4 ms·

You can build the skills necessary to play games over time, and of course it greatly depends on the games you play. I would tend to stay away from pure time sin

by M_Grey 10y ago

You can build the skills necessary to play games over time, and of course it greatly depends on the games you play. I would tend to stay away from pure time sinks like MMO's, and I've lost the taste for 2D fighters. That said, I've been playing FPS' since FPS', and those skills wake up whenever I play for more than ten or twenty minutes. I don't see a correlation with cigarettes, which offer you nothing beneficial, are physically addictive on the level of heroin, and are one of the leading causes of human death.

GuiA 10y ago
> which offer you nothing beneficial Nicotine can have some benefits; see for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457772 > are physically addictive on the level of heroin False. They're a bit above alcohol; heroin is much higher. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_as... > and are one of the leading causes of human death. Correct.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Fair enough... if you're schizophrenic and medicated, by all means vape or take nicotine in some form. There is still no real argument for smoking though... it's the worst way to handle something that is already mildly hazardous. Edit: By the way, for an appreciation of "A bit above alcohol", check out an inpatient alcohol detox clinic sometime... it is no joke at all.
- NateEag 10y ago
  > False. They're a bit above alcohol; heroin is much higher. I realize this is anecdotal, but I feel the need to point out that my father, a veteran ER doctor of over thirty years, has said more than once that based on his experience of patients, he thinks it is easier to quit heroin than nicotine.
  - GuiA 10y ago
    Huh interesting. Thanks for the datapoint. Fwiw, nicotine has never been problematic for me. I dated a girl who smoked for 3 years, and she'd smoke around me all the time- and while i indulged in it every once in a while, i never felt like i HAD to smoke. Biological things at play, most certainly.
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    Perhaps because people who are addicted to nicotine are likely to also have addictive personalities, whereas anyone can easily get addicted to heroin. Kind of like how in WWII the British improved the survivability of their bombers by increasing the armor in the places returning aircraft weren't damaged, theorizing correctly that those were the places the planes that didn't return were hit. If a person with an addictive personality gets on heroin, they're probably visiting the ER very few if any times before they hit the morgue.
  - kolinko 10y ago
    Check out this paper if you're interested in Nicotine: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4ccb41564a00d63f.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4c... Nicotine is quite often used as a form of self-medication - it's helpful for people with all kinds of issues, from depression to adhd, to weight control. Even among doctors, there is very little knowledge on the subject of why people take up smoking, and usually it's assumed it's just a matter of bad habits. So, if someone uses nicotine as an unwitting way of self-medication, it will indeed be extremely difficult to quit without fixing the core problem. To some extent it's like calling SSRIs "hard to quit", because people who begin taking them often never quit, even when side affects are worse than those of nicotine.

by M_Grey 10y ago

GuiA 10y ago

> which offer you nothing beneficial Nicotine can have some benefits; see for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457772 > are physically addictive on the level of heroin False. They're a bit above alcohol; heroin is much higher. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_as... > and are one of the leading causes of human death. Correct.

M_Grey 10y ago
Fair enough... if you're schizophrenic and medicated, by all means vape or take nicotine in some form. There is still no real argument for smoking though... it's the worst way to handle something that is already mildly hazardous. Edit: By the way, for an appreciation of "A bit above alcohol", check out an inpatient alcohol detox clinic sometime... it is no joke at all.
NateEag 10y ago
> False. They're a bit above alcohol; heroin is much higher. I realize this is anecdotal, but I feel the need to point out that my father, a veteran ER doctor of over thirty years, has said more than once that based on his experience of patients, he thinks it is easier to quit heroin than nicotine.
- GuiA 10y ago
  Huh interesting. Thanks for the datapoint. Fwiw, nicotine has never been problematic for me. I dated a girl who smoked for 3 years, and she'd smoke around me all the time- and while i indulged in it every once in a while, i never felt like i HAD to smoke. Biological things at play, most certainly.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  Perhaps because people who are addicted to nicotine are likely to also have addictive personalities, whereas anyone can easily get addicted to heroin. Kind of like how in WWII the British improved the survivability of their bombers by increasing the armor in the places returning aircraft weren't damaged, theorizing correctly that those were the places the planes that didn't return were hit. If a person with an addictive personality gets on heroin, they're probably visiting the ER very few if any times before they hit the morgue.
- kolinko 10y ago
  Check out this paper if you're interested in Nicotine: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4ccb41564a00d63f.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4c... Nicotine is quite often used as a form of self-medication - it's helpful for people with all kinds of issues, from depression to adhd, to weight control. Even among doctors, there is very little knowledge on the subject of why people take up smoking, and usually it's assumed it's just a matter of bad habits. So, if someone uses nicotine as an unwitting way of self-medication, it will indeed be extremely difficult to quit without fixing the core problem. To some extent it's like calling SSRIs "hard to quit", because people who begin taking them often never quit, even when side affects are worse than those of nicotine.