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On Smoking

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Re: On Smoking

#281

Post by pjerem »

rapind wrote: post #196
nyolfen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a pleasant social activity when you're young; you have a ritual you perform together and share informal bonding time. smoking also gives a physical sense of relief once you're addicted to it and it gives you something to punctuate your day with, little benchmarks -- i will finish writing these emails so i can have a cigarette, etc. i smoked for 8 years then switched to vaping. i don't want to vape for the rest o…

I quit smoking ten years ago (smoked for about 15y before that) and the only thing I miss is the enforced ritual to go stand outside for 5-10 minutes. I’d pay for an addictive product that gave me that back without killing me!

I did never smoke a cigarette, but I always went to pause with my smoking coworkers.

Maybe I'm making up false assumptions, but coincidentally, those coworkers were the smartest one in my mind. I don't think cigarette had anything to do with this, but I'm somehow convinced that going outside 10-15min multiple times a day is an excellent for productivity and to build strong working (and personal) relationships.

COVID WFH apart, now that I'm working with non smokers, I really miss those times and as much as I appreciate my current coworkers, I don't like them as much as I used to like my fellow smokers.

If you are a non smoker working with smokers you appreciate talking to, try going outside with them. Smoker's pause is where everything is said without filter and where hierarchy really disappears.

Re: On Smoking

#282

Post by mlang23 »

rytis wrote: post #278
mlang23 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find people that envy smokers for their breaks pretty pathetic. All it really implies is that these envious people dont know how to manage their own time. If I want a break, I take a break. If I dont need a break, I go on. But that doesnt have anything to do with my coworkers. As long as I am not the boss, its not my bussiness to do time management for others.

Annoyingly there can be slight imbalance. If a smoker takes 10 min break every hour, it's seen as "ok, he's just having a smoke". If a nonsmoker takes the same 10 mins break to check on their phone, or just chill outside, it's "oh, I've noticed you're away from your desk quite often". It's not a rule, but I've seen this happen more often that not.

Actually, where I live, people working with monitors have 10 min break every hour, by law. Most people dont use that. And no, I have never heard a case where a non-smoker was bullied for taking a 15 minute break. Never. I guess I should praise my place of birth and workplace.

Re: On Smoking

#283

Post by abyssphenom »

unixhero wrote: post #24
murat131 wrote: 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 smoking, and it was very very hard. I don't agree with you that the addiction, need and nicotine + other triggers will remain with me until the end of time. Deprogramming is part of the process of quitting to smoke. I do now never want to smoke. It is not attractive to me as a way to relax or focus. I can stand in a tobacco section of an airport taxfree shop holding a 5 cartons in my hands with absolutely no d…

I would like to ask if you ever had smoking dreams in the first year. Where you caught yourself inadvertently smoking in the dream?

Re: On Smoking

#284

Post by sateesh »

Ian Banks in his novel Complicity writes powerfully decrying smoking. Quoting from the novel.

  I take out another cigarette, light it and draw deeply. I 
  gag again, coughing and hacking and feeling the whisky 
  and the can of Export I had earlier slosh around inside 
  me, almost coming up. My eyes are watering. What a stupid 
  drug, what a completely useless fucking drug; no real hit 
  after the first drag, highly addictive and lethal in all 
  sorts of ways, and even if the lung cancer or the heart 
  disease doesn't get you you can look forward to 
  gangrenous legs in your old age, bits of your body just 
  rotting away still attached and dying in instalments for 
  you, rotting and stinking while you're still alive and 
  then they have to cut them off and you wake up after the 
  operation wheezing and burning with pain and gasping for 
  a fag. Meanwhile the tobacco companies sponsor sport and 
  fight off advertising bans and look forward to all the 
  new markets in the East and the Far East and more women 
  taking up the weed to show that they can be brainless 
  fucks too, and suits with worm-shit in their brains go on 
  television and say, 'Well, nobody's actually proved how 
  tobacco causes cancer you know', and you sit there 
  seething and then you find Thatcher is taking half a 
  million from Philip Morris for a three-year find 
  consultancy and you swear never to buy any of their 
  products ever again but at the end of the day you still 
  light another cigarette and suck in the smoke like you 
  enjoyed it and make more profits for those evil fucks.
-- Complicity (Iain M.Banks)

Re: On Smoking

#285

Post by YetAnotherNick »

lultimouomo wrote: post #274
DowsingSpoon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to smoke. I started smoking while drinking and the reason is that it feels fucking amazing. People don't smoke for no reason. They smoke because it feels good. Really good. The long-term health consequences don't feel real when you're young. It's easy to dismiss, even if you logically understand the risks. The expense is not a problem. Utterly unimportant. The addictive aspect is a subtle beast. It creeps up o…

> I started smoking while drinking and the reason is that it feels fucking amazing I have smoked about 5 cigarettes in my life, also when drinking as a young adult. It was honestly unpleasant for me; the feeling of hot smoke in my lungs was definitely not a natural taste to me. I have always thought that people powered through the initial distaste for smoke to fit in, and then they acquired a taste for it (or became…

For me I thought I would never be able to like the cigarette. I hated smoke(not just of cigarette) for my life and my eyes were sensitive to smoke. I hated the smell of cigarette too. But, oh boy I was so wrong in thinking it would never become part of my life.

Also if you hate smoke smell like I did, you tend to smoke wrongly and fail to fill your lungs with smoke. In that case you wouldn't even get the "buzz" of the cigarette while still feeling bad smell.

Re: On Smoking

#286

Post by quonn »

emre wrote: post #255

"The Buddhists think you don’t quit addictions, you become a new person who isn’t an addict." This is such an amazing quote

I don‘t think it correctly reflects Buddhist teaching, though.

You become a new person moment to moment and even „you“ is not putting it correctly and everything is tied together by cause and effect regardless.

Perhaps a better way to look at it is that the Buddha is only teaching by skillful means. So that quote may be the right thing for a particular addict at a time. In that sense it is true, but not as an absolute truth for everyone always.

Re: On Smoking

#287

Post by [deleted] »

sateesh wrote: post #284

Ian Banks in his novel Complicity writes powerfully decrying smoking. Quoting from the novel. I take out another cigarette, light it and draw deeply. I gag again, coughing and hacking and feeling the whisky and the can of Export I had earlier slosh around inside me, almost coming up. My eyes are watering. What a stupid drug, what a completely useless fucking drug; no real hit after the first drag, highly addictive an…

[deleted]

Re: On Smoking

#288

Post by mlang23 »

josephcsible wrote: post #53
blairbeckwith wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree with this, but I do know lots of people – myself to a certain extent – that have had success with mild re-programming, via Allen Carr's Easy Way method[0]. I'm not the type to buy in to this kind of thing, but it did help me quit when nothing else did, and I never felt this sense of longing for something. Nobody else I've known that has had success with that method did either. I also think it's really…

> I also think it's really unhelpful to talk about quitting smoking in such hopeless terms. If I was still a smoker, being told I was inevitably going to be craving cigarettes for the rest of my life might almost convince me not to quit at all. I think the post was directed at non-smokers, to scare them into not starting to smoke.

Treating grown ups like children usually does backfire... Or at least not work.

Re: On Smoking

#289

Post by JustResign »

abyssphenom wrote: post #283
unixhero wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit smoking, and it was very very hard. I don't agree with you that the addiction, need and nicotine + other triggers will remain with me until the end of time. Deprogramming is part of the process of quitting to smoke. I do now never want to smoke. It is not attractive to me as a way to relax or focus. I can stand in a tobacco section of an airport taxfree shop holding a 5 cartons in my hands with absolutely no d…

I would like to ask if you ever had smoking dreams in the first year. Where you caught yourself inadvertently smoking in the dream?

I certainly did. I still remember the feeling of "oh no, I've fucked it all up" in the dream, and then the feeling of relief when you wake up and realize that you didn't actually smoke.

Re: On Smoking

#290

Post by nicolas_t »

jorvi wrote: post #166
michaelmrose wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that really needs a cite in 2021 but let me give it a go https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180109214939.h... > At least 61 per cent of people who try their first cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, suggests an analysis of survey data by Queen Mary University of London. This is actually stronger than the original statement. A substantial minority who even try smoking become…

When you stated 'virtually everyone', I assumed >90%. So no, 60% is not that. It is still a terrifyingly high percentage nonetheless.

61% seems strange to me. It's anecdotal but almost (more than 95%) all my friends in university tried at least once, and yet only roughly 15% became smokers. Trying a cigarette once is something that is very very common, at least in France.
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