this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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This reduction of addiction is surprising to see here. You can literally replace your scenario with anything, booze, heroin, junk food, whatever and it may be easier to understand. You have already crossed the barrier on enjoyment, so why is it a stretch for you that people might overindulge. I'm sure there are things in your life that you overindulge in.
Our brains and bodies are vastly complex and all of these things have chemicals that alter your brain chemistry, everyone's brain is different and these chemicals affect people differently.
I'm just talking about my own experience. I also enjoy cannabis, almost exclusively via edibles, and consume it most days, but I also find it pretty effortless to take breaks, even significant months-long ones.
I think I just don't have an "addictive personality" or whatever. I enjoy a good vice, but I've never experienced dependency. Even drinking enough to get "drunk", or drinking multiple days in a row feels bad to me, even if I do like an occasional buzz.
Junk food is nasty to me. I eat it like twice a year and always regret it. Never done opiates, but I do understand that they're a whole lot more addictive than other drugs, so I don't think that even if I did understand what that felt like that it would inform me much about nicotine addiction. Given that opiates are downers and nicotine is an upper, I don't know that they are really comparable.
I'm not gonna downvote because I think your experience is valid. That being said, I think it is a little dismissive. Many people in this thread likely have direct issues with specific addictions, and many people likely have been around death or serious harm because of it.
Chemicals like nicotine have a direct addictive effect on your brain, whether or not you personally can overcome that or not doesn't make much of a difference over that fact that it isn't even about personalities or willpower in every case. Nicotine in particular digs very deep, altering brain development, changing the perception of pain, and controlling dopamine levels. Nicotine also has direct effects on the limbic system, and overall effects of the entire nervous system.
This isn't some issue of people being stupid or weak, nicotine is one of the most addictive (chemically) substances known to man, and a common delivery method is to freebase and concentrate it. It is constantly being developed in laboratories to be as addictive as possible, and there is a 1 trillion (and growing) dollar industry that is financially incentivised to get it into your hands.
1 in 8 people in the world smoke or otherwise consume tobacco products, that's almost the same amount of people that drive cars.
How much time do you spend gaming a day?