" by not giving up.
|
| I just deferred the decision to have one cigarette.
|
| When the urge came up, I put it off five minutes.
|
| And crucially, the rules allowed me to have one if I really
| wanted.
|
| At first there was lots of deferring and then deciding to have
| one.
|
| Eventually I just deferred the decision five minutes then five
| minutes more and on and on forever.
|
| The reasoning is that your subconscious mind does not like
| "giving up" anything. "Giving up" implies you are losing
| something you value for nothing in return.
|
| When you defer the decision to indulge your addiction, you are
| not fighting against your subconscious - remember the rule is you
| are allowed to have the thing you crave.
|
| So in effect I never gave up smoking, I'm just a smoker who
| deferred the decision and never decided to do it.
|
| I "stopped smoking" about 20 years ago. I'm still a smoker but
| just haven't had one for a long time.
|
| "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for
| five minutes is easy.
|
| Off topic also, I highly recommend the podcast "The Vaping Fix".
| It's closely related to Silicon Valley and is compelling binge
| listening.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-vaping-fix/id15628...
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| I think you're on to something. Similarly, doing this one
| exercise, one more time can be easy, but committing to a
| lifetime of it? No way.
| [deleted]
| qntty wrote:
| This is interesting. It reminds me both of a common piece of
| advice for meditating ("If you feel overwhelmed by the task of
| paying attention to your breath for X minutes, just ask
| yourself if you can pay attention to just one breath, then just
| one more, etc.") and procrastination. Two things that I don't
| normally associate with each other.
| fossuser wrote:
| "Two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs set out to rid the
| world of smoking with an incredible new product."
|
| This seems a little like revisionist history? Apologies for
| awful forbes link, but it has some of their early ads:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/t...
|
| I don't really hold a strong position on this issue, but it
| seems obvious their early ads targeted high school kids (and it
| worked). It was only later after their success (and regulators
| started looking at them) that they focused on smoking cessation
| and being an alternative for smokers as their purpose (rather
| than getting non-smokers to vape).
|
| That plus it came out after the success of their weed vaporizor
| Pax which they made first right? I don't really know if
| nicotine vapes are dangerous or not, almost certainly better
| than tobacco - but I don't buy that it was about switching
| smokers to vaping early on. Maybe the podcast gets into it more
| and I'm over indexing on that subtitle. If so, I'd be happy to
| read your reply.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Is there anything you picked up instead when you had the urge.
| I've never tried quitting, but I have ceased for up to a week
| (visiting family, etc.) and get incredibly agitated and fidgety
| after a day or so.
| shriphani wrote:
| The book that had an amazing impact on lots of friends who
| smoked is Easy Way by Allen Carr:
| https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-
| Smoking/dp/0615...
|
| (No affiliation).
|
| Friends report there are no lasting urges, no mental blocks,
| no inner demons etc. etc.
|
| reddit testimonials: https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking/com
| ments/odyv6/anyone_t...
| throwaway-jim wrote:
| Anecdotal, but things get much much easier after like 2
| months. The first few weeks are the worst.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| If you really want one, have one, don't fight it.
|
| Just ensure that every time the urge comes up, you say to
| yourself:
|
| "Do I _really_ want this cigarette RIGHT NOW, or can I have
| it in five minutes? "
|
| If you cannot wait then have it.
|
| In five minutes time when. the deferral has expired, ask the
| same question.
|
| Don't fight yourself, agree with yourself.
|
| And don't attack yourself for making the decision to have one
| - just ensure that the next cigarette gets the same question.
|
| This process might happen hundreds of times but don't worry
| about it, just keep asking the question.
|
| It's a long series of very short term decisions.
|
| It doesn't work if you have a rule in place that you cannot
| have a cigarette - this approach means you can, so your
| subconscious can relax - you are not depriving it of what it
| wants.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| A different perspective is that it's decoupling the impulse
| from the reward. Very powerful at taming these kinds of
| habits.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Thanks, will try this out soon (with a different addiction)
| hourislate wrote:
| There is nothing, you will have to run the gauntlet of
| addiction. It isn't pleasant but in the end it is incredibly
| rewarding. You're basically given your life/freedom back.
| Quit a 2 pack a day habit cold turkey back in 2009. These
| days I get nauseous when I'm around smokers and can't believe
| I was once one of them.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| What you are doing is a core tenant of survival training. When
| in a situation that seems doomed (ie: lifeboat in the ocean,
| lost deep in the woods, etc), you don't focus on what will
| happen tomorrow, you just do what you need to do to survive the
| next 4 hours. You repeat this over and over until things get
| better.
|
| Check out the book "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales if
| interested.
| nradov wrote:
| Same thing in endurance sports racing (running, cycling,
| etc.). Mentally break the race down into little pieces. Just
| suffer for one more minute. Make it to the next mile marker.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| In a similar vein I "stopped drinking" 18 months ago with no
| set goal for how long (but one year was a desirable milestone)
| and I sometimes say I "quit drinking" but really it's more
| about deciding not to do it for a while and then not deciding
| to do it again. Maybe I will some day but I actually don't
| desire it right now and I do like having this long time period
| "18 months no alcohol" so if I drank it would reset that. Which
| some day may be fine, but it's nice for now.
|
| I also quit smoking in my 20's. I succeeded by focusing on how
| physically bad a cigarette made me feel. There was some kind of
| tobacco buzz but also an obvious depressant effect and it made
| me feel like shit. During the period I was quitting I would
| sometimes smoke a little more to make myself feel physically
| worse so that I would be reminded of this bad feeling and want
| to avoid it. It worked!
| toss1 wrote:
| Interesting and probably highly effective. Immediately reminds
| me of a study where they got people exercising to focus only on
| the track ahead of them and only on the finish line, in some
| trial to the point of putting horse-blinker like glasses on
| them. Alternate sessions were to widen their focus to the
| entire workout.
|
| Those who were in the narrowed focus trials ran on average 22%
| faster and simultaneously felt that their effort was
| subjectively 17% easier.
|
| Similar advice I read from a former Navy Seal about their
| training sessions and in particular "Hell Week". He succeeded
| by narrowing his focus to 'just last until the next meal - they
| have to feed us every 6 hours', and he made it through, but
| many in his entering class did not, and he noticed that they
| were overwhelmed by 'how am I going to last this whole week?'.
|
| You just narrowed your focus to the next 5min, and succeeded -
| congratulations!
| treve wrote:
| Also having smoked for almost 20 years, and finally kicked it
| about a year ago, in hindsight I found this kind of advice very
| unhelpful.
|
| There's lots of different people, and there's not really a
| universal way that's going to work for everyone. I doubt that
| there's solutions that work for the majority. I believe most
| smokers wish they never started, so if it was as simple as
| 'deferring for 5 minutes' or 'have willpower' we'd have a lot
| less of them.
|
| > "Giving up smoking" is very hard. Deferring one cigarette for
| five minutes is easy.
|
| For me, it definitely wasn't, but when I read things that are
| written as 'general advice' that I couldn't follow it made less
| motivated to try to find a way to quit. It's was also
| frustrating to read other people being successful with
| seemingly 'simple tricks'.
|
| "Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking" is another example that
| has near universal praise, and was mentioned here on HN. Also a
| total dud for me, which only made me more depressed; there must
| be something more wrong with me...
|
| My suggestion now would probably be to treat it as an illness
| and go talk to your family doctor. But also: your mileage may
| vary and perhaps just waiting 5 minutes at a time will do it
| for you!
|
| Hang in there.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| Quitting by induction...
| loteck wrote:
| By procrastination, really.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is a terrible argument. It starts with something we have
| high confidence about (yes, smoking is proven to be bad), and the
| fact that there were companies that profited from it, and then
| extends that to say that doubt and epistemic uncertainty are bad.
|
| And therefore you should believe the author's other hobby-horses,
| because if you doubt it you're the enemy, or a sucker.
|
| Being able to recognize what you don't know isn't going to help
| you quit smoking, but it helps you from falling for conspiracy
| theories, and that's important too.
|
| (A good way to learn to live with doubt is to collect questions
| you don't have good answers to yet.)
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| >there's no ethical consumption under capitalism
|
| This part of the article seemed like a non-sequitur.
|
| I smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a year. It doesn't seem
| like it's an unhealthy thing to do, and I enjoy it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| "denying the science"
|
| and yet ppl still smoke in spite of warnings and knowing the
| risks ...
| lordlic wrote:
| It's kind of jarring to see Doctorow praise hypnosis in one
| paragraph and then excoriate tobacco companies for their science
| obscurationism in literally the next paragraph.
| 542458 wrote:
| Why? Like, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of woo
| practitioners around hypnotism, but hypnotherapy does seem to
| have real scientific support.
| Factorium wrote:
| Smokers and the Obese save Governments money on healthcare costs,
| by dying earlier:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748...
|
| This study only included healthcare costs, and so the savings
| would thus be even greater when considering pensions.
|
| "On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived 77
| years and obese people 80 years.
|
| The healthy group cost $417,000, the obese $371,000, and smokers
| $326,000."
| umvi wrote:
| Using that logic, the government should be eager to keep covid
| around as long as possible because of money being saved by
| people dying early.
| kimixa wrote:
| The question would be how does that balance against
| "productive" years, where they're paying taxes, their work
| increases the GDP etc.
| Factorium wrote:
| According to this UK COVID Risk Calculator:
|
| https://qcovid.org/Calculation
|
| An average healthy White British male of 66 years
| (retirement age) has a hospitalisation risk of 1 in 831;
| death risk of 1 in 2786.
|
| By contrast the yearly risk of death in that age bracket
| generally, from any cause, is 1 in 42:
|
| http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html
|
| COVID is accelerating deaths from existing comorbidities or
| very old age; based on this data it is not felling healthy
| workers.
| Ekaros wrote:
| One could argue that fighting against covid was worst thing
| we could have done for climate in long run...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| We just voted out a government that tried to do that.
| [deleted]
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| I wouldn't expect that to stay stable any more than doing the
| lifetime cost calculations for HIV initially and today. Cancers
| are increasingly being survived, usually with at least some
| additional lifelong health care requirements (which pharma will
| always be looking to expand upon) on top of the costs for a
| healthy individual.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not really.
|
| When your diabetes leads to kidney problems and stroke, your
| last 5 years of life likely cost more than the rest combined.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| I'm ready to be judge and called an idiot (Not even going to
| disagree) :/
|
| I use to smoked for little over 10 years. I also quit smoking
| about 11 years ago.
|
| Recently I started pipe smoking again. Man do I love it :) The
| *hunt* for the next perfect blend is fascinating and lol I dare
| say addictive. Cracking open that new "tin" (yes pipe tobacco
| comes in tins, like big shoe-polish-tins). Nothing like the
| expectation of waiting in the mail for that new batch of tinned
| pipe tobaccos you bought after spending days reading their
| reviews and comparing notes.
|
| Of course we don't inhale ! (like that is really going to save
| us).
|
| PS. Not suggesting its anyway healthier nor better for you that
| *yukky* cigarettes, I kinda wish someone can just make it less of
| a health risk :(
|
| I can say smoking 1-2 pipes (yes the bowls are bigger than your
| avg cigarette) a day is way wayyy more enjoyable than 20+
| cigarettes a day.
|
| Oh well, time to load up some "SeattlePipeClub - Plum Pudding"
| (it's been called the nirvana of pipe tobacco) in my
| ole'reliable-but-not-fancy Lorenzo pipe :)
| Causality1 wrote:
| _That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason
| not to smoke._
|
| Smokers truly are oblivious to how godawful they smell to
| everyone else. I'd rather sit next to someone actively shitting
| his pants than someone who's smoked in the last three hours.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Marijuana smokers too. Wish more of them would switch to
| edibles but apparently it's a different type of high that some
| simply don't like as much as what they get from smoking it.
| erichahn wrote:
| Tabacco is a magical plant that will grant you increased
| alertness, stress and anxiety release, decreased hunger, ...
|
| Our problem is not smoking. Our problem is how and why we smoke.
| It has nothing to do with the drug itself but everything to do
| with us.
| ng12 wrote:
| The worst part is the carcinogenic chemical soup they add to
| cigarettes is to make it more palatable to smoke several times
| a day. Self-medicating is big business.
| erichahn wrote:
| Are they really doing this?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| "According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute: "Of the
| more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250
| are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon
| monoxide, and ammonia. Among the 250 known harmful
| chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 69 can cause cancer."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarett
| e...
| loeg wrote:
| You got the right link, but the quoted excerpt is not
| responsive to GP's question.
|
| The short answer is, "yes."
|
| > This is the list of 599 additives in tobacco cigarettes
| submitted to the United States Department of Health and
| Human Services in April 1994.
| loeg wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarett
| e...
| Grimm1 wrote:
| "stress and anxiety release" is strictly bs. Smoking raises
| your baseline anxiety and stress. Those only continue to
| increase as the time it takes for you to start withdrawal
| shrinks as you become more tolerant. A quick google will
| confirm this or I can do it and provide sources.
|
| I also know this empirically because I was a half a pack a day
| smoker for a few years and I have never been more anxious, it
| was what drove me to quit.
|
| You feel relief shortly because you're satisfying the addiction
| but at the general level you have more stress.
| erichahn wrote:
| Withdraw shrinks in only when you use tabacco regularly.
|
| It is not the drug that is the problem but how you used /
| abused it.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Then you get no relief when smoking, it's literally a
| stimulant.
| erichahn wrote:
| It is both. A stimulant and a sedative (dumb categories).
| Grimm1 wrote:
| TIL and it's actually the fact that causes the seeking
| behavior which eventually forms the addiction.
| Epinephrine causes the kick and beta-endorphin the drop.
| Neat. I went and searched it up because I was curious and
| you surely are correct. Not sure why they're dumb
| categories though
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