Tobacco companies had to own up to the fact that smoking is harmful in the 1960s when undeniable evidence came out. People struggled to quit because it is somewhat addictive, but mainly because they enjoyed it.

Those companies then encouraged the rhetoric about it being more addictive than heroin. It isn’t. In my experience it’s less addictive than caffeine.

Here’s my history with nicotine:

  • Smoked cigarettes from 15 - 26.
  • Quit totally for 14 months
  • My friend who smoked moved back to town and I smoked when I was with them.
  • Switched to vaping 8 years ago.
  • Quit vaping in January this year (2024).

I bought 30 cigars at the start of last month (April 2024) and have smoked 9 of them so far. I normally just have 1 a week if I’m having a beer at home but I went out drinking 2 nights in a row at the start of this month and smoked 6 over that weekend.

Am I addicted? Maybe, but I haven’t had any nicotine this week and don’t plan on having any next week either.

  • @[email protected]
    2•6 months ago

    Thank you for your detailed response, and I’m sorry you had to (and will have to) go through this. Feel free to send me a link to your writing if it’s publically available. Philosophically it’s a really interesting subject, but realistically it’s quite revealing of how we are failing as a society.

    Your comparison to Neanderthals would surmise we drove them to extinction while morally or ethically speaking they were the better species. Are we the baddies?

    • @j4k3
      1•6 months ago

      Nothing publicly posted yet. Thanks for the kind words.

      I honestly think Neanderthals likely went extinct because of sex with Sapiens. I mean (Occam’s Razor), we know there was gene mixing, so we were having relations, and we know that the divergence likely made fertility much less likely. Humans tend to like having sex without impregnation consequences. I imagine it was quite appealing to integrate Neanderthals into human tribal groups simply for sex without consequences. Eventually, that leads to them dying out. I’m sure they were likely sorely missed in this context.

      Conflict as a mechanism makes no sense to me at scale. Our behavior does not uniformly collectivize conflict like this.