I was taught this growing up, but I don't really believe it anymore. Nobody is addicted to drugs or alcohol or cigarettes just from one use. The people who become addicted are the ones who are using it to escape their lives, and continue to use the drug for the same reason they used it in the first place. After a while of this continued use, then they might become addicted. But the significant factor is their environment and mental state, not that they decided to try something once.
They started smoking when working at the mines, on boats, or when they worked hospitality, or when they hang out with a certain friendship group. Saying yes that first time, allows it to begin and develop. Because you're often in that context due to work/life you will come up against that decision point again and again, quickly becoming addicted through repetition. But what keeps you there for life is the craving for nicotine.
So abstinence is a worthwhile goal still, and especially if the opportunity to smoke comes up at somewhere you'll be regularly.
When you leave that context, all you've got left is a costly habit that's a pain to quit.
But, not saying yes at that point might have cost you some chances to socialize and create some bonds with other smokers.
And you can still find places where being a smoker will help you socialize. Ex: in places where smoking is banned in bars, going out for a smoke is a pretty good way to start up a conversation with a perfect stranger.
Some coworkers at my old work quit smoking and also had to give up coffee. The connection was so strong they couldn't have one without the other. And the socializing out back in the smoking area was also a big part of it.
It also can cause friction at work. I've worked with smokers who are practically bouncing with energy. But they were crabby and combative when their nicotine levels were low. Then ten minutes later back to bouncy and cheery, it was exhausting to be around. I also estimated the 10 or 15 minute smoke breaks meant that my coworker made $5/hour more than me when were actually paid the same rate. He was adamant they were not breaks it was just a "quick smoke" but he was gone for 10 or 15 minutes every hour.
That doesn't sound right; the pattern I've generally seen for pack(s)-a-day people is they take similar smoke breaks as pack-a-week people -- something like once every few hours. But they'll smoke multiple cigarettes in that break. This would also make sense if you imagine nicotine decrease rate as constant, but number of cigarettes required to hit "satisfied" as steadily-increasing, though I don't know if that's the case.
Additionally, IME, smoking or not, I've noticed that most people follow the pattern of
1. Do a decent chunk of work for a few hours 2. Dick around for 20 minutes, especially if they just finished something notable
where that 20 minutes get spent on coffee breaks, smoke breaks, chatting around, etc.
Most of the "hard workers" spend more total hours, not more continuous hours, as far as I've seen. Of course, intentional abuse of the break is another matter, but that's independent of smoking
By comparison 3 heavily medicated days in the hospital plus 1 week on heavy Opiods and 2 weeks light Opiods and that’s a vastly lesser craving. So, no addiction is not really just about long term exposure.
PS: Addiction is also not simply a habit, though habits make addiction harder to deal with.
Nicotine can be just as harmless as caffeine. Personally I don't find nicotine very addictive at all, but even if it were super addictive it's all about how you consume it. [1] Nobody cares about how many people are addicted to caffeine, because the main consumption method of caffeine is pretty safe (coffee).
Caffeine is actually mixed with meth in ya ba (popular in Thailand) [2], but that doesn't mean that caffeine ruins lives. When you say that nicotine is deadly you're conflating the drug with something completely separate. It's sort of like saying that air is deadly, because it could kill you if you inject a lot of it into your veins.
At this point I'm just happy I can breathe properly.
I can smoke a cigarette or cigar socially, periodically, have done so for years, and never experience a craving. However, alcohol calls to me like Odysseus's sirens.
I have friends who are precisely the opposite: hopelessly jonesing for cigarettes, but have no problem grabbing a few beers a month with friends.
This is not merely anecdata - individual susceptibility has been documented in the literature, as well.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171010124112.h...
my friend is trying to quit and i hope he does , his health is sub-par.
In that context, certain things that may seem benign to try can easily progress into a stronger habit, then a dependency and pave the way to a real addiction.
This sort of drug education is actively harmful for exactly the reason that you mention: For most people it does not work that way and when people encounter things that they thought are true and that turned out to be lies, trust in whatever else you told them is going to evaporate.
The kicker with lung cancer is that it doesn't really have any symptoms, and most people don't know they've got it until the cancer has metastasized and shows up somewhere else. That's more-or-less a death sentence.
Please do yourself a favor and get tested every ~6 months. (I know there are a lot of people that say false positives do more harm than good, and I still believe you're better to get tested if you smoked a pack a day for >10 years)
I am by no means a lung cancer expert, but currently there is contention about whether lung cancer screening in smokers is worthwhile, and I doubt at 6 monthly intervals. Some studies have shown benefits from screening for smokers, but I dont think any high quality evidence exist which shows a clear benefit of screening. There are options for screening, chest xray, CT chest. A CT chest is more sensitive than a chest xray but doing it every 6 months is going to cause much more harm than good.
My more general point is that these are recommendations which need to be evidence based, and doing more harm than good through false positives, excess radiation exposure, etc is a real risk. I dont think its helpful to make suggestions that are not based on evidence.
a) it was published yesterday, which means there is insufficient time to have a good critical appraisal.
b) looking at the confidence intervals, although there is significance in men, there is not one in men, and the confidence interval is quite wide
c) all cause mortality is similar in both groups despite screening
d) the follow up is only 10 years after first CT. the effect of radiation from these multiple CTs is unlikely to have reached maximum effect in damage to tissues/new neoplasms. This may also explain the increased non lung cancer mortality.
e) no mention is made of morbidity (although I might have missed it) which is a huge importance.
Overall, it’s unsurprising that in a group screened regularly for lung cancer that lung cancer incidence increases but mortality drops. The problem is the other effects of screening which this paper doesn’t seem to focus on. I don’t think this actually shows screening is particularly worth it especially given it’s caveats.
> Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japan+lung+cancer+paradox!g
What is actually going on here?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18420238
I get Fallout vibes here.
Plus that VATS bonus
It's been a long time since I've smoked. I've lost people close to me and will soon lose another due to lung cancer or emphysema. Smoking sucks, but I do miss those quite moments outside in the cool air with a cigarette.
It's a shame we have to walk past / through so many people smoking on the sidewalk though. It really is quite a disgusting habit.
If you work in a smoke-filled bar for 20 years or something, second-hand smoke is probably bad for you although the evidence for even that is much weaker than originally claimed.
Second-hand smoke outdoors in open air has very little in evidence to support claims that it's going to do much to you.
https://slate.com/technology/2017/02/secondhand-smoke-isnt-a...
1 and 2 combine for a moment of micro-anger
Whether or not second-hand smoke is carcinogenic or otherwise detrimental, the smell alone should force a public ban.
Or my solution: let businesses determine whether or not they want to allow smoking and for the most part the non-smokers will self-segregate to the non-smoking establishments just to avoid smelling like a cancerous ashtray.
I tried to switch to vaping high nic (20mg liquid) - i think i may have scarring on my wind pipe (my throat still hurts from vaping that high nic, and breathing is still sometimes painful, which is pretty bad news)
Lungs do recover, but dont count on it. Quit today, and take it seriously.
Watch thank you for smoking, its great for stopping.
One of my friends from decades ago had asthma right through his teenage years, and was extremely thin and weedy. Couldn't exercise much without coughing fits and similar.
He took up swimming (!), and although it was slow going at first he eventually developed good lung capacity. And became a body builder. :)
Suspecting the same thing would work for anyone with not much (or damaged) lung capacity.
I smoked for 23 years and was diagnosed with COPD at about year 17. I still have serious lung issues but they do get better, slowly. Also I want to say that my body has adapted to function better in lower oxygen availability environment - as long as I don't burst cardio over a level I'm not accustomed to, I can keep it up for hours esp. endurance
I don't stink like an ashtray and the smell of other smokers turns my stomach upside down and yet I am still under the spell of nicotine via ... e-cigs. Should I force myself to quit? Again, I haven't experienced any of the symptoms you describe above and smoked for a nearly the same period albeit just half a pack a day...
Nicotine alone is probably better than tobacco, but by how much, we are not sure.
Nicotine alone fucks with my hand joints -- whenever I go back to NTR my hand joints, my thumb joints hurt like hell; it takes about two- three months after I completely quit nicotine for the pain to subside.
Humans are just exceptionally good at metabolizing both.
After faffing two years with patches and liquids I took the Varenicline route... it was supposed to last 10 days and i stayed on it one full month but eventually I literally forgot to light up.
It works
Her cigarette budget was 80% of her pretty frugal food budget. If she hadn’t been smoking she wouldn’t have had to put so much time and effort into managing her food budget.
I wonder how much and how many ways our situation would have been better when I was a kid if my dad hadn’t smoked the entire time. Fucker used to hotbox us in the winter, too.
It's in the human nature, instead of fighting it it's better educate people to not abuse of anything
Playing devil's advocate, I'd say that the misery is not the smoking, but the excess smoking. Everything in excess begets misery.
Worst of all might be the fact that my bank account will never be what it could gave been if only I didn't start, get addicted then squander the thousands of dollars a year on something that was killing me for over two decades.
Aint life funny that way? Nope, nothing funny about it, just regret, remorse and sadness.
If you don't smoke, please don't start it truly is self imposed misery.