3 ms·

It seems like a stretch to compare the most normal activity ever, moving your body, to intentionally ingesting poison. For one, if exercise makes you dizzy, na

It seems like a stretch to compare the most normal activity ever, moving your body, to intentionally ingesting poison. For one, if exercise makes you dizzy, nauseous, sweaty, and all your muscles ache, you are either severely out of shape are overdoing it. I smoked for a fair portion of my life. The main motivation for addicts is to relieve the craving for tobacco. It’s pleasurable in some ways other than that, but cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time.

bronson 9y ago
You're wrong about exercise (ask any water polo player...) > cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time. Sounds like an easy habit to kick!
- code_duck 9y ago
  No, not an easy habit to kick and that’s exactly the issue with cigarettes. Even though they’re not really that pleasant, they chemically trick your body into wanting them. Extremely vigorous sports is different than your average exercise. I’m still happy to assert that it’s a twisted analogy - If you compare the feeling from exercise to cigarettes, it’s obvious that they are not qualitatively similar, despite the fact that each involves some unpleasant sensations. Another significant thing to note is that over time, exercise clearly has positive effects on your body – you feel healthier, more muscular, lose weight, breathe easier. Cigarettes do not have a healthy effect on your body over time, and it doesn’t take a doctor to tell or modern medical technology to tell they are staining your teeth, making your breath bad, making you cough, and so forth. This was not lost on Europeans went tobacco was first introduced.
- sli 9y ago
  > Sounds like an easy habit to kick! This is an odd view on the nature of physical addiction. I personally know more smokers that hate their smoking than smokers who are ambivalent or actually enjoy it.
  - pizza 9y ago
    I think addiction itself acts as a vastly profitable and effortlessly marketable boogeyman today, moreso than a Sisyphean defect of the human condition, if you catch my drift... > "[...] the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint." [0] > "As for smoking tobacco, Shapiro argues that quitting is hard because smoking does not disrupt the smoker's life, not because of the mild effects of nicotine on the brain" [1] etc. I expect up-in-arms responses to views like mine, but even neuropharmacologically, speaking there is really less of a danger to ~"the disease known as addiction"~ than there is to codifying addiction as a metonym for "sepulcher for all the lost people". I say this for all substances, even something as malicious and unforgiving as carfentanil.. [0] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zizek-spirit-as-the-wound-of-nature/ https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zize... [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=PA281&dq=thomas+szasz+smoking&source=bl&ots=w-elZIXT1r&sig=7dN33QPdgt-KA68rkWqdYC0mAyo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic56W5hLHYAhVKx1QKHesNA_cQ6AEITzAE#v=onepage&q=thomas%20szasz%20smoking&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=...

bronson 9y ago

You're wrong about exercise (ask any water polo player...) > cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time. Sounds like an easy habit to kick!

code_duck 9y ago
No, not an easy habit to kick and that’s exactly the issue with cigarettes. Even though they’re not really that pleasant, they chemically trick your body into wanting them. Extremely vigorous sports is different than your average exercise. I’m still happy to assert that it’s a twisted analogy - If you compare the feeling from exercise to cigarettes, it’s obvious that they are not qualitatively similar, despite the fact that each involves some unpleasant sensations. Another significant thing to note is that over time, exercise clearly has positive effects on your body – you feel healthier, more muscular, lose weight, breathe easier. Cigarettes do not have a healthy effect on your body over time, and it doesn’t take a doctor to tell or modern medical technology to tell they are staining your teeth, making your breath bad, making you cough, and so forth. This was not lost on Europeans went tobacco was first introduced.
sli 9y ago
> Sounds like an easy habit to kick! This is an odd view on the nature of physical addiction. I personally know more smokers that hate their smoking than smokers who are ambivalent or actually enjoy it.
- pizza 9y ago
  I think addiction itself acts as a vastly profitable and effortlessly marketable boogeyman today, moreso than a Sisyphean defect of the human condition, if you catch my drift... > "[...] the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint." [0] > "As for smoking tobacco, Shapiro argues that quitting is hard because smoking does not disrupt the smoker's life, not because of the mild effects of nicotine on the brain" [1] etc. I expect up-in-arms responses to views like mine, but even neuropharmacologically, speaking there is really less of a danger to ~"the disease known as addiction"~ than there is to codifying addiction as a metonym for "sepulcher for all the lost people". I say this for all substances, even something as malicious and unforgiving as carfentanil.. [0] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zizek-spirit-as-the-wound-of-nature/ https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zize... [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=PA281&dq=thomas+szasz+smoking&source=bl&ots=w-elZIXT1r&sig=7dN33QPdgt-KA68rkWqdYC0mAyo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic56W5hLHYAhVKx1QKHesNA_cQ6AEITzAE#v=onepage&q=thomas%20szasz%20smoking&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=...