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Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

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 desire to smoke. Likewise for being around other people who smoke. There is no creeping need, no urge.

The deprogramming comes last. When it came around for me, it was gradual but it did definitely come. There is no way, not a chance in the world that I would somehow "relapse". It just is not interesting to me any more.

EDIT: *On slaying the dragon*

I want to add the timeframes, which could be useful as anecdotal data.

It took me 9 months after my last cigarette to get rid of the "critical urges". Then after that it took another 12 months to get rid of the sweet itch I would get. After that period it was gone completely, and I mean absolutely completely. It was an exorcism. To anyone trying to quit smoking; know this, if you fight through it, it all does go away.

View on HN

+1. I quit smoking a little over a decade ago, gradually, by winnowing myself down cigarette-by-cigarette. If I smoked six cigarettes a day, for the next two weeks I'd smoke five; by the end of two weeks I'd stop feeling the urge for a sixth. Then I'd move down to four, etc etc, until finally I was down to two and just stopped entirely.

For the first year after stopping regularly smoking, I still felt the urge when drinking, and sometimes would have a cigarette with drinks on the weekend. After two years, I mostly stopped even wanting that.

For many years after, cigarette smoke still smelled good to me, although I had no daily urge for one. But eventually even the positive association with the smell faded, and now I'm back to the original state of thinking cigarettes smell bad.

Nicotine's hooks run deep, but they're not permanent. Stay away long enough and you'll eventually make it back to wondering why anyone smokes in the first place.

I think it's important for people who are addicted to know that quitting is possible — you aren't permanently rewired. And it doesn't have to consume your life.

You must have enormous will power to taper nicotine.

I'm addicted to nicotine, though not cigarettes (though I do smoke on social ocasions, but the nicotine in just one cigarette available in the EU does nothing for me), and I've "quit" numerous times for months, but my (undiagnosed) ADHD brings me back to it.

It is such a perverse stimulant.

I've taken hardcore stimulants and never got addicted, but nicotine has such a small half-life that it's impossible to not get addicted.

While I'm on more powerful stimulants I don't need nicotine to do my work(in fact I can go without if I don't have to work).

For me, tapering nicotine was about as hard as getting daily exercise. Instead of a bit of muscle soreness or tension, I'd get a mild headache towards the end of the day for the first few days of a two-week cycle. About halfway through the two weeks it would usually stop, and while I'd still want the extra cigarette, I wouldn't get a headache from skipping it.

I suspect if you're using enough nicotine that you can't feel the effect of a cigarette, you're probably using a lot more than I was getting from smoking. I'm not sure if my advice is equally useful for you, but I hope you manage to kick the addiction cycle at some point.

Thanks for this. It's important that smokers yet to quit hear this message. Quitting is not impossible and it won't consume the rest of your life.

I gave up after 20 years of pretty much constant smoking. I will cave and have one with a friend who still smokes while drinking once in a while. Not perfect but better than smoking a pack a day.

Equally. I haven't wanted a cigarette for a few years now, the first 2 or 3 months were very challenging-what worked for me in the end was cold turkey and a strong will to quit and someone who believed in me to help me through it. If you don't want to quit, you won't. Try next time until it works. The first 2 or 3 years, I kept finding myself reminding my brain that I don't smoke, I missed my smoking-buddy (myself-it's a different kind of lonely when you are with a cigarette, it's a kind of comfort). Some years later I forgot I even used to smoke. Deprogramming, exactly as you say. The addict just stops visiting and you forget about her.

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

There's a pleasant mild buzz you get before your tolerance builds up.

As a teenager one doesn’t really think the things you mentioned. And it was cool.

Source: Me. Smoked for 15 years. Stopped 6 years ago.

For me it was something I did with co-workers, and eventually at home, to de-stress. I was in a terrible place mentally, physically, and from a career perspective at the time, but it helped me feel like I wasn't going to suffocate from stress. I got my life together after that, but it so bad at the time that taking half an hour to smoke a cigar in the evening was a godsend.

Alcohol is also addictive expensive and bad for you, and yet no one asks why anyone would drink alcohol

To get physiologically addicted to alcohol, one has to drink heavily every day for a year or so. Few people, especially people with college education, do that. One can drink a glass of wine or a cocktail every weekend for life, and form no addiction at all. Such a person can go dry for weeks or months, without any adverse effects.

Nicotine forms a physiological addiction much faster, and then the addict has to have a fix daily, several times. So the exposure to nicotine (which is mildly toxic in the quantities needed) and smoke (which is way more dangerous, and hits the lungs directly) is much more intense and sustained.

One of my friends gave up smoking for exactly a year on a whim, celebrated his success with a cigar, I think largely to rub it in the faces of people who struggled to quit - after a few months smoking again he packed it in permanently. So it doesn't have a strong hold on everybody. A few of my friends reduced their smoking to just a cigar once in a while, others moved to vaping, it is disheartening that then going from vaping to nothing seems to be not really a thing, but at least the vaping doesn't smell atrocious and seems less immediately likely to kill them.

I'd say many people can drink more than that without dependency. I have a whiskey most evenings, but if I run out, I don't have any problems. Sometimes I'll go days or weeks without a drink, just depending on what else is going on.

The addiction likelihood of alcohol is much smaller. Nowhere near tobacco's ~100%

Damn, this thread is making me itchy.

Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol. Regardless, a lot of people do ask why anyone would drink alcohol, given that it offers up an enormous array of detrimental health effects, the possibility of addiction and social troubles (DUI, violence, etc), and as a mental "holiday" altered state is an incredibly poor mechanism.

Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism.

That's already been tried before, and it resulted in the US government deliberately poisoning people, widespread organised crime, and a lot of methanol poisoning.

Turns out it's really hard to ban something you can make in a 20 gallon drum from yeast and sugar.

We wouldn't have to ban it any more than we had to ban cigarettes

The decline in smoking has absolutely been accompanied and/or caused by a massive array of state coercion, from requiring all their advertising to prominently state "THIS WILL KILL YOU" to limiting who's allowed to sell it to banning it in almost all public spaces. (Which isn't even mentioning the "softer" approaches of massive state-funded PR campaigns against it.)

It seems quite likely that absent all of these, smoking would still be as popular as it ever was.

Not to mention the incredibly high taxes on cigarettes.

> Smoking is magnitudes more addictive than alcohol.

No it is not magnitudes more addictive. Alcohol is extremely addictive, 1 in 12 Adults in the US has an alcohol problem [1] and withdrawal can literally kill you, unlike nicotine.

1. https://www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol

Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction.

Almost everyone who smokes to any degree becomes addicted and a regular user. Tens (100 million+) of millions of Americans drink occasionally with no addiction.

Alcohol is a dangerous drug in every dimension, and I specifically said that. But their addiction profiles are dramatically different.

> Your stats in absolutely no way counters my claim about addiction.

There is no standardized addiction metric. The product, the dosage, age of user, and social habits matter significantly. Alcohol is extremely addictive and habit forming it kills 95,000 people a year in the US. I think it is disingenuous to dismiss it is as orders of magnitude less addictive than nicotine.

Most people can smoke a Cigar without becoming addicted to nicotine and a regular user. In the same way most people who are exposed to alcohol in the US don't get addicted.

This is an absolutely ridiculous claim given the number of people I know who've had a first cigarette and not touched a second. Business Insider claims 76% of the population have smoked and 24% have become addicted, while 92% have consumed alcohol and 14% have become addicted[0]. That's nowhere near "almost everyone", it's 31%, and 15% for alcohol.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/most-addictive-substances...

Addiction rates are lower than people think; heroin, even, is lower than you'd assume (the rate I remember seeing was about 25%, in-line with nicotine).

Of course, 1/4 is still a HUGE amount of people, and an absolute health crisis.

I think there's an important difference to make, I know a lot of people who have smoked once or a few times and have not become addicted but I don't know anyone who smoked regularly and didn't become addicted.

On the other hand for alcohol, I know a lot of people who will have a glass of wine whenever they go to a nice restaurant yet are not addicted.

So there's a magnitude of difference. Nicotine is significantly more addictive for anyone who uses it semi regularly whereas alcohol is not as addictive in that case.

"given the number of people I know who've had a first cigarette and not touched a second"

Okay, now exclude people who did that as children, an experience after which they had zero access to cigarettes. That same survey if demanding an adult experience would be much, much closer.

Everyone has a "Jimmy lit up a smoke and I took a drag and coughed my guts out when I was 9" story.

Overwhelmingly people either had a problem smoking (one that they had to quit through extreme effort), or they never smoked cigarettes at all as adults.

The one "exception" I can recall is a "social" smoker who would tell everyone that she controlled it by only smoking when she drank/at social events, a consequence of which was that she sought drinking opportunities at every venue. She was a problem smoker that turned it into also being a problem drinker.

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.

That sounds like a lot to me, almost once a week. Then again it's normal to drink that often without being considered an alcoholic.

A person would usually smoke more than one cigarette at an outing, so its more acute than chronic, I'd assume. Not sure what impact that would have in terms of health differences, but in terms of addiction potential it definitely would.

I used to smoke occasionally. Only when I was drinking, as a matter of fact. I never became a regular smoker. I also don't smoke at all anymore, even when drinking.

1 in 12 adults had met the criteria for abuse or dependence at some point. 1 in 12 aren't present drinking themselves to death and it is highly likely that this figure that has gone up substantially has more to do with our screwed up society and less with the properties of alcohol.

Notably 90% of Americans have drank alcohol at some point without becoming addicts which one can't be said of nicotine.

> 1 in 12 adults had met the criteria for abuse or dependence at some point.

That year, not some point in their lives.

Nicotine is very addictive, but it's not an order of magnitude (10x) more addictive than alcohol.

>That year, not some point in their lives.

What could be possibly so special about this year that you're so adamant to talk about it?

Also, nice website, definitely not partisan.

> That year

> This year

Your other points aside (I agree, they should probably at least include some citations to their statistics), this article is from 2015, so I don't think anyone is making it about 2020/covid other than you.

I cited the article. The initial refutation was not even the date (covid) but a baseless claim that the statistic was at some point in there lives.

I understood and was pointing that out (given that GP appeared to be insinuating things about 2020, but to be clear the list of one-sided talking points you posted puts no effort into citing sources for its "facts", so the technicalities of the 12% number (what qualifies as abuse, for how long, etc) are left for the reader to interpret.

I got 12% and 1 in 12 and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III survey which IS your entire life mixed up in my head and was arguing that point not about 2020 specifically.

From 2015.

If you don't like that source Here is the NIH [1] in 2019 saying 5.3% have AUD, slightly lower stat but it is including 12 year olds.

I consume Alcohol and accept the health risks, but it is a hell of a drug and highly addictive.

1. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...

I was looking at the wrong article there was a clickbaity article in Washington Post that 12% of Americans were alcoholics which is based on a based on National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III (NESARC-III) which is about your entire life and I got my wires crossed.

1 in 12 being 6% seems fairly accurate and supportable

Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not. Most of the people who consume alcohol do so casually and not to excess.

Essentially the chance of dying in a given year due to alcohol if this were anything like a random chance is around 1 in 2000 whereas the chance of dying from smoking is around 1 in 77.

This is something like the difference in danger in riding a motorcycle 100 miles and base jumping.

Of course its not random at all whereas taking up smoking is extremely likely to result in becoming a life long smoker and suffering the average ill effects its perfectly possible for most people to enjoy a sane amount of alcohol infrequently.

Consumption of intoxicants of some variety seems to have been a feature of humanity for the entirety of human history. The expulsion of smoker from reasonable things to be in human society has only happened after we realized its predictable massive effect on human health. There just will never be the same impetus with alcohol.

>Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted and almost all do so enough to substantially effect their health and longevity whether they know it or not.

This sounds right enough, but can you cite your sources for it?

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 smokers.I think it ought to be considered a given that people who smoke are physiologically addicted to nicotine. Having many relatives who smoke currently or have in the past. Smoking in America has been so pervasive that most of us likely have direct knowledge of smoking by either smoking having family members who smoke.

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

To clarify imagine a funnel. In step one 61% who try smoking become daily smokers. In step two some percentage n of those who become daily smokers become addicted to smoking.

Virtually everyone who smokes for any reasonable duration will become addicted is a statement about step two and asserting that n is somewhere near 100% based on knowing a plethora of smokers, hearing about how smoking effected them, and watching their struggles to quit and reading about the physiological effects of smoking. It isn't a very scientific analysis and I'm open to more clear numbers if you have them.

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.

In 2014 34% of the french smoked I think it is down to around 27% but e-cigarette use is up so part of the decline might be down to that.

Going to the other end percentage who have tried smoking. This is harder to pin down because tobacco use by youth is illegal and its hard to ask kids to be honest about breaking the law even when its supposed to be anonymous. It looks like between 20%-30% self report trying tobacco in school here and in France although I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was substantially wrong. Not as wrong as 95% is though.

I suspect you like most people don't really closely associate with enough people from your school days to be called a useful sample, you don't actually know how many of them tried nicotine products, and you don't know how many of them ultimately spent some of their life smoking. What you have tried to do is make a rough estimate of how many people you know and tried to bring to mind the ones you had seen smoking.

It's not shocking that a large portion of people that try a very addictive and at one time socially acceptable drug have gone on to become addicted.

Not OP, but this is one study I have came across, which postulates that cigarette addiction is quick to develop, and doesn't take years of smoking to develop. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444329/

From the abstract:

  New research has overturned the dogma that cigarette 
  addiction takes years to develop. Studies of adolescent 
  smokers show that symptoms of addiction, such as 
  withdrawal, craving for cigarettes and failed attempts at 
  quitting, can appear within the first weeks of smoking. 
  To account for these findings, scientists have developed 
  a new theory positing that the brain quickly develops 
  adaptations that counter the effects of nicotine. These 
  adaptations lead to withdrawal symptoms when the effects 
  of nicotine wear off. The results highlight the 
  importance of boosting government funding for antismoking 
  campaigns, particularly those aimed at youngsters.

The author of the paper (Joseph R.DiFranza, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, USA.) wrote in May-2008 issue of Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2008/05-01/ outlining his research findings. The article Hooked from the first cigarette in this issue isn't available online, but if you are subscriber of SciAm checkout this issue.

The question is... what is a sane amount of alcohol? It’s surprisingly carcinogenic. It’s just the alcohol industry, much like the tobacco industry of yesteryear, has successfully suppressed this info.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer

> Alcohol hangs around because it was accessible in earlier eras. There will come a time, I suspect in the very near future, when it will look ridiculous. Where having a `drink' will be an anachronism

Why do you think this? It seems an extremely puritan outlook, I'm a bit sceptical that puritanism is saleable without enforcement of society-wide religious norms. Smoking, sure, but smoking is not at all like alcohol consumption.

Given that I think cannabis, MDMA, pyslocybin and other drugs are far superior to alcohol, I don't think most people would categorize my beliefs as puritanical. If anything it's puritanical "old ways" beliefs that keeps alcohol as the primary drug despite an enormous array of extreme negatives.

I understand where you're coming from, but I feel like this ignores practicality and, coupled to that, social use. You can go on numbers related to health, or raw effectiveness, but those numbers don't measure practicality.

MD, mushrooms (and acid et al) are far too powerful (yes, you can take very small doses, but in general). To look at it coldly, they're just not at all practical, regardless of them having, I would say, far fewer direct negative health effects. Indirectly though, things that immediately change people's mental state to such a degree are I would say more dangerous than alcohol.

With alcohol, I can go and have a small amount with family or friends or colleagues, for a short period of time. I can do it home, with a meal. And the actual drinking of it is core. It's not like taking one the above drugs: I take the drug then I am mentally altered to a large degree, possibly for a long period of time. In the case of a selfish drug, like cocaine or an amphetamine, I can function, and the effects a shorter, but there's no social aspect. The actual sitting down with others to spend time imbibing is central.

Cannabis obviously has this in common, so I think that's a very fair comparison. And just to stay on topic, so does tobacco. It's not just the effect of the drug that's attractive, it's [what I think is fair to say is] the social ritual associated with it. It helps that taking those isn't quick (it's not just slipping a pill), that's a feature.

Alcohol has enormous benefits over smoking and has pretty much been in hand for the entirety of civilization.

If people drink like a normal smoker smokes its considered a problem. If your having a couple morning drinks and taking shot breaks at work people would view that as extreme, yet that was/is a norm for smokers.

The thing is that its not so much explicitly smoking, but cigarettes that are the major problem. Cigarettes have so many additives and distort the natural tobacco to enhance the addiction that they themselves create the bulk of the smoking related issues. Using a natural tobacco product at the same frequency as normal / social drinking wouldn't have nearly the terrible health impacts as what happens to typical cigarette smokers and would likely be seen in a similar vein were it not for the negative attention brought on by cigarettes.

Right but if someone did, there might be some good answers. Do you have any good answers for why someone takes up smoking?

It is quite simple: someone is offered a cigarette, and they accept. And they have some more, and it is pleasant and social and/or stress relieving (both in ritual and physically: warm smoke in the mouth and throat is pleasant, as is the slight buzz, as is the act). This will often happen at a young age (teens, early twenties), within social settings. And then the addiction and ritual are the thing, and that thing is extremely satisfying. If you do not and have never smoked, then this will seem stupid, and it is, that would be a completely fair assessment: it is unlikely that any smoker will recommend that you become a smoker. Note that many people who give up smoking will replace it with an equally pointless (albeit generally much, much healthier) addiction/crutch that gives a mild buzz and requires some ritual habits (running, for example).

Alcohol has gourmet attributes and is a good social lubricant. The question is more around whether those two attributes warrant ingesting what is essentially poison.

I don't think I've ever heard a cigarette smoker comment on the taste of their cigarette (cigars are the exception here) and the high, especially for regular smokers, is near non-existent. So for cigarettes the initial appeal is much less obvious.

I'd assume most people start smoking due to social pressure/trying to fit in.

I quit smoking over 40 years ago (TL;DR: It sucked). Best decision I ever made. I don’t regret it one bit.

To this day, I sometimes smell a nearby cigarette, and it smells good to me.

My dad smoked through my entire childhood. I don't like the smell of stale cigarette smoke, but smoke drifting from a lit cigarette smells good to me, and reminds me of being around my dad as a kid.

>Alcohol has gourmet attributes and is a good social lubricant

smoking was a good social lubricant as well. you can see that in the old Hollywood movies and in real life back when smoking was the social norm.

Alcohol is regarded as lowering inhibitions, which allows people to express themselves honestly and break down boundaries while returning to the normal social order the next day.

While alcohol does lower inhibitions, it is generally only acceptable after work or at the odd outing/party. A smoke break is acceptable during work and might be the only time different departments and levels from management to floor workers interact on a day to day basis.

Cigarettes are also a good social lubricant.

Not responding as an argument, just to share my perspective (as I’m holding a lit cigarette in my hand).

I’ve definitely described the flavor of my cigarettes. I switched to my current brand because I liked the flavor more than my previous brand, which I described as having no flavor (and of course it did, just not flavor I found offputting), which was preferable to previous brands I’d smoked. I’m leaving out brand names here mostly because this is a way we reinforce our addiction and I don’t want to give anyone inspiration to try something else.

I have only once smoked to address social pressure. I was 12 at the time, I hated it, no one pressured further. When I started smoking of my own volition, I was 15. I did it privately out of curiosity because I was terribly bored. I didn’t like it, then I did it out of habit. It happened like that.

A lot of my smoking friends preferred one brand over an other and even refused to smoke some brands. But I wouldn't classify that as being 'gourmet' in the same way as alcohol is.

A similar example is mineral water:

I have preferences around which mineral water I drink. I even dislike waters very high in minerals and will only have them if there is no choice. But in the end water is just something I drink to satisfy a physical craving; it is not something I will consume as part of a gourmet experience (although some 'artisan waters' have tried to market themselves that way...).

You won't hear many smokers say things like: "OMG have you tried the new XYZ cigarettes? The subtle flavours of tar and nicotine are just to die for!" (and the same is true for water) There's also no 'craft cigarettes' market, or cigarette tasting tours and whatnot.

Cigarettes, no, but smoking generally - yes. Previously cigars and pipes, today vapes.

That may be because it's self-evident to most people.

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 of my life, but there was an obvious difference in my fitness as soon as i quit (e.g. being able to run twice as far without stopping). i also smell better and my teeth are whiter. i'm glad that i switched, but it doesn't share the same ritual feeling when you can just pull a drag at any arbitrary time.

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!

When I was much younger I was the only non-smoker in an office of about 10 people. This included the owner and his wife who also worked there. Several times a day one or more of them would spend ~15 minutes loitering around smoking a cigarette. I'm prone to throwing myself into my work, even back then, and so initially this didn't really bother me. But, eventually the imbalance in workplace expectations, around scheduled breaks up against this informal unscheduled break they all benefited from, started to bug me. Sooooooo... one day I just start going outside randomly and standing around looking at the trees and listening to the birds for 10-15 minutes at a time. A few days of this went by and my boss (the owner) asked me what I was doing (insinuating I should get back to work). I said, "The same thing the rest of you do everyday, just without the part where I'm also lighting money and my wellbeing on fire. Sometimes I eat an apple or a banana though." Thankfully he was the sort to be reasoned with and saw my point. Shortly thereafter he quit smoking.

Good story but for some reason has a distinctive...LinkedIn story vibe. I can't put my finger on it.

It could very well be true, but it seems fake because the ending is too perfect. Nothing is that easy in real life.

There's a very serious cost to living with the cynical perspective your comment expresses. If you think that people will only change when you have authority or leverage over them, and that they will always ignore reason, you'll pass by hundreds of chances to reach equitable mediums over your life, and get nothing in return except a little saved inconvenience of never opening discussions with a less than 100% chance of success.

Oh, it didn't end perfectly. His wife was the office manager, and grew to resent me immensely for being perceived as inspiring her husband's change in behavior. Less smoking, more walking, dietary changes, etc. Unlike him, she had less than zero interest in any of those lifestyle changes and it created strife, which palpably transfered to me all the way up until I eventually quit.

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.

Maybe you should, because I've experienced it a few times. Not in recent years though, as smoking has become a minority thing in all the offices I've seen in the last 5 years.

When I was a smoker, my smoke breaks were the thing that was noticed, I used to have one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Was incredibly awkward (due to the addiction) and in hindsight incredibly shortsighted on behalf of the company due to how productivity works.

Now most of my inspiration comes from taking breaks.

Yes. Actually I've not noticed it in the last 10 years and seemingly everybody has stopped smoking, but before that...

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.

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.

Get a job somewhere with poor mobile reception where you have to stand in just the right spot to check Facebook. :P

I started because I thought it made me look really cool. Plus menthols tasted great

I don't think this is expounded enough: smoking does make you look cool. Hollywood inculcated society with this back in the 50s with the James Dean types. You go down to drags with bars and you see all the people outside doing it. There's something alluring about someone not caring that they're shaving off a fraction of a fraction of of their lifespan. To me socially I've found myself drawn to those who smoke vs. those that don't. They're right below the surface to where I can quickly find something in common with them. At one of my previous places, the CTO told me how he took a bunch of the employees from another job to start their own successful company. How did that happen? They got the idea because they were all smokers and all congregated at the same.

I don't smoke, but my roommate does. After living in the same house for a couple of years, now, I think I understand the social aspect of why people start. A cigarette break is the perfect amount of time to sit down and have a little chat, and provides a reason to stop once it's done, too. Meet on the deck, catch up on each other's day, see you later, back to work. That kind of thing.

That's the only thing I miss about smoking.

Never smoked but always liked to get out of the office with my smoking friends for some (ironically) fresh air and a chat. There was a bit of zen in this. And hey, my lungs didn't have to pay price for it :)

Could do the exact same thing with... a bottle of water instead. I guess it's not cool enough though.

It's about social rituals. If you can create one of those with the people around you without addictive substances, more power to you! But coffee and cigarettes: they come with prexisting societal level rituals out of the box, so to speak.

I can totally understand that. I would just suggest to reconsider coffee/tea drinking in that regard (or whatever drink might serve as a substitute).

Already when studying/researching at Uni having a cup of coffee together did serve as such a communal break, catching up, etc. When I did an abroad term in Canada what hit me by surprise is that people would get take-away coffee and would ONLY drink it at their desks browsing Facebook. As a European it didn't take me long to find a Dutch guy who had the same feeling about joint coffee breaks and we became buddies.

Coffee/tea breaks are great, but they are in a different category. People drink at different rates, and you need to be somewhere to sit to drink, and usually indoors near a kitchen area.

Smoke breaks are fast, usually outdoors, and limited by the short burn time of a cigarette the moment someone lights up. It's (IMO) a different social function, which is something I didn't appreciate until I lived with a smoker.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying smoking is a good habit to have. Only that I have a new appreciation for what 'smoke breaks' are as their own unique sort of socialization. Having a drink together, it's just not the same.

This is not why people start though, see DowsingSpoon’s comment above as to how that happens, it nearly always involves alcohol. This is what people do once they are already addicted, and then use socialisation and relaxation as a post-hoc justification to rationalise or even deny their addiction.

My dad started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol in his teens. From what I’ve gathered, he had a rough childhood. If you’re not sure you’re going to live very long, putting harmful things in your body for the immediate high isn’t the worst. It might feel worse to deny yourself the pleasure of (temporary, and in his case ultimate) escape.

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 on you slowly. At first, smoking is a great, fun thing to do every once in a while. It's a great, fun thing to do with friends. Slowly, every once in a while turns into every day. Then, a few times a day. Now you need a cigarette to start the day right. You try to cut back and only then realize you're addicted.

> 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 addicted and thus associated the smoke in the lungs with the nicotine rush, not sure).

Was I wrong? Did that first cigarette feel amazing to you? Was the first drag a pleasant feeling? Genuinely curios!

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.

You don’t inhale solely through the cigarette until you’re a seasoned smoker. You suck a bit of smoke in as you breathe in, gradually more as you get used to it.

Smoking never made sense to me until I spent some time in an English winter. It warms the air up when it’s so cold it hurts to breathe. The nicotine feels nice as well.

I only ever smoked a few times though. It started to feel normal and I took this warning sign to heart and stopped forever.

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/smoking-and-mental-...

Yes, they do. But people are not programs. Wondering why people behave irrational is a bit like wondering why rain is wet.

You never wondered why rain is wet? But it's so interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetting

First, it's the social aspect. You smoke because it is/was cool.

Second, it's the anti-stress effect. When you take a hit, you concentrate on your breath. It's like a mini mindfulness moment. Under stressful situations at work I used to do it by myself (even walked out of the office to not be seen). Then I did not care and started smoking outside with the rest of coworkers. This combined the anti-stress with the social effects.

In the meantime, addiction kicks in. You don't get any pleasure any more, but you cannot leave it.

I am currently on an average of 6 cigarettes/day, but it's only because I do not smoke at home or weekends. Only on workdays, so really around 9-10 cigarettes/workday.

Depression in my case. I started smoking before high school as something to fill the void, only realizing much later that I've been severely depressed for a long time. (SSRIs are an amazing tool in my case FWIW)

Once you get used to it, it's an amazing social tool -- making new friends/acquaintances becomes a piece of cake. I travelled a lot for work and, as a smoker, I would instantly integrate with the other smokers. It's just something fun that leads to pursuing other social activities together. I've seen ADHD mentioned in this thread and that makes sense, the habit as "something to do" is a powerful grip on top of the chemical addiction.

It is a drug. It makes you feel good when you use it. Being able to feel good on-demand is very hard thing to resist.

Feels good man

It’s also cool, something to waste your time on, a way to socialize, an (apparent) way to control your mood.

It’s not worth it and the advantages are mostly fake, insignificant or easily replaceable but you only see that if you quit smoking. Just like you have to quit smoking to notice how bad it smells.

This is my experience as well, and I can still occasionally have a cigar or hookah on special occasions a couple times a year without any problems. Then again I only smoked about 1/3rd of a pack a day for about 3 years, so maybe the addiction levels also depend on the quantity and the length of time

After getting fully non-addicted (~3 years) I was able to do this. But after having cigars a bit more frequently (once every ~6 weeks, ~7 times total) I found the cravings started to come back. It surprised me a little, so I've stayed away. Back to actual special occasions if that. For comparison I smoked ~5-10 a day for ~15 years, with a few quitting segments in between.

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.

First I want to say I don't want you to start smoking again, nor go through something painful. I will admit I have a habit of being negative about things-- so I can't help but to wonder, because you sound so confident.

Would you say that in the time you quit smoking you experienced a time where "The chips were down" so to say? I'm not talking about something small. Im talking things got real real. Cause that's usually when the switch appears.

To those that have tried this, I found something a bit different, and I'm not even sure if I should say anything.

Again--to those that tried to stop completely, and failed, maybe cut way back?

I have never been successful at quitting anything.

Diets have failed. Drinking abstinance has failed.

What worked though is drastically cutting back.

Ok, I was never a two pack a day smoker. I couldn't even imagine it.

I did smoke though.

That said, I cut way back.

Cut back to a few cigarettes a week.

I use rolling papers, and only buy one pack of cigarettes every few weeks. (probally 6 week interval, but I don't like to think about it). I roll tiny bits of tobacco into a paper, and smoke it, when I get that urge. Only when I get the urge.

I can't recommend it because the research on smoking a little bit of tobacco is fuzzy.

What I feel is wrong with most methods of stopping any substance, including food, and booze, is telling the brain you will never have this again.

As my grandfather told me so many times, moderation my son.

(I am not very successful in any part of my life, but smoke no more than three packs a year.)

A big part of my process for quitting was associating smoking with feeling disgusting and sick instead of feeling relaxed (which was never true anyway). For me it was more like reprogramming than deprogramming. But in broad strokes my experience was similar to yours.

Same here. I started in my teens and eventually quit in my thirties. It was so difficult I'm still surprised I was actually able to finally quit. Each time I walked into the office in the morning and at lunch I had to walk through the gauntlet of smokers and the mantra I repeated to myself to resist was, "That is what death smells like" It didn't take that long (months) before I found that familiar sweet smell very distasteful.

I hope it's true for you long term. But please watch out. My aunt said pretty much the same thing. She was back to chain smoking after 3 years of completely no cigarettes. It may be safe to doubt yourself just a tiny bit...

Have you had any major stress events in your life since quitting?

I quit something myself and have felt much the same way, but I eventually had a string of very stressful events in my life that resulted in me seeking comfort in my old addiction.

oddly enough i only quit after a major stress event in my life, but that was such an experience where i managed to quit multiple things at once because i almost died haha good times

I quit for nine years. After a stressful event four years ago I started again. I think that, for me, the habit of going outside once an hour is the part that's hard to change.

IMO its not just about time, its also about repeating common activities with or without smoking a couple of times

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.

As always with anything, it seems like there is a wide range of reactions to quitting. I know of people who quit and never went back to smoking, and I also know people who find it incredibly hard to stay off of it forever and go back to smoking sooner or later. For some people's brains, it does seem impossible to quit forever for some reason regardless of how much they want to quit etc

This was my experience quitting drinking. Once I realized what it meant for my stability, both mental and financial, the upsides stopped outweighing the downsides and I lost all interest.

Still working on cigarettes.

How did you deprogram? This seems like it would actually be broadly relevant to habit change, so as a non smoker I’d be interested to know more.

Did the "deprogramming" came naturally over time, or did you do anything intentional to reach it?

If it's the latter, would you care to expand?

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.

I stopped smoking over 10 years ago and still want to smoke regularly. Often in situations where there are no cigarettes available

same here. i would say it was a full 2 years before i was free.

i do not want to go through that again though.

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