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> Smokers are fully aware of the health risks of smoking. But they ignore all warnings from friends, family and outsiders. Because the only voice they listen to is theirs. And it tells them things like, "Everything causes cancer these days" or "I can give up whenever I want.

This is not the logic of most smokers I know (myself included). My reasoning, like that of most smokers I know, is:

1. I know how bad smoking is.

2. I know how hard quitting is.

3. I know the mental health effect of a quitting effort (whether successful or not) is challenging and unpredictable.

4. I have a lot of other challenges in life that incentivize putting off #2-3 until such a time as I think I can weather the storm and have a high chance of success.

Most smokers try and fail to quit multiple times before they succeed. It's a strong addiction, with a lot of negative emotional associations.

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I know many smokers that have different logic. They know how bad it is, yet for them it is not hard to quit, but they choose to smoke (often only occasionally or "celebratory" as some insurances call it). Many just don't want to quit, don't try, and accept the trade offs of enjoying their vice vs its harms.

This choice, like many choices involving vices or other intentional deviations from happiness vs wellbeing, are too often assumed to be made in ignorance. This same misunderstanding also happens when one political persuasion attempts to rationalize the choices of another.

> Many just don't want to quit, don't try, and accept the trade offs of enjoying their vice vs its harms.

Unless you've invented a mind-reading device I'm pretty sure you're talking out of your ass. Most people, including myself, might at times express a lack of desire to quit smoking, but it's often not how we really feel about it (especially not in the morning).

> Unless you've invented a mind-reading device I'm pretty sure you're talking out of your ass.

You may feel that. But you can't know what other smokers feel, either.

> This choice, like many choices involving vices or other intentional deviations from happiness vs wellbeing, are too often assumed to be made in ignorance.

Smoking happens to be a vice that has particularly noticeable side-effects on the rest of society. If you lived alone, had an adequate ventilation system (which does not distribute your smoke to your neighbors), and only smoked in your own house, I doubt there would be many complaints. The problems start when you have a family, or when you go outside where others now have to deal with your smoke.

> I know many smokers that have different logic. They know how bad it is, yet for them it is not hard to quit, but they choose to smoke (often only occasionally or "celebratory" as some insurances call it). Many just don't want to quit, don't try, and accept the trade offs of enjoying their vice vs its harms.

I know some people who express the same. I just don't know very many at all who express the delusional sentiments from TFA.

It's not about logic at all.

Addiction makes you crave something in an irrational way.

Logic and thinking are not the proper tools to make you stop the craving.

Look at the 12 steps program of AA, there are no "thinking" or "logic" steps.

Recovering from addiction, as well as getting addicted, are mostly social and biological processes.

You might want to read about the Rat Park experiment, here's a quick link: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/substance-use-disorder/what...

AA is also pretty well known for having very mixed success rates [1]. I believe the truth of the matter is people form addictions for a wide variety of social, psychological, and physiological reasons.

12 step programs work for about 40% of the people who participate, and a large portion of that success is attributed to the availability of such programs. [2]

I believe logic has it’s place. Like a 12 step program, it won’t work for everyone, but there is a place for rational approaches to treatment of addictions.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_...

2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-livin...

Excuse my ignorance, but is there an atheist form of AA and similar 12-steps programs?

My knowledge of them is very limited to pop culture (like its depiction in TV shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Grey's Anatomy), but their depictions always seemed annoying to me because they are all about god, submission to a "higher power", and "the original sin"/"flawed humans" in one way or the other. If you are actively atheist, you will find this approach off-putting and it won't help you.

Yes: https://www.addictionrecoveryguide.org/resources/recovery/ra...

Interesting! I didn't know, for example, about Secular AA.

Reading their brochure, however, it seems they are effectively not a 12-step program, since they ditch or ignore most of the steps (a must if they want to remain religion-neutral, since about half the steps mention god, a higher power or prayer in one way or the other).

From their brochure:

> "What about the 12 Steps? How can you be A.A. without following them? A.A. co-founder Bill W.’s thinking evolved on many issues [...] he wrote that, “so long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most antisocial, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholic Aonymous group has been formed [...] these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so!”"

That's a very lax definition. It's very hard to measure effectiveness with this...

Hi, Although AA references a "higher power" and a lot of their rituals are obviously based on Protestant Christianity, there are quite a few long term members who are openly agnostic or atheist. I myself prefer the term agnostic, as although I doubt there is a God out there, I would find it pretty cool if I was wrong. Anyhow, If that is what is keeping you or a friend from trying it out, please don't let that stop you. Also feel free to contact me, email in profile.

Thanks for the offer! I know it's a cliché to say this, but I'm not an addict (no alcohol, no drugs, no smoking, no overeating, nothing I'd consider an addiction. Maybe I could do more physical exercise though!) and I'm not looking for help for myself or anyone I know. I was just curious about this aspect of AA :)

I'm not sure how standard AA can help an atheist, since about half their 12-steps mention god, submitting to a higher power or praying. If atheists say it helps them, I believe them -- who am I to doubt it? But I don't understand the principle at work.

My understanding of the principle is that you often need a much larger rework of your life to quit an addiction than just changing the habit itself. So much of an addiction is the habits and preconditions that you take before using a drug. For example, first a person might have a lunch break at 12:30, then they'll go and talk to coworker X who also has a lunch break, then they'll take a walk, then they'll start lighting up. All of these little habits have nothing to do with smoking individually, but your brain is already primed to assume 'lunch break -> chat -> walk -> smoke'.

Being willing to alter your deepest held beliefs predisposes you to altering other things about your life, from big things like moving across town to small things like taking a lunch break at a different time.

There's also a social element that I think is hard to reproduce in a secular context. Convincing a bunch of adults to coordinate their schedules is much easier if they believe that they will go to heaven if they do so. Furthermore, you already have a public building as a location to hold meetings. Hell, even the architecture of a lot of churches is awe-inspiring. They're physically designed to be these places where you come to terms with your faults (sins) and begin to deal with them. Of course, that also means that their design is religious, with religious iconography in the stained windows and on the walls.

Charlie Munger has a theory of hour AA works that is pretty convincing. He says that AA uses a number of natural psychological tendencies together to create a "Lollapalooza effect" that helps people to stay stopped, once they quit drinking.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22554750

The craving itself is irrational but logic and thinking are useful tools to stop. Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Stop Smoking" is a testament to that. While everyone knows that smoking is bad for health, many people don't know to what extent or have mistaken beliefs about the benefits of smoking.

It's not logic goes entirely out the window when you're addicted.

You reply just sounds condescending. Yes, smokers (myself a smoker) know that their logic isn't ideal on this and we're aware that much of it is biological and emotional, but there is room for reasoning about when to try quitting for a less stressful and more likely optimal result. We're not simply blind rats in a cage just because we have this ferocious addiction, and we don't need to be implicitly told by others that all such reasoning about how or when to go about quitting is nonsense, that we "should just do it".

> It's not about logic at all.

Yes, it is. Believe it or not, I described it. I wasn't describing the logic of being addicted, or of how to overcome addiction, but of conditions that affect the decision to try to quit.

> Look at the 12 steps program of AA, there are no "thinking" or "logic" steps.

You're either deliberately or ignorantly misrepresenting the 12 step program. They are nearly entirely about reasoning (even if you don't particularly subscribe to the suggested reasoning).

It took me dozens of attempts. Find three days. Use the next long weekend. No excuses. Cold turkey on Friday afternoon, drink yourself to sleep, self-isolate until Monday afternoon, incorporate endurance exercise (long distance cycling is very good) if at all possible. Try not to schedule critical family/business meetings on Tuesday/Wednesday. Exercise Tuesday/Wednesday.

If you are a positive reinforcement type of person, keep a "money and time I didn't spend on cigarettes" and "days of life saved to spend with my kids" counter as a reinforcement every time you log in.

"Drink yourself to sleep" is weirdly phrased. Could you clarify?

Also, thanks for the positive re-inforcement idea.

It's a common phrase that means to drink enough alcohol to pass out. Presumably because otherwise sleep would be difficult to find, due to withdrawal symptoms.

I downvoted you because these are terrible suggestions. Tapering down is a far easier way of quitting most addictions. Drinking yourself to sleep is always a terrible idea.

Actually I’ve seen variants of this work in many different ways. Listen, you got yourself already onto a powerful drug. People use drugs to come off other drugs all the time, and it works. In fact I think it has a high success rate if done properly.

High dose NAC with a couple night’s of Xanax to sleep would probably be better.

I never said it couldn't work, I said it was a terrible idea.

I anecdotally in my 20s found that a lot of non drowsy cough syrup (DXM) is great for any kind of withdrawal.

It's probably a good idea to disclose, for anyone who isn't already aware, that DXM (dextromethorphan) is a dissociative hallucinogen. It doesn't take much more than a normal dose to experience mild intoxication, and "a lot" can be a pretty intense (and for many, unpleasant) experience even if you're expecting it.

It's also probably a good idea to disclose that it can be pretty nauseating in its own right, and that it's often paired with other drugs like guaifenesin that are even more likely to cause nausea and vomiting.

Like, don't get me wrong, if folks wanna take a robotrip to quit smoking, I'm not going to dissuade them. It's crazy what works for some people. But I don't think just encouraging people who are desperate to find a way to quit smoking to take a robotrip without warning is a good idea at all.

> Find three days. Use the next long weekend. No excuses. Cold turkey on Friday afternoon, drink yourself to sleep, self-isolate until Monday afternoon, incorporate endurance exercise (long distance cycling is very good) if at all possible.

FWIW, I know some have said this is bad advice, but it's remarkably similar to my most recent attempt that had any kind of success. I did taper first, but when it came time to actually follow through, I did reserve some time for self isolation. I did drink myself to sleep (I basically had a drink any time I had a craving for a smoke). I did substitute long distance cycling! All of this helped immensely.

Unfortunately, most of that is available to me right now. I'm fortunate to be working, but I'm currently working far more than I should. My family is depending on me for routine contact (and I on them) for mental health during isolation. I don't currently have access to my bike, and even if I did I would not have the time or energy to exercise.

I will get there again. It's just not the time. Thanks for the advice though!

Thanks for your supportive comment. Exercise helps. Time helps, to a point (2-3 days). Obviously anything like this is highly personal, and anyone who hasn't done it should be "taken with a grain of salt" (ignored). Remember not to take yourself too seriously :)

I quit smoking in 2013. Before that I tried more or less every month for 2 years till I succeeded. The logic was :

1- every day I'm not smoking has a positive impact on my health. Even if it's a few days

2- I had to make it as easy to quit as it is to restart smoking. Because restarting smoking is too easy and there is nothing I can do about it

3- my environment can make it more easy or more difficult for me to stop. So I had to be ready to stop when the conditions were ideal. For instance, my partner was a smoker too, which made it more difficult for me stop. So when she finally decided to quit smoking, I was able to immediately stop too. We encouraged each other and succeeded together

Is caffeine any different? I went 40 years without it but started when I had a need for some energy as life was so bad. I tried to quit after two years and had 30 days + of migraines that never left of abated so I went back on it. I want off but I am not in a position to have MORE pain and headaches now as life has collapsed. I wish I had never had a coffee. The small boost and bowel regularity are benefits, but the dependence is miserable. Even getting off a cup a day is super painful for me and I have read I am not alone...but people who aren't as affected think its ridiculous.

yes, it's very different.

the health impacts of coffee are significantly less than the health impacts of smoking. Coffee doesn't cause cancer or heart disease. ~480000 americans don't die every year of caffeine-related illnesses. being dependent on anything sucks, but a dependency on something that's not really even bad for you is a lot different than a dependency on something that has a decent chance of killing you.

The relevant question would be the health impacts of caffeine vs the health impacts of nicotine.

Smoking is a horrible delivery mechanism. There are others that seem to present far fewer downsides.

Taper down, don't quit cold turkey. Reduce your intake by 10% a day. Eventually you'll be at a low enough level you can stop and the side effects will be minimal.

Anecdotal, but many smokers I’ve known are using nicotine as a cognitive enhancer.

Yup. I've solved many a perplexing problem over a five minute cigarette break. Now that I've quit, I find a brisk five minute walk is a suitable substitute, but not quite up to par with the nicotine. I consider it a good compromise though, considering the health risks.

What's your caffeine intake like? I'm wondering if drinking an extra cup of coffee can help cognitively or if the caffeine stimulation just makes the nicotine craving worse.

I don't think there is a general answer. I have to quit coffee when I try to quit smoking (it reduces the craving and helps me to sleep at night), but I know people who have quit substituting the tobacco with huge amounts of coffee. You will have to find what works better for you. Good luck!

Very high. I only stop when I start getting the jitters. although, back when I smoked, I was never one that had to have a cigarette and coffee together, but I hear it's very common.

FWIW, if you find nicotine (or caffeine as suggested in nearby comments) helps you cognitively, that's a potential sign that you have a dopamine deficiency (i.e. ADHD).

Well, I have been diagnosed with ADD, so that would make sense.

You really should read allen carr's easy way to quit smoking. I was a smoker for a long time and would say exactly what you've said here. The main pull for me was always the social smoking as well.

The tl;dr is that, for a lot of different reasons that aren't your fault, you've become convinced that quitting smoking is a lot harder than it actually is. If you have any feeling like you would like to quit (or that you think its gross) then go grab the PDF and give it a shot.

I dropped the habit two years ago and have never had a slight urge to try again. The text is a little cringeworthy, but if you can look past it you will see the benefits

That book is magical. Made me quit cold turkey after 10 years smoking one pack a day.

I see the PDF is posted here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuittingJUUL/comments/d10l69/full_p...

In a subreddit called "QuittingJUUL", none the less! An entirely new generation is getting to learn about Carr's book.

I strongly agree. This book is the way. Your might not quit right away, but if you let it, it will infect your mind with a new virus that outcompetes the cigarette meme over time.

Quitting smoking is both easier and harder than you think it is, but having done it, I learned a lot about my mind and the way humans think in general. Another step on the path to enlightenment.

Good luck.

Listening to the audiobook while smoking is how I quit. Took me two attempts but it really wasn’t some grueling, terrible ordeal the whole time. Smokers and non smokers alike romanticize smoking excessively. Listening to Carr helped me realize that smoking is actually a huge pain in the ass that makes your life worse instead of something so pleasurable that living life without it seems like asceticism.

I also quit directly because of Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. This is a fantastic book, and I gladly gift it to anyone I know who wants to stop smoking.

Thank you for the suggestion (and I see all the other praise for this in the sub-comments). I will definitely give this a read as soon as I have time available.

Great book worked for me!

It think you are right, and I explain the same concept as: rational people don't quit smoking. The logic is simple and entirely correct. Quitting tomorrow has the roughly same health benefits as quitting today. Quitting today incurs a lot of pain, so it is better to quit tomorrow. By induction, never quit smoking.

When one accepts that the rational choice is to continue smoking, then it is much easier to deal with the emotions that come with quitting.

That being said, I am a huge fan of nicotine. Gum, patches, vape, snus, are all great. If you want to explore your subconscious then a nicotine patch before bedtime is diving straight into the deep end.

> Most smokers try and fail to quit multiple times before they succeed.

There's truth to the joke "quitting is easy, I've done it many times". It's not the quitting part you have to worry about.

I used to say, "I quit every night, just before bed."

Quitting smoking is attainable.. Sure there is some uncomfortable days, but its completely tolerable. The greatest marketing tobacco came up with is how difficult it is to quit. Its a mind fornicator.

It's definitely attainable, but I feel like there is quite a bit of variance in how painful it is for various people. But I totally agree that quitting has been marketed as more challenging than it is.

one day you will realize that your body was prio #1

This is purely condescending and unhelpful.

Do you really think most smokers hit those points over and over?

If so, doesn't that mean it's something we should probably ban as a society and provide transitional support to help wean people off of it more gracefully? Even if tobacco itself remains an accessible substance, getting rid of pre-rolled cigarettes would probably annoy a large portion of the population into quitting.

I've never been a smoker so I can't really relate, but sugar is addictive as hell and quite terrible for you as well. I try and minimize deserty things and get really annoyed when something I'd like (like a nice dry cracker or a marinated piece of meat) is needlessly slathered in sugar. I, personally, want regulations that would push prepared food back into the realm of healthy because, even if the taste suffers a little, it'll let me relax a bit when trying to consume food healthy while also feeling the time stresses of a full time job & commute.

I think it's dangerous thinking to wish the state and its guns to dictate life

So here's a fundamental issue I have with this brand of Libretarianism - states have laws, they have laws whether they're prohibitions or allowances. Most humans agree infanticide is bad so that's been illegal for a lot of history. Most of the laws in society aren't just to wag a finger at someone and saw "naughty naughty!" they're there to make sure that people with disproportionate amounts of power don't take advantage of other people. Minimum wages are there to protect workers, not just needlessly increase the bottom lines of companies - contract law exists to prevent private entities with guns from just having whatever they want...

We, as a society, have allowed our food supply to get saturated with sugar - fixing that is just as controlling of our lives as allowing it was in the first place.

We, as a society, have allowed tobacco smoking to bloom as it has - fixing it is just as controlling of our lives as allowing it was in the first place.

plenty of people can't stand perfumes. i could die of an asthma attack with that stinking lady getting on the bus i'm on. i get off the bus because i'm not going to try and kim-jong-un others for me.

It's more than that, we in the US are actively subsidizing sugar, making it cheaper and more available for use everywhere.

How many processed foods would contain sugar if it raised the price by a few cents per unit cost?

If we're going down the market path of "letting people choose," why not let them bear the real cost of sugar proliferation?

Hey it's a libertarian site talking about sugar subsidies:

https://reason.com/2019/02/27/sugar-subsidies-are-welfare-fo...

For my part, since we're doing market-based stuff for diet, I'd rather end meat, dairy, and sugar subsidies entirely. (I'd actually rather we subsidize vegetables and so on, but I'd be okay with ending all of them.) Let people buy food as it really costs, and then let's see what the national diet looks like.

This logic is completely backwards. People should generally be given the freedom to make their own choices in life. If the government wants to take your freedom to choose something away, it should have a very strong reason for doing so. I would also suggest that if a government wants to take liberties away from the individual, it should really only be done in situations where the choices of the individual are very likely to harm others (which smoking isn’t, given how regulated it is, the general public is no longer at risk of harm from secondary smoke).

If your basis for banning smoking is that it harms smokers, then you have no logical reason to stop at smoking. The leading cause of death in the US is heart disease, if you ban smoking, you should also ban everything that can contribute to an unhealthy diet. The US has 12.4 traffic deaths per 100,000. Given that why would should anybody be permitted to drive for non-essential purposes? Millions of people suffer negative effects from social media and video game addiction, why should they be allowed to consume those products? Less that 5% of US adults get 30 minutes of exercise per day, so why should I be allowed to stream Netflix or YouTube for as long as I like?

If you think it’s the governments responsibility to ensure we make healthy choices, then you really can say goodbye to any sense of freedom over your life. Unless you think that should apply to smoking only, in which case you don’t have a rational argument.

> Most smokers try and fail to quit multiple times before they succeed. It's a strong addiction, with a lot of negative emotional associations.

I know it will sound too obvious but my thought when I read the above is that the best time to reach people about the dangers of smoking is before they start smoking.

I am not so sure that smokers are aware of the risks of smoking, especially when they first start smoking. A big one a smoking friend told me that he could tell himself was decreased lung capacity. I don't know if this is scientifically proven (anecdotal evidence) but he says he used to swim longer when he was younger (and didn't smoke).

Just spitballing: How do you feel about a ban on buying tobacco related products without a license/prescription? Like you can buy cigarettes and such only if you have a document that says you need it?

As a smoker I'd be fully in favor of that. Anything that lets existing smokers do their thing, but makes it significantly more difficult for non-smokers to start, is a good thing.

In the US we tried a program called DARE that was focused on telling kids about the dangers of harder drugs to try to get them to stay away. That program was later discontinued because it was shown to have no impact. Part of the problem here is that we focus on the negatives of smoking as the reason for quitting. But nobody ever talks about how good it can feel to smoke a cigarette. It's relaxing. The nicotine creates this nice, peaceful feeling.

In my opinion if you want people to quit smoking you need to give them the tools to create that feeling without smoking. Otherwise people will seek that feeling out when they're trying to quit and the easiest way for them to get it is to light a cigarette.

> In the US we tried a program called DARE that was focused on telling kids about the dangers of harder drugs to try to get them to stay away. That program was later discontinued because it was shown to have no impact. Part of the problem here is that we focus on the negatives of smoking as the reason for quitting. But nobody ever talks about how good it can feel to smoke a cigarette. It's relaxing. The nicotine creates this nice, peaceful feeling.

I don't smoke and I have no intention of learning the nice, peaceful feeling. I was just saying that we already require people to be twenty one years old to buy tobacco. I completely support legalization of all drugs but perhaps there should be some supervision. I thought requiring a prescription/license to buy drugs makes sense. We require a doctor's visit to get birth control pills.

Perhaps we could even get rid of the age limit if we require a prescription... Or do you fear the market will flood with unlicensed (possibly adulterated/low quality) tobacco products if we make it too difficult to get tobacco without a license/prescription?

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