4 ms·

The nicotine high is a very pleasant headspace. I only smoked occasionally in college and grad school for a few years and off-and-on afterword socially for a fe

The nicotine high is a very pleasant headspace. I only smoked occasionally in college and grad school for a few years and off-and-on afterword socially for a few more years but I miss the scintillating conversations and the headspace nicotine put you in. More pronounced than caffeine but not so stimulating as a stronger stimulant. Some of my most interesting conversations happened over a cigarette.

nine_k 4y ago
AFAICT nicotine is the lesser evil. It's addictve, and somehow toxic, but not hugely. What makes cigarettes so vile is the actual smoke. The tars, the CO, the nitrous mess that's needed to keep the cigarette from extinguishing. The filter helps, but not a lot. A cigarette without any nicotine would still damage health a lot. Fortunately, the addicts, and those who want the nicotine high, have the option of vaping now, which is close in the sense of the ritual required, but is much less detrimental to health.
- globular-toast 4y ago
  Nicotine isn't a particularly difficult addiction in the grand scheme of things. It takes most people only a week or two to overcome nicotine addiction. Alcohol and opiates are on a different level. Cigarettes, on the other hand, are extremely addictive. There's something about putting a little stick in your mouth, inhaling, tasting it, then exhaling a cloud of smoke/vapour. I was given a nicotine-free disposable e-cigarette and was quite alarmed at how quickly I became addicted to it.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    And possibly the fact that cigarette companies freebase the nicotine by soaking the tobacco in ammonia.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      I switched to rolling my own smokes with hemp paper and filters almost 20 years ago. I can't stand the taste or smell of chemicals from packaged cigarettes (even the "organic" ones that still have all kinds of accelerants and flame retardants in the paper). A single Marlboro will give me a headache the next day. It's actually just really sad that smokers have been force-fed that deadly shit, because while the poster above is correct that nicotine itself is not harmful and it's mainly the burn products of the tobacco leaf that are carcinogenic, they don't need to be nearly as deadly as they are in modern packed cigarettes. Some of the additives are mandated by the government (such as the wood glue that's now used in all commercial rolled cigarette papers as a "fire safe" stopper halfway) and those are as bad or worse than the arsenic and other additives the tobacco companies came up with. On the other hand, roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco, especially the type labeled organic, has its own issues. One of them is that "organic" tobacco actually has a higher level of Polonium (which is taken up and concentrated by all tobacco plants, where it's present in the fertilizer - but organic fertilizers have higher levels of Polonium). Of all the thousands of compounds you inhale when you smoke a cigarette, that's probably the one that's most likely to cause lung cancer. And yet smoking is so fucking delicious. The commenter above who talked about conversations in college over a cigarette -- that's my life. Every night. Having to step outside the cafe hasn't killed it, that social ferment, although I think that was the intention when they banned smoking inside. If anything, it's heightened the interaction after an entire generation was forced into these ghettos. If only 11% of Americans smoke (which cannot possibly be true -- that's an absolute lie, as at least 70% of people I can think of in Portland from 30 to 60 smoke cigarettes and Portland is not exactly Mississippi) they're definitely the most interesting 11%, and highly concentrated now.
      - gooooooore 4y ago
        Wtf did I just read
        BizarroLand 4y ago
        You just read some extremely refined copium in text form. This person has some major cognitive dissonance about the health and safety of smoking cigarettes and is dissociating from the dissonance with poetic drivel. Tobacco is unhealthy to consume. It's okay in small, occasional doses, your body can probably shrug off a few draws from a ceremonial peace pipe like it was nothing. But smoking every day or multiple times a day is unhealthy and will hasten your demise, and there is no working around that, not even by using organic free range gluten free fair trade halal tobacco grown by vestal virgins in the Himalayas.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Oral fixations are tough for some of us. A former coworker and I found ourselves utterly addicted to chewing gum after our office began offering gum as a free perk. I've cut it out of my life because I found myself going through a pack of gum in a day. No nicotine at all, just regular chewing gum.
- oblio 4y ago
  It's not just the smoke. Otherwise chewing tobacco and inhaling it wouldn't cause cancers for the mouth and nose.

nine_k 4y ago

AFAICT nicotine is the lesser evil. It's addictve, and somehow toxic, but not hugely. What makes cigarettes so vile is the actual smoke. The tars, the CO, the nitrous mess that's needed to keep the cigarette from extinguishing. The filter helps, but not a lot. A cigarette without any nicotine would still damage health a lot. Fortunately, the addicts, and those who want the nicotine high, have the option of vaping now, which is close in the sense of the ritual required, but is much less detrimental to health.

globular-toast 4y ago
Nicotine isn't a particularly difficult addiction in the grand scheme of things. It takes most people only a week or two to overcome nicotine addiction. Alcohol and opiates are on a different level. Cigarettes, on the other hand, are extremely addictive. There's something about putting a little stick in your mouth, inhaling, tasting it, then exhaling a cloud of smoke/vapour. I was given a nicotine-free disposable e-cigarette and was quite alarmed at how quickly I became addicted to it.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  And possibly the fact that cigarette companies freebase the nicotine by soaking the tobacco in ammonia.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    I switched to rolling my own smokes with hemp paper and filters almost 20 years ago. I can't stand the taste or smell of chemicals from packaged cigarettes (even the "organic" ones that still have all kinds of accelerants and flame retardants in the paper). A single Marlboro will give me a headache the next day. It's actually just really sad that smokers have been force-fed that deadly shit, because while the poster above is correct that nicotine itself is not harmful and it's mainly the burn products of the tobacco leaf that are carcinogenic, they don't need to be nearly as deadly as they are in modern packed cigarettes. Some of the additives are mandated by the government (such as the wood glue that's now used in all commercial rolled cigarette papers as a "fire safe" stopper halfway) and those are as bad or worse than the arsenic and other additives the tobacco companies came up with. On the other hand, roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco, especially the type labeled organic, has its own issues. One of them is that "organic" tobacco actually has a higher level of Polonium (which is taken up and concentrated by all tobacco plants, where it's present in the fertilizer - but organic fertilizers have higher levels of Polonium). Of all the thousands of compounds you inhale when you smoke a cigarette, that's probably the one that's most likely to cause lung cancer. And yet smoking is so fucking delicious. The commenter above who talked about conversations in college over a cigarette -- that's my life. Every night. Having to step outside the cafe hasn't killed it, that social ferment, although I think that was the intention when they banned smoking inside. If anything, it's heightened the interaction after an entire generation was forced into these ghettos. If only 11% of Americans smoke (which cannot possibly be true -- that's an absolute lie, as at least 70% of people I can think of in Portland from 30 to 60 smoke cigarettes and Portland is not exactly Mississippi) they're definitely the most interesting 11%, and highly concentrated now.
    - gooooooore 4y ago
      Wtf did I just read
      - BizarroLand 4y ago
        You just read some extremely refined copium in text form. This person has some major cognitive dissonance about the health and safety of smoking cigarettes and is dissociating from the dissonance with poetic drivel. Tobacco is unhealthy to consume. It's okay in small, occasional doses, your body can probably shrug off a few draws from a ceremonial peace pipe like it was nothing. But smoking every day or multiple times a day is unhealthy and will hasten your demise, and there is no working around that, not even by using organic free range gluten free fair trade halal tobacco grown by vestal virgins in the Himalayas.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Oral fixations are tough for some of us. A former coworker and I found ourselves utterly addicted to chewing gum after our office began offering gum as a free perk. I've cut it out of my life because I found myself going through a pack of gum in a day. No nicotine at all, just regular chewing gum.
oblio 4y ago
It's not just the smoke. Otherwise chewing tobacco and inhaling it wouldn't cause cancers for the mouth and nose.