Nicotine addiction isn't that bad - tobacco companies encourage the belief that it's more severe to keep people smoking

Tobacco companies had to own up to the fact that smoking is harmful in the 1960s when undeniable evidence came out. People struggled to quit because it is somewhat addictive, but mainly because they enjoyed it.

Those companies then encouraged the rhetoric about it being more addictive than heroin. It isn’t. In my experience it’s less addictive than caffeine.

Here’s my history with nicotine:

  • Smoked cigarettes from 15 - 26.
  • Quit totally for 14 months
  • My friend who smoked moved back to town and I smoked when I was with them.
  • Switched to vaping 8 years ago.
  • Quit vaping in January this year (2024).

I bought 30 cigars at the start of last month (April 2024) and have smoked 9 of them so far. I normally just have 1 a week if I’m having a beer at home but I went out drinking 2 nights in a row at the start of this month and smoked 6 over that weekend.

Am I addicted? Maybe, but I haven’t had any nicotine this week and don’t plan on having any next week either.

guyrocket,
guyrocket avatar

This is pretty complicated, I think much more so than what you've said reflects.

First, if you can stop DO IT NOW. Any benefit you think you're getting is a rationalized illusion and the risks FAR outweigh any possible benefits. It is irrational, foolish, and truly dangerous to continue smoking, especially if you can stop. If you need to remind yourself of the downsides and risks of tobacco use google some images and read some first hand accounts. It is NOT a joke that tobacco KILLS. STOP playing Russian roulette if you can.

I smoked and/or chewed tobacco for most of my adult life and feel fortunate that I was able to quit a little over 10 years ago. It was not easy for me to quit. I had tried to quit many times over the years. I took a class about quitting and finally did. I hope for good.

I do believe that some people are more affected and/or addicted to nicotine than others. I had girlfriends that would smoke at the bar and nowhere else, which really pissed me off because I COULD NOT do that. BUT, there is no good understanding about this. Maybe these people are not far enough into the habit to be addicted. It seems unclear if some are really resistant to nicotine addiction and I have NO doubt that it is not worth trying to find out.

I'll stop here. But anyone can feel free to ask questions.

CarbonatedPastaSauce,

The amount of self delusion in this post is pretty normal for an addict.

RedditWanderer, (edited )

Personally I was always told quitting was worse than quitting heroin. And when I quit because I wanted to “feel better”, I just did without any of the crazy symptoms they told me about. I think what he is trying to say is craving cigarettes/smoking is not the same as Nicotine addiction.

I thought I would have to crave cigarettes for the rest of my life, and that simply isn’t true. (I was a very heavy smoker).

folkrav,

Interesting. It’s been like 7-8 years here and I still crave them once in a while, especially in stressful situations. Not the sweats and the likes that I got in the first couple of days, obviously, but I kind of accepted at this point that “cigarette = relaxing” is just how my brain connects the dots, and it’s up to me to rationalize.

Aggravationstation,

The relaxation element of cigarettes is partly that you have to go and be yourself in the quiet but mainly because you’re stopping and taking a deep breath. Try some breathing exercises and try to associate that with relaxation.

folkrav,

I never really managed to do these things outside really controlled environments, like laying down in bed as I fall asleep. My inner voice/chatter just doesn’t stop going off unless I’m too tired for it apparently lol. It’s easier if I’m medicated obviously, but then I feel like I need it a lot less often.

Aggravationstation,

I thought I would have to crave cigarettes for the rest of my life, and that simply isn’t true.

This is what I was trying to get at.

I also smoked weed most days for about 15 years then quit due to starting a job that drug tests and had no ill effects. I thought this would be more common but reading what people are saying here there are a lot of individuals who have problems quitting even weed which is far less habit forming than nicotine.

RedditWanderer,

The problem with weed is it absolutely wrecks sleep for people. Without the high, people don’t fall into deep sleep and end up having vivid nightmares. It can take weeks or months for your brain to adjust.

Lots of people have trouble quitting cigarettes, but they aren’t having nicotine symptoms.

Aggravationstation,

The only effect I noticed when quitting was that I could remember my dreams more often.

h3mlocke,

Yeah, anytime I quit weed I have the craziest vivid dreams, not nightmares just weird ass dreams

Dasus,

This is extremely ironic.

From the several “quittings” to what is at most a few weeks of going without nicotine.

“It’s less addictive than caffeine”, it isn’t, you just have a poor understanding of it. Nicotine is way morr addicting than caffeine. That’s a scientific fact.

I hear excuses like yours from smokers all the time. Myself included.

Cosmicomical,

After years of no smoking I still dream of it, I certainly can go months without thinking of cigarettes now, but it’s like being on a diet forever

loaf,
@loaf@sh.itjust.works avatar

I smoked for years, then woke up one day and realized I didn’t like it anymore. Left half of a pack on my bedside table. Spent three days grinding Neverwinter Nights (yusssss), and was over it.

I’m lucky as hell, though. Some people simply can’t quit. Plus I have other vices. I basically can’t sleep at night without smoking weed, for instance.

kandoh,

I find addictions are very routine dependent.

Aggravationstation,

Totally with you on that.

Kolanaki, (edited )
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Nicotine addiction can be broken within 3 days of not consuming it.

The psychological habits, however, are way stronger to break. Your attestation that nicotine addiction isn’t that bad is true; it’s been studied to death and it’s not the chemical addiction that fucks people up. It’s the psychological conditioning stemming from when and how you’re smoking.

Pretty much anything concerning quitting smoking talks about this. The fact it’s an unpopular opinion is a bit concerning, since it’s not even an opinion. OP: you’re not addicted to nicotine, but the fact you still smoke says you’re addicted to the habit.

Donut,

How about you look up a study instead of relying on your own experience? www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5797716/

Its like saying “smoking doesn’t kill, grandma smoked a pack a day until she was 89 and she’s fine!”

Aggravationstation, (edited )

I didn’t say smoking doesn’t kill, it’s one of the most harmful activities a person can engage in. My point was about the addictiveness of smoking, not the harm.

But I didn’t read any studies because this is unpopular opinions, not unpopular balanced research.

Donut, (edited )

It was an example of anecdotal evidence. Your post isn’t really an opinion either, unless you count “I think the sky is actually not that blue” as an opinion that should be on this community.

Not saying you’re not allowed to have your opinions. But at the same time I’m allowed to call you out for being wrong

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Well, I hate to break it to you, but when your opinion is outright ignorant, I don’t think it reasonable to call it unpopular. It’s just wrong. That’s not even word play, it’s just the condition of subjects where there is adequate evidence to work with.

I suppose you could just call it an empty opinion, if you were wanting a less accurate way of looking at it.

But the truth is that willful ignorance isn’t an opinion, it’s just stubbornness and stupidity rolled into one.

Carrolade,

Cigars and beer? Eugh. That’s like a really nice, high percentage dark chocolate and marshmallows. Or a big, beefy red wine paired with chicken breast. A cigar needs something equally strong and complex to punch back against it.

I mean, maybe like a really good stout at room temp or something might be decent with a mild cigar. Really though, I’d want an oak-ey liquor of some sort.

Aggravationstation, (edited )

Yea when I said beer I meant “alcoholic drink”. Normally it’s Guinness or a whisky based cocktail. Most recently a “Jack Torrance” (bourbon, advocat and bitters).

Brkdncr,

Counter point: Smoked over half their life with 2-3 breaks, but claims it’s not that addictive.

Aggravationstation,

Fair point. Maybe I’m just justifying my addiction.

j4k3,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

It is not a binary subject and different personalities have a range of experiences. The resolution of a person’s self awareness is likely a large factor. Some people really struggle to recognize and shape their own habits and routines. Humans tend to be less in control of their inner animal than the mind leads them to believe. It is why humans are not fully sentient. Even when we recognize a habit as harmful, we still do not act in our personal or collective best interest.

Donut,

It is why humans are not fully sentient

I think I understand what you mean, but we are sentient. Unless you’re talking about us from an alien’s perspective

Aggravationstation,

Yes, we are sentient, in that we perceive the outside world just as animals do. But there is some disagreement as to whether we truly have free will or if we’re still just slaves to our instincts.

Donut,

Can you link any research or study into this? It sounds interesting. I thought sentience meant being conscious of oneself, or self awareness

Aggravationstation,

With sentience I was going off the definition of the word:

sentient /sĕn′shənt, -shē-ənt, -tē-ənt/ adjective

  1. Having sense perception; conscious.
  1. Experiencing sensation or feeling.
  1. Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient

But as far as free will goes this article is quite compelling: newscientist.com/…/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-e…

j4k3,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

From an absolute individual, and at a species level, we can’t always act in our own best interests. At the highest abstract levels, this is subsentient behavior. People still starve to death. We turn to primitive violence constantly. Our entire reason to avoid large scale conflict is by threatening a massive bottleneck, if not full extinction, of the species with atomic weapons.

On the individual level, no one is massively altering their lives for sustainability and the vast majority are willing to exploit those outside of their limited tribal sphere. Our evolutionary tribal scale mental scope is itself a subsentient behavior. These are but a few examples.

I’ve been writing for fun and exploring this in some depth in a distant future hard sci-fi universe. True sentience is a very high threshold. I don’t think humans will ever be capable of such behaviors, even in a post scarcity world. We lack the mental scope and can’t see completely past the animalistic needs. We are all in conflict internally. Most conflict is just beyond our conscious thoughts.

Looking up and thinking about cognitive dissonance and the resulting behaviors can reveal a lot in this conflict/sentient awareness space.

I’ve personally experienced physical disability long term, and a lot of the uglier side of the present state of medicine, science, and the failures of government in a place that is likely one of the better, and is still terrible. Such experiences shine a light on the true nature of the present human condition in ways most people never need to come to terms with in life. I mean Neanderthals provided food and shelter for their disabled (like Nandy) 45k+ years ago, and I’m looking at likely homelessness within the next 10 years along side the 100k+ other homeless in the greater Los Angeles area. That last sentence alone is proof of subsentient behavior.

Donut,

Thank you for your detailed response, and I’m sorry you had to (and will have to) go through this. Feel free to send me a link to your writing if it’s publically available. Philosophically it’s a really interesting subject, but realistically it’s quite revealing of how we are failing as a society.

Your comparison to Neanderthals would surmise we drove them to extinction while morally or ethically speaking they were the better species. Are we the baddies?

j4k3,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing publicly posted yet. Thanks for the kind words.

I honestly think Neanderthals likely went extinct because of sex with Sapiens. I mean (Occam’s Razor), we know there was gene mixing, so we were having relations, and we know that the divergence likely made fertility much less likely. Humans tend to like having sex without impregnation consequences. I imagine it was quite appealing to integrate Neanderthals into human tribal groups simply for sex without consequences. Eventually, that leads to them dying out. I’m sure they were likely sorely missed in this context.

Conflict as a mechanism makes no sense to me at scale. Our behavior does not uniformly collectivize conflict like this.

Eol,

Everything’s different for everyone. Which may partially be the point you’re making. But generally anything other then oxygen in your lungs is bad for you.

Everything in life is basically dumbed down and generalized till it’s stupidly black and white, which breeds a distrust for x group or idea.

Nobody wants to show the broad spectrum. Nobody wants to understand the reality of everything goes infinitely in both directions. It makes life scary and unpredictable. Unknowing is fear and anxiety if you don’t learn to accept reality.

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

People and substances are not a one size fits all.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Thank you.

I smoked for a decade, 1-2 packs a day. Met my wife; she didn’t smoke, so I quit cold turkey. That was 20 years ago; I’ve smoked 4 cigarettes since I quit, 3 of those in one night about a decade ago.

I also drank alcohol - like, normal amounts, not day drinking - and abruptly gave that up a couple of years ago. Now, I have maybe a drink a month.

Quitting this kind of stuff has never been hard for me, but I believe that’s purely genetics, because I have 0 willpower. I am simply not prone to addiction, and thank goodness, because I’d probably already be dead by now otherwise. But I hit the genetic jackpot on that one; many (most?) people haven’t.

The moral of your story is: don’t extrapolate onto everyone else based on your own experience.

folkrav,

I love this takeaway. So few people seem to follow this line of thinking.

I was a pack-a-day smoker at my worst, probably a pack every 2-3 days for most of it. I smoked for less than a decade. It took me all my willpower and slowly cutting down on nicotine through vapes over a couple of years, until I couldt kick the habit itself without the physical cravings getting in the way. But I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum, and I think that what I now know to be my ADHD impulsiveness is making me really prone to addiction…

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Its the stimulants your brain craves. It fucking sucks. But now you know where it comes from it at least makes sense why its hard. Addiction is just hard enough with support, and i dont understand why people have a punitive view of rehabilitation. congrats on beating the habit and good luck, that sounded like hell.

folkrav,

That dopamine hit, amirite? Good thing I’m legitimately terrified of hard drugs or I’d probably have been down that path at some point… I seldom do something halfway hehe. Having the right people around and working on that general mental health also helps…

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Its the best lolol. And that fear is understandable. However some really cool research is coming where they use specific drugs as a therapy aid. The results are pretty promising. Though the keyword is therapy aid there. Right people and mental health goes such a long way. That’s just something we all should be more actively doing.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

There are also drugs available that help curb the urge for some drugs; Naltrexone and Ozempic, for instance. Both make you nauseous pretty quickly if you drink alcohol, and Naltrexone blocks opioid receptors in the bargain. Ozempic has a better mechanism, in that it’s an injection once a week; Naltrexone you have to take daily, which makes it easier for opioid addicts to skip of they’re feeling urges. I don’t know of any that block nicotine.

I know about these because both of those have secondary uses; low-dose Naltrexone is used to treat auto-immune diseases, and Ozempic is a highly effective diet drug.

Better living through chemistry!

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Wild… Fucking wild. Like this stuff is amazing how when used responsibly it can drastically change a persons life for the better.

Ozempic is insane. Its touted as this miracle drug… And I worry if its gonna be the new oxy cause of how its being I guess seemingly over prescribed. I do hope I’m wrong in that regard.

I just wish the need for number line go up was split from the need to address these issues we have as a species. That way I don’t have to be skeptical about these advancements.

folkrav,

Interestingly enough, Ozempic was first and foremost a diabetes drug.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Yup! Weight loss is a secondary (off-label) use.

Aggravationstation,

I think there could be something to this because I took stimulants like cocaine and amphetamine sulphate when I was younger and never really enjoyed them.

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Everyone’s body chemistry is different… So its very possible something isn’t working for you.

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Thank you for sharing. I totally agree with your moral.

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