I was surprised when I was quitting smoking that my friend (who also smoked) was advocating vaping instead. I asked: Why not just quit completely?
I do think vaping is less dangerous than actually smoking but not doing either one is best for your health. Even getting “hooked” on nicotine gum or similar is better than smoking or vaping. But again, best to just quit nicotine / smoking / vaping completely.
Quitting cold turkey and failing sometimes prevents people from trying again.
I think people need to PRACTICE quitting and I wish more people had this mentality. Assuming that you’ll succeed at something so difficult the first of many times of trying to do it is unrealistic. It took me several attempts and taking a class about it to quit smoking.
“I couldn’t climb the mountain the first time I tried with no practice or help, therefore I’m never trying again” is very defeatist. Quitting is a process and practicing quitting is completely acceptable. Learn what didn’t work that time and develop strategies to deal with what didn’t work.
I have a bunch of tips from the class I took that I still mostly remember. I wonder how much of that info is online.
I feel like the generally accepted wisdom on the issue is that quitting smoking is hard. Whichever one works for you is the best one.
For me, “harm reduction” was just a convenient excuse for not really trying… And, I eventually decided, again, this is my experience, not advice, but, like, eventually, every method of quitting will eventually be cold turkey, so I just went for it.
Personally I found the nicotine addiction is overstated. I never had any trouble making it through 8 hours of sleep without a cigarette, so my claim that I needed one every hour or two kinda seemed like bullshit. Also, if I was so hung up on nicotine addiction - nicotine starts declining in your system almost immediately, so, if I was smoking for 5 minutes of every hour, I was spending 55 minutes of every hour in nicotine withdrawal. That’s… dumb. That’s a dumb way to live.
(I was also a heroin addict from when I was a teenager until my late 20s - and - at least heroin lasts a while. Nicotine is a garbage drug.)
In the end, smoking is a habit - and there’s not much in the way of shortcuts to changing your habits - and it’s especially hard when your enjoy it. There are better techniques and worse techniques, but no cure.
For me, when me and my wife added tiny little people to the world, I realized that they would prefer me to be alive, and I didn’t want to make them sad, so I quit.
nicotine gum is probably as bad or nearly as bad as vaping since nicotine is the aspect of it that is proven to be especially bad for you.
That’s quite literally not true. Nicotine is indeed the addictive part of smoking, and the source of long term behavioural issues.
But that’s not, by far, the most dangerous or impactful aspect of cigarettes or vapes. Cigarettes are little cancer sticks with some of the most absurdly carcinogenic substances known, and it really destroys your lungs ability to expel excess mucus and contaminants.
Vapes don’t have nearly the same amount of quite absurdly random crap a cigarette will have, but they’re still carcinogenic and they slowly burn cilia and cause inflammatory responses.
Being addicted to nicotine gum could give you headaches, issues with mood, and eventually cardiovascular issues. It’s certainly not a good thing - but saying “nicotine is the aspect of it that is proven to be especially bad for you” is simply wrong.
alternate take: personal freedom of movement, whether bidedal, or automated, is a thing of value, as is electricity, clean running water, and a majority of what modern technology provides. it, like most everything else can be done better, and cleaner. not the same argument as smoking, which was always an “entertainment”, as apposed to transportation and perambulation which are a necessity. thank you for coming to my ted talk.
Exactly right. We should celebrate the possibilities and freedom that modern technology gives us. EVs are an amazing invention and nitpicking for tiny issues that they don’t solve is a level beyond First World Problems.
The only things EV’s solve is emissions. They reduce emissions in cities which is great, and thanks to clean power plants (renewable and nuclear) help reduce overall emissions. But they are still cars, still take up space, they are heavier so cause more wear on the road surfaces and emit tire particles. I wouldn’t say these are tiny issues.
If we have to use cars then yes, electric are better, but it’s not the solution. The solution should aim at reducing use of the inefficient forms of transport in favor of mass transit or micro mobility.
Better urban planning, as well. We can’t do anything about cars as long as we build entire communities to accommodate cars. We’ve gone from people owning cars to cars owning society.
Regardless of how you power it, bringing thousands of pounds of steel with you to get to work or buy grocceries is inefficient. Cities really need to rethink the way they build and zone to promote higher densities and encourage walkability.
It’s not even the energy that’s really the issue; it’s the space. Cars ruin cities by physically forcing origins and destinations to be far apart with wastelands of pavement in between. It destroys the viability of transit, makes it both laborious and downright unpleasant to walk, and even screws cities over financially because worthless pavement doesn’t generate tax revenue, but costs a lot to maintain.
Why the fuck would you want to walk to the grocery store and back?
Pretending people would rather do that than use a car makes you straight up delusional
I really enjoy walking to my grocer instead of driving. I walk through a quiet neighbourhood with some large trees. Theres a hill with a nice view midway.
Hauling 50 pounds of groceries a couple miles is not enjoyable for the vast majority of people.
You need to rethink how cities are designed for walking to grocery stores to work. It won’t in the US, because everything is designed for cars. But if a city is designed right, you won’t need to go miles before finding a grocery store. You can take a cargo bike to haul more things at a time. You can stop by shops on your way home from work to pick up a couple things and stick them in a backpack.
Cities designed correctly reduce the burden on those walking or biking between points of interest that are no more than 1 or 2 miles away.
Yeah, I can imagine that. Tobacco companies have been selling better smoking (first, electric cigarettes, then vapes) for decades.
Without control, companies will always want to sell more
First the cigarette itself was marketed as better than rolling your own. Next came filters, so called “light” and “ultralight” versions of existing products, electric cigs, then finally vapes.
Imagine if we ran out of war. All those jobs in the military and the military industrial complex!
Vaping is actually very helpful and it’s probably helped a lot of people stop smoking.
The only problem was the fact that they got away with doing shit like advertising it to kids and making it cool. Fix that problem and vaping is almost literally only an advantage compared to cigarettes.
And even with more people taking it up, it’s still unhealthy but it’s like mildly unhealthy instead of cigarettes where it’s like oh yeah you’re going to double your chance of dying at 50.
Vaping is actually very helpful and it’s probably helped a lot of people stop smoking.
Being marginally less unhelpful than some other very unhelpful thing is still objectively unhelpful.
Marginally is a massive understatement. Maybe in 50 years we’re going to discover that it causes some crazy side effects, but in comparison to smoking it’s like having a hamburger once a week compared to three a day.
The point is, its amount of helpfulness is still negative, not positive.
For someone who is a smoker and otherwise would not be able to quit its helpfulness as immensely positive.
For every smoker vaping helps, it also tempts probably at least one person to start using who didn’t before. Therefore, it is 1000% indisputably negative and everybody trying to make excuses for it is a goddamn enabler.
