NYT: New Calculus on Smoking, It’s Health Gained vs. Pleasure Lost

[dragonpuff]

It's no secret that quitting smoking can predispose to a long-lasting depression.

A doctor of mine once told me a story:

He had a good friend who was a smoker for 30-some years before he quit. This man used to love going for walks in his large backyard; it was something he did almost every day.

Once he was visiting with my doctor, about 2 years or so after he quit smoking. He said, "You know what Doc? I feel better than I ever have - I can breathe easily, I can taste and smell like I never have in my life, I can go up stairs with no problem at all... but there's just one thing that's really been bothering me..."

Doc said, "What is it?"

The man said, "I don't really enjoy my walks anymore."

 

[Katya]

Depression 'second leading cause of disability worldwide' - Medical News Today

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America states that major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the US. Now, new research has revealed that it is the second leading cause of disability worldwide. This is according to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

Medscape: Medscape Access

Morbidity associated with depression is difficult to quantify, but the lethality of depression takes the measurable form of completed suicide, the eighth leading reported cause of death in the United States.

Depression is a potentially life-threatening mood disorder that affects 1 in 6 persons in the United States [...]

Persistent ignorance about depression and misperceptions of it by the public, and even some health providers, as a personal weakness or failing that can be willed or wished away lead to painful stigmatization of and avoidance of the diagnosis by many persons who are affected by the disease.

Earth to NYT.

 

[Kent C]

Depression 'second leading cause of disability worldwide' - Medical News Today

That's depressing.

 

[Rickajho]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/health/pleasure-factor-may-override-new-tobacco-rules.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — Rarely has the concept of happiness caused so much consternation in public health circles.

Buried deep in the federal government’s voluminous new tobacco regulations is a little-known cost-benefit calculation that public health experts see as potentially poisonous: the happiness quotient. It assumes that the benefits from reducing smoking — fewer early deaths and diseases of the lungs and heart — have to be discounted by 70 percent to offset the loss in pleasure that smokers suffer when they give up their habit.

Experts say that calculation wipes out most of the economic benefits from the regulations and could make them far more vulnerable to legal challenges from the tobacco industry. And it could have a perverse effect, experts said. The more successful regulators are at reducing smoking, the more it hurts them in the final economic accounting.

Very interesting read.

You know... that could very well be true. Have you ever noticed how bleepin' cranky those cold turkey quitters are? Your blood pressure is supposed to go down after you quit smoking, not up.

 

[sonicdsl]

That's depressing.

You know... that could very well be true. Have you ever noticed how bleepin' cranky those cold turkey quitters are? Your blood pressure is supposed to go down when you quit smoking, not up.

They need to get some nicotine.... like a normal person.

 

[dragonpuff]

I'll never forget this quote from Michelle Pfeiffer:

"I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table."

 

[Kent C]

I'll never forget this quote from Michelle Pfeiffer:

"I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table."

I agree with the lady

 

[Katya]

That's depressing.

 

[aubergine]

I was always able to tolerate (by force of will) the initial acute misery of quitting, even held out for a year once; what always yanked me back was the "symptoms" that just don't go away.
I was just always raw and reactive, month after month, waiting and waiting for that to pass - like permanent super-severe PMS more than any single, diagnosable, coherent syndrome for me. And just not functioning well - I'm usually pretty steady and sharp and focused on the job, but with no nicotine I'm easily flummoxed and thrown off balance.

Every time I went back to cigarettes it was after some particularly awful and stressed out day, just couldn't hack it any more, and it was always just such a "phew" thing - better within a few hours, ahhhh. Except I didn't want the crap in my lungs, so it was always so sad and discouraging, too. Forty+ years of that crappy struggle, mostly spent smoking. Then along came vaping, miracle. Same story for SO many.

I don't want to hear anything about my "happiness" from anyone who'd come NEAR my right to vape.

Quantifying and engineering my "happiness" in order to control my life is nobody's business.

 

[bigdancehawk]

I'll never forget this quote from Michelle Pfeiffer:

"I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table."

The main reason I stared smoking was because all of the coolest and most interesting kids smoked.

 

[dragonpuff]

The main reason I stared smoking was because all of the coolest and most interesting kids smoked.

I first smoked when I was 10 because I was curious. That's all. Coolness wasn't such a big deal when I was 10.

I got hooked when I was 12 (the third time I ever smoked), and I was really hooked - I stole, I hid cigarettes, I snuck around, anything I could do to get more cigarettes. I actually got in tons of trouble back then just because of my addiction to smoking.

Why did I get so hooked? Because I was severely depressed back then and it was the only thing that made me feel better.

I still look back at that time in my life and scratch my head a little at how quickly and severely I got addicted to cigarettes. It still seems odd to me. I've never been that addicted to anything else in my life. To this day I can't quit nicotine without feeling like an out-of-focus basket case, even after vaping for several months.

Oh well, it is what it is. I have no problem with being addicted to nicotine as long as I'm not hurting myself to get it.

 

[rothenbj]

You know... that could very well be true. Have you ever noticed how bleepin' cranky those cold turkey quitters are? Your blood pressure is supposed to go down after you quit smoking, not up.

Just go over and read the board at QSMB. Those people are not happy after years of quitting. Look at it this way-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7Q2vJw9Og

Now look at the results-

Fidel Castro, 88, Still alive
Albert Einstein, 76, rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm
Thomas Alva Edison , 84, complications of diabetes
Alexander Graham Bell, 75, Complications arising from diabetes
George Orwell, 46, tuberculosis
James Dean, 24, Auto accident
Dr. Seuss, 87, oral cancer
Charles Darwin, 73, coronary thrombosis
J. R. R. Tolkien, 82, Old Age and Loneliness.
Sigmund Freud, 83, cancer of the jaw
Carl Jung, 86, a short illness
Mark Twain, 75, heart attack
Pablo Picasso, 91, natural causes
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 78, rheumatism
Vincent van Gogh, 37, shot himself
Humphrey Bogart, 57, cancer of the esophagus****
Clint Eastwood, 84, alive
Irene Ryan chain-smoker, 70, brain tumor
Buddy Ebsen, 95, pneumonia
John F. Kennedy, 46, assassination
Marilyn Monroe, 36, suicide
John Lennon, 40, murder
George Harrison, 58, throat cancer *****
Bob Dylan, 73, living
Miles Davis, 65, stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure
Johnny Cash, 71, broken heart over June's death
Frank Sinatra, 82, heart attack
Alfred Hitchcock, 60, kidney failure
John Wayne, 72, stomach cancer

It looks like the leading causes of early death are assassination, murder, suicide or accident and these stats don't show that tobacco use killed 50% of this subset.

I say, if you want to quit, quit and be happy you did, if you want to switch to vaping or smokeless do so and be happy with your decision and if you want to keep smoking,

Smoke'em if you got'em!

 

[Kent C]

Just go over and read the board at QSMB. Those people are not happy after years of quitting. Look at it this way-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7Q2vJw9Og


Smoke'em if you got'em!

 

[Katya]

I don't want to hear anything about my "happiness" from anyone who'd come NEAR my right to vape.

Quantifying and engineering my "happiness" in order to control my life is nobody's business.

 

[bigdancehawk]

Just go over and read the board at QSMB.

This post should have come with a warning. They have an e-cigarette sub-forum, but there is no useful information there. Just insufferable Puritans pontificating about the dangers of e-cigarettes and a few die-hards wondering why noobs don't stick around. I applied for membership and supposedly I was to receive a confirming e-mail within 15 minutes, but nothing has arrived and that was well over an hour ago. Too bad; I had some choice words for the Puritans.

 

[Katya]

 

[Anjaffm]

I was just always raw and reactive, month after month, waiting and waiting for that to pass - like permanent super-severe PMS more than any single, diagnosable, coherent syndrome for me. And just not functioning well - I'm usually pretty steady and sharp and focused on the job, but with no nicotine I'm easily flummoxed and thrown off balance.

Every time I went back to cigarettes it was after some particularly awful and stressed out day, just couldn't hack it any more, and it was always just such a "phew" thing - better within a few hours, ahhhh.

I can see your point. And yes, nicotine has benefits. People smoke for the nicotine (but they die from the tar).

Actually, in the days before the smoking bans in the office, we had a colleague (manager) who tried to quit smoking. He was unbearable. Intolerable. It was impossible to work with him. We could not get decisions, cooperation, signatures, advice - nothing. And we needed this guy's cooperation. After a week of this - and being sent away with a growl and / or scolding whenever I needed his signature on work to be done - I finally went to his desk, put my pack of cigarettes and my lighter on his desk and said "Please, George, have a cigarette. We have to get our work done. Please!" He did not take me up on that offer. But he did start smoking again - and peace and cooperation returned to the entire department.

Actually, I never wanted to quit smoking. Not once. And I knew that I would be precisely the same - extremely unhappy and an extreme pain in the .... to anybody around me. Why suffer like this? With vaping, I stopped smoking tobacco "accidentally". It just happened. Because I had found something much better But take my nicotine, and you take my ability to function as it is required in today's society. Pure and simple.

 

[rothenbj]

This post should have come with a warning. They have an e-cigarette sub-forum, but there is no useful information there. Just insufferable Puritans pontificating about the dangers of e-cigarettes and a few die-hards wondering why noobs don't stick around. I applied for membership and supposedly I was to receive a confirming e-mail within 15 minutes, but nothing has arrived and that was well over an hour ago. Too bad; I had some choice words for the Puritans.

I wouldn't even bother. If you create an issue, you could get banned here. There was a war maybe three years ago because they are still cranky from nic withdraw and feel unless you are in constant misery, you haven't quit. I just like going over there and lurking once in a while to see if anything changes. It doesn't.

 

[bigdancehawk]

I wouldn't even bother. If you create an issue, you could get banned here. There was a war maybe three years ago because they are still cranky from nic withdraw and feel unless you are in constant misery, you haven't quit. I just like going over there and lurking once in a while to see if anything changes. It doesn't.

I have been in a real war. The enemy was cranky.

 

[dragonpuff]

This post should have come with a warning. They have an e-cigarette sub-forum, but there is no useful information there. Just insufferable Puritans pontificating about the dangers of e-cigarettes and a few die-hards wondering why noobs don't stick around. I applied for membership and supposedly I was to receive a confirming e-mail within 15 minutes, but nothing has arrived and that was well over an hour ago. Too bad; I had some choice words for the Puritans.

I wandered over there and nosed around a bit to see what the fuss was all about. At the bottom of a locked thread about an e-cigarette study I found this:

This thread was locked because we have asked members not to post anything related to the pros or cons of ecigs unless published by the FDA, WHO, or SG.

Eww they only allow sharing information on e-cigs if it's government endorsed. I shall never return.