I always thought being addicted to smoking was mental pissweakness. My (smoker) girlfriend’s problem with that attitude is that I myself have never been addicted to anything. At least she is going to see a hypnotherapist soon to hopefully get that last bit of whatever to give up.
I want to become addicted to something as an experiment to see if it is mental pissweakness. Of course this attitude might prevent me from becoming truly addicted, we will just have to wait and see.
Either way is there anything out there I could become addicted to, but is safe and legal?
If something were easy to stop doing, then would it be addiction? Isn’t that the definition of addiction- something extremely difficult to stop doing?
Realistically, addiction can be harder/easier to overcome for different people. My mom and dad both smoked- when the Surgeon General’s report came out my dad said “I shouldn’t smoke” and stopped. My mom took five years to slowly wean herself off cigarettes. It’s not simply a mental failing- my mom felt the pains of withdrawal or the pull of the addiction more acutely, for whatever reason.
If only. By analogy, wanting a smoke when you’re an addict is in between hunger and holding one’s breath. If I were hungry and had only the money to buy smokes, I’d buy the smokes not food.
Wrong. Nicotine gum also has adverse health effects, just not as bad as those of tobacco products.
Among other effects, nicotine by itself is a stimulant, constricts blood vessels, and raises blood pressure. It also causes a cascade of effects on the central nervous system. As a compound, it is fairly toxic. For example, pure nicotine is far more toxic than cocaine.
One life insurance company that I recently looked at dings you for any use of nicotine-containing products, including the use of nicotine gum.
The problem with this experiment is that it really proves nothing. People with addictive personalities have a lot of trouble stopping what they are used to. If you arent a personality like this then it would much easier for you to stop.
Nicotine addiction isnt just will, these people are chemically addicted. Its not like eating too many Oreos at bedtime, thats more a compulsion than anything else. They will suffer real withdrawal when they stop. This is why its so important to never start.
Blood test. I was once denied a “non smoker’s rate” for health insurance based on a blood test - I had been to a party the night before and smoked about a half dozen cigarettes.
Anyway, exercise was also my first response, JustThinkin’. Unless it gets to the point where you’re neglecting your obligations and are getting unhealthily obsessed, or too thin, exercising during injuries. I guess even something that improves your health can get…well, unhealthy.
I once filled out an application that asked: "Do you smoke cigarettes? (Y) (N) ___. Next, it asked “How many cigarettes a week do you smoke?” ____
I replied ‘N’ and ‘0’ because I don’t smoke but I do use Skoal sometimes. They basically called me a liar when they got my blood test results even though I had been perfectly truthful based on their form and there was no way to indicate otherwise. I guess they have never heard of cigars, pipes, chewing tobacco, snuff, or nicotine gum (all of which are generally safer than cigarettes).
A true addiction is no fun and knowing what I know now there is no way I would try to become addicted to something as an experiment.
Last year after my 9th surgery, coming off the pain meds, I experienced bad withdrawal symptoms. My doctor reframed my condition as “dependent” rather than “addicted”. In his mind addiction implies a non-legitimate use/abuse and dependence happens when using a drug for legitimate medical conditions. AFAIK, this is an arbitrary distinction and physically it means nothing.
It was a real bad three days. Nausea, depression, lack of energy, lack of appetite, shivers - it was miserable. When a friend called and I found myself crying for mostly no reason, I was horrified to finally realize that something was wrong and it was probably due to withdrawal.
Looking back I experienced these to some degree after *each *of my operations. I used to think that the depression that came after surgery was a side-effect of the surgery. Now I suspect it was related to coming off of the pain meds.
During those three days, every time the thought would creep into my mind: you know, just one pill would make this go away - I would remind myself that then I would probably have to start over. I felt so miserable that I can actually tell you exactly when the spell broke. I know it sounds nuts but it really was almost like a switch was turned off - at 3:00 PM on the third day I suddenly felt: Wow, things will be OK.
I now know that weaning myself off would have been easier on me. I wish my doc had counseled me better. His reasoning, perhaps not invalid, is that there are patients who will experience these symptoms simply *because *they have been told that they might.
In any case, to sum up, addiction, true addiction, is not something to play with.
It seems to me that the semantics of several popular words are so badly garbled that it is almost silly to attempt to talk seriously about them without first setting down a really good definition. Addiction and allergy are two of that are hard to discuss.
You need to rethink your opinions about addiction in general. President Obama is still a smoker as far as I know and it takes some pretty extraordinary discipline to get to the point where you can get to be the POTUS and yet he can’t seem to beat it despite the desire to. I would hardly call him a “pissant” regardless of how you feel about his politics. No one knows exactly what addiction is but we do know that some of it is genetic and parts of it get hard-wired in the brain. The third component is that withdrawal can be extremely uncomfortable if not downright painful and many people don’t have the cash or the time to spend up to a week in a hospital to recover from the physical withdrawal symptoms alone for some drugs. Withdrawal from cigarettes doesn’t require a hospital stay but that may be even worse because most people don’t know what they are up against and the three days or so of physical withdrawal are bad but then there are plenty of psychological effects that last much longer. No one wants to be addicted to anything because it can be hell on earth getting out of it.
My Dad is a West Point man, and an Airborne Ranger. He served three tours in Vietnam, all of them voluntary. Rambo wants to be like him when he grows up.
He has tried on and off for the 41 years I’ve known him to give up cigarettes, never managed it.
If you want to accuse him of mental pissweakness, please give us a few minutes notice, we’d like to make popcorn.