• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I liked my sister’s answer when someone offered her cigarettes to try.

    “If I don’t like it, it will be a shitty experience. If I do like it, that’s much worse. There’s no way for me to smoke a cigarette and win.”

    • April (She/Her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 hours ago

      I mean as cliche as this seems to be an an answer, I think the best solution is to not try them in the first place. You can’t lose if you never play the game.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Yeah. It’s weird that just saying “no” really is the best move. We just shouldn’t count on it when teaching kids about substance abuse.

        Just like with abstinence-only sex education, basing the entire strategy around just one method of preventing an unwanted outcome is dumb.

    • KammicRelief@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      My mind focused on the word “weed” and got very confused… had to reread a few times :)

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk
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    6 hours ago

    Be me.
    Be 12.
    With my friend, steal a pack of ciggies from his mum.
    Smoke a couple in low ground between two fields, surrounded by Meadow Pipits and Chiffchaffs.

    Didn’t bother for a fair few years after that. Never really got into it, but enjoyed the acceptable work breaks that came with it for a while. Haven’t smoked more than a cigar or two a year for the last 25 years.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    I never even bothered trying it. Expensive, smelly, bad for your health, it’s all downsides.

  • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 hours ago

    Easy! It just takes a little trauma! You’ll be a smoker in no time if you sync buying your next pack with the death of a family member that your other family members are too grief stricken to help you process!

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    13 hours ago

    I actually enjoy a good cigarette, but I still don’t understand how folks get addicted. Smoking more than one in a single day always makes me feel like shit. Even just one cigarette and I feel like I need to take a shower. I smoke a cigarette now and then for fun, and couldn’t imagine doing more.

    I smoke like a pack a year. I keep it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge to keep them fresh. Been doing this for about 19 years…

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I actually enjoy a good cigarette, but I still don’t understand how folks get addicted.

      Ah. Well perhaps you should read some neuropsychology?

    • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      This reduction of addiction is surprising to see here. You can literally replace your scenario with anything, booze, heroin, junk food, whatever and it may be easier to understand. You have already crossed the barrier on enjoyment, so why is it a stretch for you that people might overindulge. I’m sure there are things in your life that you overindulge in.

      Our brains and bodies are vastly complex and all of these things have chemicals that alter your brain chemistry, everyone’s brain is different and these chemicals affect people differently.

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        10 hours ago

        I’m just talking about my own experience. I also enjoy cannabis, almost exclusively via edibles, and consume it most days, but I also find it pretty effortless to take breaks, even significant months-long ones.

        I think I just don’t have an “addictive personality” or whatever. I enjoy a good vice, but I’ve never experienced dependency. Even drinking enough to get “drunk”, or drinking multiple days in a row feels bad to me, even if I do like an occasional buzz.

        Junk food is nasty to me. I eat it like twice a year and always regret it. Never done opiates, but I do understand that they’re a whole lot more addictive than other drugs, so I don’t think that even if I did understand what that felt like that it would inform me much about nicotine addiction. Given that opiates are downers and nicotine is an upper, I don’t know that they are really comparable.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          I’m not gonna downvote because I think your experience is valid. That being said, I think it is a little dismissive. Many people in this thread likely have direct issues with specific addictions, and many people likely have been around death or serious harm because of it.

          Chemicals like nicotine have a direct addictive effect on your brain, whether or not you personally can overcome that or not doesn’t make much of a difference over that fact that it isn’t even about personalities or willpower in every case. Nicotine in particular digs very deep, altering brain development, changing the perception of pain, and controlling dopamine levels. Nicotine also has direct effects on the limbic system, and overall effects of the entire nervous system.

          This isn’t some issue of people being stupid or weak, nicotine is one of the most addictive (chemically) substances known to man, and a common delivery method is to freebase and concentrate it. It is constantly being developed in laboratories to be as addictive as possible, and there is a 1 trillion (and growing) dollar industry that is financially incentivised to get it into your hands.

          1 in 8 people in the world smoke or otherwise consume tobacco products, that’s almost the same amount of people that drive cars.

    • way_of_UwU@programming.dev
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      12 hours ago

      Same, except from the pipe for me. A nice high quality tobacco from my favorite pipe really hits the spot sometimes, plus it makes me feel classy as hell.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Same except I just grab some cigarillos from time to time. Some people are just more susceptible to chemical addictions then others, we’re probably on the “Not Very Susceptible” end of the spectrum lol

  • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
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    18 hours ago

    Wish I never smoked, but over 4 years since my last and no cravings. Always was afraid that cravings would never go away, that hungry anxiety was awful, even if it was dull after a time

    Terrible addiction that isn’t worth it

    • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      1 year with nothing, after years of vape only and a long time with smokes.

      I still get cravings every once in a while, especially with certain actions. Recently It was playing a record, I used to sit and listen to music and chug on my vape and now I sit and do nothing, so the craving comes back.

      • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
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        7 hours ago

        Haha oh man, a smoke on the move used to be my jam. Smoke when leaving a place. Smoke before I go in the building. I guess that happens ubiquitously enough that the correlation gets burned through pretty quickly

    • Kallioapina@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 hours ago

      Little over four years smokeless for me too, after 20 years of smoking. High five for the quitter crew!

      Sadly I still get cravings almost weekly.

      • Pilon23@feddit.dk
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        15 hours ago

        10-year smoker here who quit 5 years ago. My cravings were gone after about a month. I had nightmares about smoking occasionally for the first year or so though. I really didn’t wanna fall back into the trap

        I attribute the lack of cravings mostly to quitting using “the easy way to quit smoking” book by Allen Carr. It really helped how I thought about smoking as a whole. It’s designed to be read while you’re quitting, but maybe even 4 years later it could help you - worth a shot I’d say.

      • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
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        14 hours ago

        I did get them the first time I tried quitting, which lasted 1 or two years before I started up again

        I don’t think I’ll ever smoke again this time though. Combination of reasons, I have kids now, who I don’t want affected by it. I ve really gotten into cardio since then, and I’m starkly aware of how it affects your lungs. Also this second time I quit I had a minor health scare where my mouth started sloughing a bit. Wasn’t just the smoking causing that, I also was drinking some very acidic juice and was reacting badly to a toothpaste ingredient, but it did help me to quit

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I had the same experience, I think I even tried a few times over the course of years after I’d forget how bad the previous experience was. Each time it was the same, “Why the fuck do people do this? This fucking sucks.” And I grew up in a household where my Dad smoked constantly throughout his life, I had been around cigarette smoke for awhile.

    There’s other addictions I can understand, and even have myself, but smoking is such a harmful, nasty addiction that I can’t get how anybody can willingly do that to themselves repeatedly.

    • herrvogel@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Same here. My parents both smoked like chimneys. I tried smoking once. Tasted awful, smelled disgusting, and made my eyes hurt like a motherfucker. Then I tried twice again on different occasions. Same experience. Just an exceedingly nasty thing overall that had not a single thing that made me wanna go back again, so that was it. I consider myself lucky that my body found it so revolting.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    This reminds me of when I tried smoking when I was 18. It did nothing to me and I didn’t see the point. So I did not continue.