351–360 of 403 posts
The Buddhists believe that you ARE the person that does not need anything, f.e. smoking, to be happy. The only thing you have to do is finding your true nature that is already there.
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I've smoked tobacco on somewhere between 5 and 15 occasions over a decade since becoming an adult, but I didn't become a daily smoker or addicted to smoking. Am I just an extreme outlier?
Another data point: I'm some kind of introvert, if i hang out with people, my social "battery" drains and i get tired. I smoke because it gives me much more time before my social "battery" is empty. I don't smoke otherwise. Right now i'm at two packs a year.
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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.
Taking many smoke breaks per day - no problem. Standing in the office kitchen for 5 minutes with a fresh coffee "why aren't you working" in voiced form or just the looks.
In some companies we just made "team smoke breaks" with non-smokers randomly joining, either to chat or continue discussing work and I felt that was the best solution (unless people wanted to be alone for 5 minutes). Either you have stuff to talk about anyway or depending on the ratio of smokers to non-smokers there was some form of interaction.
Anectode. A few years ago, the "neutral pack" was introduced in France, and for some reason, it was decided that the pack would be so neutral as to not even mention the exact composition of the cigarettes themselve. (You can get a CSV with the ingredients from some offical website. Whatever.) One day, I was waiting in line to buy newspapers (the same stores typicall sell tabacco and press here. (And newspapers are th…
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…
Some things happen once a year, so it takes quite a bit to get around to repeating them, feeling the urge, recognizing that you're learning how to do the activity without smoking, resisting for a bit and treating it as an important new learning experience, and then proceeding to the next one.
After learning how well it worked for me for coffee (something I thought I could never ever do without smoking), I was confident it will work for everything else that causes a trigger.
Well, except for alcohol, since it removes inhibition barriers. I was very careful with alcohol for the first year.
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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
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Well, coffee doesn't contain nicotine
And that's where it immediately becomes obvious it's not just about going outside, or having small breaks, it's about the addiction that's so destructive that it's easier to deny it than to accept it.
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Fellow non-smoker to another, but with a very different experience. Over a decade ago, I tried chewing tobacco. Definitely a stimulant, but of the relaxing variety. It’s like a shot of adrenaline but only on your brain and with no negative feeling side-effects. Or like eating an especially delicious gourmet hamburger that is both interesting in its complexity and relaxing at the same time. The noticeably pleasant men…
I appreciate the feedback. I'm not at all interested in seeking it out anymore, those days are long behind me. I think I might be able to relate to the "trying it" again craving. I don't think I was able to differentiate that inclination from how I thought I was supposed to feel. Perhaps that's how subtle the addiction is why it's so hard to defeat.
You don’t feel like you really need it, yet you want your morning coffee; it’s baked into your routine. If you don’t drink it, you feel miserable for a day or two, possibly with awful headaches. Even if you break your short-term addiction, it’s easy to fall back into it because what’s the harm in one cup of coffee? It’s so easy to simply have another cup of coffee, and seems so pointless not to. Your brain pushes you to it despite your conscious mind knowing better.
The difference, of course, is that the cup of coffee doesn’t haven’t such a serious downside, and the addictive quality isn’t as intense.
Personally, I know my caffeine withdrawal kicks in each morning and a lot of the good feeling of coffee is canceling withdrawal plus a bit of warmth or icy cold, and hydration.
In a few years, someone will make a post like this for the internet, the YouTube, the reddit or Insta. Avoid addictions of any kind.
None of those things are actual physical addictions like nicotine is.