That may be so I hadnt seen that study. I wonder if you are have multi addictions that trigger the endorphins and you were to quit them all at one time what would cause the strongest craving.
Encourage or Discourage eCigs?
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That may be so I hadnt seen that study. I wonder if you are have multi addictions that trigger the endorphins and you were to quit them all at one time what would cause the strongest craving.
Its the nicotine that triggers the endorphins in the brain, but then the brain see you are holding a cigarette,cigar, or you are chewing what ever the cause of getting the nicotine is and associates it. So it should work where if you withdraw from the nic, and use 0mg but continue vaping you can trick your brain into thinking its the same. Its a retraining of the brain and associations.
It has been found that taking a person off one type of addiction they will find a new addiction.
It has been found that taking a person off one type of addiction they will find a new addiction.
True, but again (see back in the thread a page or two) this beta-endorphin release is relatively minor without the presence of mao inhibitors to enhance it. One can turn chocolate into a fairly addictive stimulant with a strong enough mao inhibitor.
As for replacement....you may be able to trick the brain to some degree, depending on the individual. But more likely you will recondition the activity, to not be associated with the active chemicals and effects, changing the re-inforcement/learning and thus removing the impulse/association to some degree (aka "exitinction")
Anecdotally, that seems to be true. Fortunately there are plenty of non-harmful activities that elict pleasure responses and other brain effects, such as love, sex, exercise (all produce quite a few chemical responses including but no limited to endorphins), spiritual experiences and also contemplative relaxation techniques (which may even produce some chemical pleasure, but at minimum produce relaxation - a valuable thing for any former addict).
In the end, it depends what the former drug did, in terms of what makes a satisfactory replacement. And anecdotally, successful former addicts do tend to replace their former choices with healthier lifestyle alternatives of some kind.
As I actually have experience with this, I'd go with sugar. But would concede that the stigma with 'other items' being as it is, made my coming back to sugar far easier in that sense, but also one that literally in less than a day, I had some strong cravings for (the others not really at all), and that I simply gave myself permission for ingesting sugar. The others were years away in terms of use again, or not at all (to present moment).
IMO, once you get past 30 days with most 'heavy' addictions, cravings go way down and is just a mental game of sorts.
If I had a ultimatum type choice, right now, between sugar or nicotine.... I'd choose sugar.
I'm currently happy that I get to enjoy both.
For me at least, and probably many more, these are in no way equivalent. I can see where sugar may be hard to resist completely in my diet and in trying, I may break down and eat a whole bag of M&Ms one day. But, that doesn't mean that the next day I would struggle not to eat M&Ms.
With smoking, if I quit cold turkey, and started craving a smoke, once I start, it is right back in the habit.
Some big differences physiologically in how some of those work though.
I don't think so. There are more than one billion smokers worldwide. Unless more smokers begin vaping it will remain marginal... if it can be called marginal. I think its creeping over the margin. Sales of e-cigarettes continue to soar
Thing is, it's not like that with cold turkey. I've quit cold turkey 3 times and when I went back it tasted like many vapers claim a smoke tastes to them - read as disgusting. I also think it tastes like that the first time, but doesn't ever get discussed. It is an acquired taste (like other things) and once acquired, if being honest, it tastes alright to good. But that doesn't happen on first 3 to 5 smokes. And neither does the craving, in my experience. To me, a user sets up a situation (perhaps without much forethought) where they'll justify reason to have smokes available and then keeps seeking those situations until those situations aren't needed to 'enjoy' smoking.
With vaping, the taste is much easier to acquire. Hence, I can understand why ANTZ would desire to limit flavors. I completely disagree with their take and will debate this with them, or anyone, but I think vaping is able to mask the 'bad elements' of nicotine use much easier / quicker than smoking does.
And yet, I still believe (strongly) that vaping is relatively harmless.
I've quit cold turkey several times. And when I started again, the taste was not bad, and the taste was not what drove me to take it up again any way.
Interesting that the person asking for references has offered none of his own.
Smoking is a marginal behavior in the US, so that if every US smoker switched to vaping tomorrow, that would still not constitute enough to prevent vaping from being a marginal behavior.
I don't think I would call 20% marginal.
Heck, I'm not sure I would even call 10% marginal.
I'm curious about this, as it doesn't align with my experience. But not sure if you care to discuss it as much as just use it as a retort in this back and forth.
To be clear, I don't believe that taste is what drives one back and feel I kinda sorta made that point. I was actually just making a side point about going back to or getting into smoking. It is not for the taste if one has been a good 30 days without it.
Added point - if one can go cold turkey and stop for say a full year or more, and then go back, in a way where it isn't really craving that is driving that, then I think it speaks a bit to - relative harmlessness. Because with that much time of 'liberation' you pretty much know more than all non-users what that smoking experience is like, and yet you choose to go back, and in the case of at least 2 people in this thread, you are alive to tell about it later on.
I believe we all pretty much agree on the idea that one is probably better off not having an addiction to nicotine, but also it seems just a wee bit selfish to me to say we, who may have quit for a year and then chose to go back, are 'perfectly okay for doing so, as is our choice,' but those who have never used, ought to be discouraged at all costs. If we smokers / vapers were truly discouraged by everyone, we'd perhaps never had got started nor ever gone back. And thus ANTZ approach would be seen as 'best approach.' As I know most of us don't see it this way, then there does seem to be a bit of blurring going on with the lines of encouragement and discouragement.
And in my black and white take on this issue, if you are in the camp of 'always discourage the non-user' then I think you are just a step or two away from 'support of the ANTZ' position. I realize I'm not likely to get agreement on that. It does seem though that with non-users, we carry the ANTZ torch, but for those 'in the club' of previous or current user, we flip flop. Which just makes this issue fascinating to me on many levels.
According to the CDC's 2012 facts on smoking, 19% of all adults smoke. It's still considered a marginal and stigmatized behavior.
It is, but the numbers are nearly irrelevant. This is an example that is key to demonstrating the frequently underestimated power of the State Media Machine. You see, when we are bombarded with images of smokers killing their children, causing suffering and inflated health care costs and being self-destructive (and inconsiderate) monsters, we start to believe it subconsciously. Some people cannot wait to hear it, others try to resist the perception, but it works into your mind bit by bit. I am shocked to hear that number is so high. But then, we herd smokers into tiny safe zones and treat them as second class citizens, so we begin to consider them a tiny insignificant minority. How could we not?
They are called stupid and uneducated. They are not stigmatized by their lack of numbers (and I am guessing that percentage you cite is cigarette, cigar, pipe, and self rolling smokers, not just cigarettes-not sure how CDC defines "adult smoker") but by the associations driven into everyone's brains. We want the number to be tiny, so therefore they are, even if the truth is not so. Like a
Jedi mind trick. Startling when you consider it through.
Your experience doesn't match mine. How long and how much have you smoked?
In my experience, even if you quit for a good period of time, it is very easy to fall back in the habit. While you say "choose to go back" it isn't that simple. While you say it we should know better, it takes only a short period of weakness. Maybe stress, maybe a bit of depression, etc. The problem is that long term smokers have conditioned your brain in such a way as to find satisfaction and/or respite from tobacco. This, at least for many, doesn't go away no matter how long you go without. IMO, It isn't like a smoker is making a brand new decision to be a smoker again.
The problem with ANTZ is they do not wish to acknowledge THR.
True. .........ing and looking at porn are stigmatized in a way that makes them marginal behaviors, even though they are nearly universal behaviors among certain segments of the population. Or, that's what I've heard anyway (see quote in signature…)
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Okay, that's what I thought, our initial disagreement stemmed from the way you were using the word marginal.
Now that I understand your usage of the word, I can certainly agree.
I would very much discourage this, why? Anther addiction. I thinks it's great I couldn't quit any other way, but there os no good reason to start. It's not the nicotine, it's being dependent on something and have to depend on others to get it.
We could use marginal with unexceptable behaviour. At one time smoking was an excepted behavior, you saw it everywhere, it was the thing to do, be like the movie stars. Then they found how bad smoking was. So it was the media,movies,tobacco companies that made it totally exceptable. Now its media, health associations, and all those other people telling the public at large that they need to scorn smokers, just like they under their collective breath say porn and any other sexual behavior is unexceptable. That only bad people do this.
Media is very powerful on how people look at things. Collectively they have bunched togeather good guys and bad guys to make all look bad. Yes they have marginalized a large grp of people into the shadows, just like they have with people who have guns, but what I dont understand is drinking is also found to be unhealthy, but they havent marginalized,scorned those that drink, its so one sided, if its a thing that the collective likes then it doesnt get to be unexceptable. And what spurs this I believe is as long as the powers to be can have their happy hours, social drinking partys then they wont find the unexceptablity about drinking. Its ok that many die from drunk drivers, its ok that many die from alcohol related health problems and its ok that its very addictive in many people. Two standards go on in the collective mind all the time.
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