Live data from Hacker News

On Smoking

annagat.substack.com

61–70 of 403 posts

Re: On Smoking

#61
post #7

Has anyone else tried writing under some arbitrary restrictions? In case you did not notice, the blog subtitle is 11 sentence essays. The post as well, unsurprisingly, is 11 sentences (... I guess, but it has a number of complicated ones).

I have been putting my Linux notes online in the form of a blog. I use a plugin that estimates the time it takes to read each article. I try to keep them all under five minutes, unless I specifically set out to write a longer article.

Inside that, I also try to not use more than 300 words without a new sub-heading, avoid too much passive voice, don't use too many overly long sentences, and don't use the same first word for more than two sentences in a row.

Re: On Smoking

#62

> too embarrassed of chewing-gums In case others don't know, there are nicotine lozenges that are smaller than the gum and require no chewing. And if you happen to swallow them nothing happens, the nicotine is destroyed by your stomachs without being absorbed. They are really very discreet to use. (Even the gum isn't actually chewed like regular gum; you just chew it for a few seconds and let it sit on your gum.)

Tobacco free snus like pouches have exploded in the US the past two years. I quit smoking about a year and a half ago by switching to them. I'm not sure if they're cooler or less cool than gum but it's pretty great not smoking. I'd recommend anyone trying to quit to look into them as a possibility.

Re: On Smoking

#63
Here are the steps I took that have helped me not smoke for the past 1.5yrs:

1. Switched from cigarettes (great taste) to an iqos (disgusting taste).

2. Threw away my iqos the day before I moved countries (back to my home country).

3. Arrived in new country around new years, set that new years resolution.

4. Spent first 1-2 months of new year living with my parents while I searched for housing.

Aside from the resolution, each step wasn't particularly aimed at quitting _forever_. With time under my belt, I've since adopted a hardline "no cigarettes for life" mentality. It comes at the cost of being overly judgmental of others who are smoking. It keeps me in check though; otherwise, I sense that a relapse is far too easy.

Re: On Smoking

#64
post #3

The thing about smoking is that when you quit smoking you quit it every day. Imagine a light switch on the wall. You turn it off by quitting smoking and you can always go back at a desperate time for instance and turn it on. And some time later off again. Smoking your first cigarette implants that light switch on your mind and you can't make it go away. Since you know how it makes you feel good when the switch is on,…

I was lucky when I tried my first cigarette in that it just didn't do anything for me. Later I would try cigars on drunk evenings with friends. I enjoyed the smell just never really understood what it was suppose to do. Always wondered about that, maybe just like how covid hits some people really hard perhaps smoking is the same.

Re: On Smoking

#65
post #52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I quit smoking back in 2016 and I don’t think of myself as a smoker at all anymore. I sometimes have to remind myself I used to smoke.

Why do people start smoking? Surely they know it's addictive, expensive, and bad for you

As a teenager one doesn’t really think the things you mentioned. And it was cool.

Source: Me. Smoked for 15 years. Stopped 6 years ago.

Re: On Smoking

#66

I quit about a hundred times 20 yrs ago. I don’t why, but after that I finally grabbed this damn book by Allen Carr. I would have never that it would work. But for me it did. Been smoke free ever since. Maybe just pure luck. Maybe it was the goddamn book.

That book is a gentle and thorough introduction to an idea that I, as a smoker, had been hiding from or confused about.

Pretty amazing.

Re: On Smoking

#67
post #3

The thing about smoking is that when you quit smoking you quit it every day. Imagine a light switch on the wall. You turn it off by quitting smoking and you can always go back at a desperate time for instance and turn it on. And some time later off again. Smoking your first cigarette implants that light switch on your mind and you can't make it go away. Since you know how it makes you feel good when the switch is on,…

[deleted]

Re: On Smoking

#68
post #3

The thing about smoking is that when you quit smoking you quit it every day. Imagine a light switch on the wall. You turn it off by quitting smoking and you can always go back at a desperate time for instance and turn it on. And some time later off again. Smoking your first cigarette implants that light switch on your mind and you can't make it go away. Since you know how it makes you feel good when the switch is on,…

I quit a few years ago and never looked back, even made a pet app for quitting smoking as I was learning iOS development. Check it out, recently switched from UIKit to SwiftUI: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1459979131

When I was quitting smoking I found 2 things useful:

1) Alan Carr's book, which in essence is designed to convince you that you actually don't enjoy smoking. I completely agree, when I first started it gave me the sensation, then I had to smoke every half an hour just to stay functional.

2) The cigarette prices. There was no way I can sustain smoking when first move to London. A pack of cigarettes was the same as my food budged.

So, I just quit as a chain smoker. It was bad for a week but I kept observing myself and surely Alan Carr was right. I wasn't getting any boost from the nicotine, I was simply getting rid of the cravings for a brief period of time. In a month all the cravings disappears, in less than a year I had no desire to smoke even among people who are smoking. These days the cigarette smoke is simply something I try to avoid when exposed.

This was not my first time to quit but on the previous occasions I had the wrong mental model. I was thinking of it as stopping doing something that I enjoy, like quitting chocolates. In less than a day it would have turned into torture.

Just observe yourself to see if smoking actually gives you any pleasure or does smoking simply make you functional again. Then remember that non-smokers are functional without the cigarettes and their clothes and hands don't smell horrible.

Notice that there's no boost once you get addicted, it's more like removing tight shoes when your smoke break comes. Would you wear tight shoes only to experience the pleasure of removing them?

Everything gets so much better once you quit. You remember that the streets have a scent, the weather has scent. Just take note on yourself and there's no way going back to smoking, it's just a tremendously bad deal.

Re: On Smoking

#69
post #40
post #31

I quit smoking when I got COVID because it was the first time I was too sick to smoke. I’ve tried to smoke since and it just tastes awful. I know this might be crude to say but I’m thankful for having had the virus

I knew a bunch of people who started smoking menthol because of sickness.

For me, menthols never seemed to sit well on my stomach.

Re: On Smoking

#70
post #50
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went into a wikipedia rabbit hole about restricted writing after reading about E-Prime. It's a very intriguing topic.

E-prime intrigues me too ;-) I just love E-Prime. I once, for a month, used social media where I would try to only use e-prime. I experienced a lot of difficulty, but I enjoyed the experience. For a week, I tried only speaking in e-prime and had to use a notepad to formulate my thoughts before speaking. I had more problems then, but also more fun explaining to people why.

Haha, sounds fun, yes.

Do you have any good resources on how to get started?

Post reply on HN