Unfortunately, nowadays I instead get addicted a lot to various websites, like YouTube and ... Hacker News.
It's pretty easy to hang out with drinkers when you drink. Grab a glass, shoot the shit.
But it's hard to hang out with smokers and drinkers when you don't drink or smoke. Those who smoke or drink are the vast majority of the adult US population.
It's especially hard when you're not religious, as most of the teetotalers seem to be religious. Finding non-smoking, non-drinking, religiously tolerant peeps as an adult is so, so tough. It's like, choose one (or more) - drinking, smoking, institutional religion. Those are your options if you want to be a social adult.
It doesn't seem like it should be this way, but it seems to be, across countries and cultures.
That's definitely not across countries and cultures, that seems to either be specific to your country, or at least your part of the world.
Try traveling to the Nordics (specifically Sweden). Usually very tolerant of most things, few smoke but most drink. But won't look sideways at you if you don't do either.
As a proud owner of two kids and as a former kid myself: their prefrontal cortex is still developing. Either they cannot stop themselves or they don’t notice the danger or don’t believe it applies to them. Kids will happily walk into traffic without realizing they’re in any danger at a much older age than it would seem reasonable.
I think this is one of the reasons cigarette companies keep getting caught marketing to kids, as if they wait until people have more ability to reason and more agency, then they would decide to not start smoking. It’s almost as if they are preying on that weakened mental state to build a pipeline of lifelong customers.
Gotcha. It’s hard to reason about in that case and I agree it’s really frustrating when you’re in the same peer group.
As much as I struggle to understand why someone would fall for something as obviously bad as smoking, I have ADHD and routinely have to explain why things that are easy for others are hard for me. We all have strengths and weaknesses. One of the only universal weaknesses is that we are all bad at understanding what is hard for others.
I teach 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Executive function is a skill. Some people are better at it than others.
I think the ULTRA hard thing to realize about other people is that they’re not like us. Even when we are comparing a peer group. What is easy for you and me might be hard for others. The inverse is true as well. Empathy is hard.
When it comes to smoking, I think of it like cult indoctrination. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it REALLY works on the people who are susceptible to it, and intelligence unfortunately has very little to do with it.
That’s almost funny, except for how sad it is…
Just because something is addictive doesn't necessarily mean that my life overall would be better without it. I drink coffee daily, I smoke and have other vices too, and realize that they're harmful. But I think with moderation, it won't kill you too quickly, and if I really enjoy something, shouldn't I just enjoy it?
Eventually I won't be able to enjoy anything as I'll be in the ground. But until then, I'll try to enjoy myself (in moderation of course).
Not to pass judgement. We all do things that cause secondary effects to others. I just picked smoking here as an example because everyone knows what those are.
The only thing I can do is minimize the harm. I don't smoke next to others outside, I use tobacco made by smaller company with no additives, I never throw the fag-end on the streets and so on.
Years later my vape is still my oral fixation, I use a fairly low nicotine level. But its a constant need for myself. Even after getting medicated.
Take this as you will, the relationship between mind altering chemicals and the pressure to succeed in a rat race.
Funny how different bodies seem to react very differently to substances...
I realized this about myself recently as well. I found a pretty good solution that works for me and may or may not work for you.
1. Disable all Youtube search history (no more recommendations!)
2. Use your hosts file to block sites you spend too much time on. To visit them you have to go through the effort of opening the hosts file and edit it (which for me requires typing in a long password because sudo). This was enough to break my habit of mindlessly visiting them. Here's an excerpt from mine:
127.0.0.1 youtube.com
127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com
#127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
127.0.0.1 chess.com
127.0.0.1 www.chess.com
127.0.0.1 reddit.com
127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
3. For your smartphone, uninstall all browsers and just use Firefox Focus. Turns out having to manually enter URLs and searches without auto-complete is pretty shitty user experience (which is good in this case!)
Human behavior is not generally a result of reasoning.