Drugs, Addiction and Morality

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by ScaryMonster, Sep 27, 2009.

Page 2 of 5
  1. takethewarhome

    takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    625
    Yeah, actually I do. Thanks for bringing that up. I think that cigarette smoking will be more and more frowned upon as time passes.

    And why aren't more people getting in on the whole nicotine vaporizer thing, anyway? Has anyone tried one of those?
     
    takethewarhome, Dec 11, 2009
    #21

  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Orleander

    Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    Ah cool!!! Is there a raygun type thing that vaporizes nicotine? So you could just point it at a pack of cigs and vaporize all the nicotine out of it?
     
    Orleander, Dec 11, 2009
    #22

  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. takethewarhome

    takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    625
    takethewarhome, Dec 11, 2009
    #23

  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    I met someone who was using it and she thought it was wonderful. What surprised me was that it was so carefully crafted to mimic a real cigarette:
    • There's a red light on the end that lights up when you inhale, looking like the ash.
    • It delivers a small volume of water vapor into your lungs, so when you exhale, steam comes out and it looks like smoke.
    I guess people want the entire experience, not just the nicotine.

    Of course if they used the vaporizers that are built for aromatherapy (and are also used for marijuana), there would be no telltales at all. I'll bet you could keep it in your purse, turn on the heating element, wait for the little thermostat light to come on, then puff on it unobtrusively, and you might get away with "smoking" indoors and nobody noticing.

    And it would be much cheaper. With the imitation cigarettes you have to buy the individual ciggies and they only last for about ten smokes. The Amsterdam-style vaporizer looks like it's a real appliance; you just grind up some tobacco--which isn't too expensive--and toss it in. I guess maybe because it just doesn't look like a cigarette and feel like a cigarette, it spoils the experience so they're willing to pay more.

    With what cigarettes cost these days I'd think they'd be looking for ways to economize. Vaporizing the nicotine won't waste 95% of the tobacco by burning it up, so you get something like ten to twenty times as much use out of the same quantity.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Dec 11, 2009
    #24
  8. Tiassa

    Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    Nicotine and Pavlov

    It's a strange phenomenon. While nicotine withdrawal is a bitch, what I always miss most when I quit smoking is the harsh, hot sensation of inhaling. I'm sure it's Pavlovian, but still ....

    Of course, marijuana out of a glass pipe usually suffices.
     
    Tiassa, Dec 12, 2009
    #25
  9. shichimenshyo

    shichimenshyo Caught in the machine Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,110
    Yes, it does =p
     
    shichimenshyo, Dec 12, 2009
    #26
  10. Orleander

    Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    My husband had knee surgery 4 weeks ago. Since he couldn't drive to get cigarettes and I'm not gonna enable him, he quit smoking 4 weeks ago.
    He's been doing fine, except that now his hands are constantly doing something. Its like they have a mind of their own and he can't make them stay still. What's up with that? I thought smoking was more of an oral thing.
     
    Orleander, Dec 12, 2009
    #27
  11. takethewarhome

    takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    625
    I thought smoking was more of a something-to-do-with-yourself kind of thing. Maybe that's what it is.
     
    takethewarhome, Dec 12, 2009
    #28
  12. DRZion

    DRZion Theoretical Experimentalist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,046
    I personally like to buy cigars when I go to the smoke shop. It gives me something to do and doesn't last as long as a whole pack.
     
    DRZion, Dec 12, 2009
    #29
  13. Tiassa

    Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    It's a bitch

    His brain is freaking out. Not only are his impulses all out of whack, he's also looking for something to occupy the manual activity that is ritualistically fundamental to the oral fixation. You're seeing both a somatic disorientation and signal interference, and the one is not necessarily dependent on the other. His electrical and chemical systems are reconfiguring; the addiction puts up a hell of a fight.
     
    Tiassa, Dec 12, 2009
    #30
  14. fellowtraveler

    fellowtraveler Banned Banned

    Messages:
    323
    REPLY: Yes, end the drug wars by legalizing them. It just makes sense. ...FT
     
    fellowtraveler, Dec 12, 2009
    #31
  15. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Smoking is not just a bad habit. Nicotine is a psychoactive drug.

    Its immense popularity is due to its effect as a mood leveler: If you're a little nervous it brings you down, if you're a little depressed it brings you up. You don't even have to have enough self-awareness to be able to figure out how you feel, you can just reach for a ciggy and be confident that whatever it is, it will go away in a couple of minutes! In the Third World people cut cigarettes in half and sell them that way. For many of them it is their only fleeting glimpse of pleasure in a bleak life.

    Your husband is apparently a little hyper and when he can't dispel the symptoms with drugs they manifest as compulsive hand activity. I hope he channels it into something productive and doesn't just dust the house eight times a day or have an entire wardrobe of cute outfits for the dog. If he doesn't have a dog, this might be a good time to get him an unflappably cheerful hyperactive playmate like a Maltese or a collie.

    In many ways nicotine is the most addictive of all drugs. It rewires your brain chemistry so thoroughly that it takes some people years to get over the withdrawal symptoms. If he's going to take advantage of this opportunity to quit the habit, be prepared for an extremely long recovery and thank your stars that it's channeled into a relatively harmless quirk instead of a six-month bitchy mood.

    Synanon was one of the first of the new wave of pop drug rehab clinics in L.A. in the 1960s. At one point, in order to cut back on expenses, they stopped giving their residents free cigarettes. More people walked away over that than because of the withdrawal from the (mis-named) "hard drugs."
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Dec 12, 2009
    #32
  16. parmalee

    parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,270
    on this note, i feel compelled to chime in on the defense of tobacco:

    i smoke proper tobacco, i.e. i roll my own cigarettes from quality tobaccos--no stale packaged shit--and i smoke shisha tobacco from a narghile. epilepsy has my moods vacillating between extremes--suicidal ideation to psychotic delusions of grandeur--as frequently as hundreds of times in a day. (it's not always like this

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    ; otherwise, i'd be completely fucking wacked.) anticonvulsants, atypical antipsychotics, benzos, etc. are mostly worthless to me, but tobacco at least does something.
     
    parmalee, Dec 12, 2009
    #33
  17. takethewarhome

    takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    625
    What? Gives you cancer?
     
    takethewarhome, Dec 12, 2009
    #34
  18. parmalee

    parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,270
    and what doesn't give you cancer? moreover, while i don't drive (i bike or walk), i typically live in cities and the emissions from automobiles are a vastly greater threat in this respect than tobacco smoke--need i provide data on such?

    moreover, i only smoke (narghile excepted) outside. one estimate has it that for every mile the average automobile is driven, the emissions are comparable to about 30 thousand cigarettes--my one cigarette hardly makes a dent in that.

    i was sitting outside of a cafe one time smoking a cigarette, and an enormously obese lady, in typical american passive-aggressive fashion, says very loudly (obviously, so as to be overhead by me) to the person she was sitting with, "i am so disgusted by people and their goddamn cigarettes." i turned to her and said, "lady, you're sitting outside a cafe with dozens of automobiles passing by every minute and you're complaining about my one cigarette. i don't drive, so at least my carbon footprint is slightly minimized--how about you? given your size, i'm guessing that you don't walk or bike terribly much, so i think i know the answer to that one."
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2009
    parmalee, Dec 12, 2009
    #35
  19. takethewarhome

    takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    625
    True that.
     
    takethewarhome, Dec 12, 2009
    #36
  20. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    You didn't read his post carefully enough. He is utilizing the mood-leveling narcotic effect to mitigate the symptoms of epilepsy.
    Yes, as a matter of fact. You're exaggerating the difference between the effects of tobacco smoke (on the smoker) and auto emissions--which have fallen precipitously in the fifty years that I've been driving. Obviously your hookah filters out some of the carcinogenic material. But if you're serious about this you should get a vaporizer. They don't set anything on fire so you're not inhaling smoke at all. (This old hippie had to look up the word "nargile" because Turkish people and their slang are not nearly as common in America as they are in Europe.)

    Nonetheless as a libertarian I support the right of consenting adults to do whatever the hell they want so long as they cause no direct harm to others, so smoke away, my friend. I ain't buyin' this crap about "secondhand smoke." In this regard you're absolutely right about the much greater risk of auto exhaust.
    Hopefully you'll eventually discover that sinking to someone else's level and responding to bile with bile is not the way to inner peace. You won't change her mind by attacking her any more than she changed yours. All you're doing is flooding your metabolism with more of the chemicals that will make it even harder to regain the serenity she interrupted.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Dec 13, 2009
    #37
  21. parmalee

    parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,270
    the problem with statistics pertaining to this matter is that there is a massive disparity between the conclusions; nevertheless, automobile emissions vastly exceed cigarette emissions. still, there are countless factors and variables to consider, i.e. the diffusion throughout the atmosphere (if one is comparing the cigarette smoked indoors, to the outdoor used automobile)--and in this context, i was more specifically addressing the effects of the emissions upon others, i.e. not on the smoker (and, as noted above, i only smoke outside and i make a concerted effort to not smoke in the presence of children and the elderly). regardless, no matter which statistics you review--the most conservative or the implausibly exaggerated--methinks the auto trumps the cigarette in terms of emissions.

    oh, trust me--i figured this one out lloonngg ago. unfortunately, my epileptic temperament, if you will, tends to bring out the worst in me at times. it's taken some people who know me considerable time to figure out that i honestly cannot control some of my outbursts, and it's tremendously frustrating. i will open my mouth and say the most outrageous and inflammatory things, irrespective of context, and not infrequently does some sort of "complication" ensue. just one of the many benefits of a massively damaged amygdalae.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    parmalee, Dec 13, 2009
    #38
  22. lostontheroad

    lostontheroad Registered Member

    Messages:
    2
    Good Points

    Once again you can explain tobacco usage by catagorizing it with drug use in general. Those who are even just psycologically addicted to drugs will ignore consequences and use anyway because the brain says make me happy 24/7. All people are predisposed to drug use. If a person does not use drugs, it is more because they are afraid of something else, such as being arrested or having an overdose, or even the social stigma that surrounds drugs, then of the harm to the body and mind that takes place. So with drugs that are legal and highly available, there is a considerable amount of usage from people who would be afraid to break the law or be disowned by family. This explains why the use of tobacco, though detrimental to ones health, is so vastly popular. If all drugs were legal, there would be a significant jump in the amount of people using the common illicit drugs of abuse. I believe that the actual number of people using any drugs would stay about the same.

    I rambled a bit. What thinks ye?
     
    lostontheroad, Dec 15, 2009
    #39
  23. fellowtraveler

    fellowtraveler Banned Banned

    Messages:
    323
    REPLY: The ONLY reason people take drugs or drink is to kill pain. If you are not in pain there is an aversion to doing these things. Check into PRIMAL THERAPY if you feel like it. ...traveveler
     
    fellowtraveler, Dec 15, 2009
    #40
Page 2 of 5

Share This Page