Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
smoking poll
ThailandTom
Veteran
I am just curious to find out what people here think about smoking.
0
Comments
it's a loathsome, disgusting habit, and is toxic.
hence, if Buddhists want to include it as part of the 5th precept, I'm all for that.
My best friend has smoked heavily for years and it's killing him, it makes me so sad
They target the young (The smokers of the future) and lace their products with addictive substances, in order to keep people craving and smoking.
Nicotine is the drug, but it's not the substance in cigarettes that makes them addictive. Those are artificially added.
But it represents a huge contribution to Government coffers. So, while (In the UK) advertising is banned, and the packets carry sombre adverts and chilling warnings -this does nothing to cut down on the numbers of people smoking, because the addiction is kept going, and the dependency high.
but apparently a lot of people like it, and i don't mind smoking some every once and awhile
but i do smoke mother theresa. maybe at some stage in my life i'll have no need of it, as a result of a natural high that needs no augmentations.
but smoking earth's herbs on occasion in a healthy way has been fun.
for me personally, i'm about 4-5 months into quitting. it's mostly smooth sailing at this point, but also difficult at times still. i could write at length about how interesting it was to go through withdrawal now that i am more aware of my mind...but i have to run off to work here in a second, so perhaps later if you all are interested.
sufficed to say that i am quite proud of myself because i haven't slipped up once and as soon as i put my mind to it, i found it quite easy. i quit cold turkey. it also helps that my state just passed a ban on smoking in public. it is definitely easier when i'm not around it as much.
now why i started at all... that's a pretty stupid story, so i'm not even going to go there haha.
I just wanted to start a poll basically on the subject..
Later in my life, I became a pothead and suffered quite a few adverse consequences from it. I used to love the high, but then the high turned awful and wasn't pleasurable anymore, so I was literally forced to quit. I admit I still miss pot tho and the culture left a big mark on me, as I now still enjoy stoner music a whole lot (reggae, surf rock, dub, you name it).
I used to smoke pot as well but THC doesn't go so well with a panic attack disorder that manifested in my late 20s. Possibly related? I wouldn't be surprised.
In metta,
Raven
Congratulations to you and all the other sensible people on this thread who have kicked the habit. Good job!
What's "gear" AND "brown"!? I'm confused.
I don't even drink now or eat meat, my body is a temple
'Gear' is a word given to drugs, often given to heroin in specific which is why I said brown, another nickname. Glad I never went that far :P
I set up this thread as I was curious to see the notion practicing buddhists had towards smoking in general. Here in Thailand you see far less smokers than back in the UK. I would say back in the UK 7/10 adults smoke, here maybe 1/10 lol..
Cigarettes taste pretty bad compared to pipes or cigars, and the intent is more to get high than to enjoy a once a week smoke. As users develope tolerance to nicotine they become addicted which means they don't get high anymore and they just need nicotine to avoid anxiety. Its like a relief to get your cigarette but you don't get the 'buzz' as strong.
Both of these types of smoking are VERY bad for the health. Pretty much every type of bad illness has risk go up from smoking. If I had to choose I would smoke a pipe once a week before a 1/2 pack a day cigarette habit.
I would like to smoke because it tastes good (pipes/cigars) but I do not because they are so harmful. Also it is hard to find a place where you will not irritate others who do not wish to smell your smoke.
Has anybody ever smoked something really ridiculous before? Maybe as a teen or something. I remember a few funny situations when I was a bit younger that spring to mind.
I had this best friend at the time when I was a little wreck head abusing all kinds of substances and he was also a wreck head, very bad influences on each other actually. Anyway, we were out of weed one time so he decided to smoke some tobacco in a bong, but he put about 2 cigarettes worth in and smoked it in one hit lol.
Also I dared him to smoke a cigarette coloured in with marker pen lol. The same person also tried smoking ketamine once
Yeah man I've smoked funny stuff. Cherios, and tea.
I smoke ciggys... A good alternative I reccommend for someone who just wants to put something in their lungs are electronic vapourizing cigarettes.
when i was like 13, a friend and i tried smoking cat nip. haha.
I watched my mother smoked cigarettes and I strongly disliked seeing her do so from a very early age, which is why I stayed away from smoking them.
Alcohol and cigarettes are actually more dangerous to health than pretty much every illegal substance. A government scientist from my home town back in England published a report that got him fired lol. It stated stuff like ecstasy is less dangerous than horse riding and if alcohol was being introduced into society today, it would be a class A substance. It is quite interesting how the most harmful substances are legal... But I guess you could also look at the other negative aspects of illegal substances, how they ruin lives and destroy the brain. I personally think the class system in place is very wrong and unrealistic though.
Perhaps not every illegal substance, but certainly a lot of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20drugs.gif
I agree. It's insane. Illegal substances do ruin lives and destroy the brain, but don't alcohol and smoking (nicotine) do that too? Also, I think there'd be far less illegal drug related illness if a lot of illegal drugs were legalised and regulated. It's well known that a lot of the health related problems that come with illegal drugs are to do with things like dirty needles, impurities, accidental overdose and that kind of thing.
I wonder how many people who smoke or drink regularly now would pick a safer drug if they were more readily available.
Reading this back to myself I realised that this may come accross like a bit of a rant. That wasn't my intention.
However, as you mentioned people who are at the very top of a long chain in the illegal drug world do incorporate impurities and hazards into the drugs. At the peak of my ecstasy binge, I was taking ecstasy every weekend and use to buy 10-12 pills for myself, my friend doing the same thing. These pills could havehad literally anything in them. Ecstasy pills these days are only around 5% mdma and the rest is a total guess.
As your graph clearly depicted, heroin is by far the worse of the worse, surpasing alcohol and cigarettes for physical harm and dependency. That and crack do cause a lot of crime within communities and has the power to ruin lives.
I am too content to be out of that way of life now, I had my days of experimenting and crazy adventures into the woods all night under the influence of whatever, but the downsides to these habits far outweigh the good times.
If there was one illegal drug that I would say is near enough harmless it is LSD. If you get caught selling acid, you serve the same amount of time as selling heroin. Although LSD has never actually killed anybody, it is not physically addictive and if you have the right mental disposition and are in the right mood, it can induce a multitude of epiphanies.
This is true. I didn't mean I think that ALL illegal drugs should be legalised though, just some of the less harmful ones.
To be honest LSD is one thing I've always been interested in trying, but never have because of fears over impurities etc. I guess this sort of proves your point though...
As I said, it is a very fragile chemical. Sunlight or any UV light will weaken it, chlorine and a variety of other chemicals.
From my experiences with lsd, those who are simple minded and lets say not that intellectual often do not agree with it or see it as a negative thing. When I first took it I realised so much about my own life, where I was going wrong and things of this nature. Similar to how meditation works in fact, but obviously artificial and at a price :P I ventured off into the woods with a friend after taking a gram of mdma each and we ate 2 sugar cubes each and I consider that day/night to be one of the most profound in my life. The vibrancy of the wilderness was immense, everything was alive and was so pure. Where ever you gazed, everything looked like the perfect photograph as if it had been enhanced in photoshop
I also use to smoke weed a fair lot. Not any everyday thing, but usually a couple of times a week (sometimes more, it just kinda depended). Again, I haven't touched it in years ether. I tried cocaine one time. Hated it. Didn't not enjoy the feeling at all. I've always been curious about LSD, but I've never tried it and probably never will. My real love, when it comes to drugs, was opiates. Still is in a way. I'll be perfectly honest and admit that I may still, on occasion, down a lortab or such for non-medicinal purposes.
I hope you manage to get away from opiates though because I am sure you are aware of their addictive power.
Props to you on not smoking, it seems you never smoked regularly enough to become addicted though..
Before moving out of the UK I lived in a shared house with an ex con. Previously I had lived in student accommodation with 5 other people, but I got kicked out after 5 months, that is another story entirely. Anyway, this ex con was actually the best house mate I have ever encountered. He was so generous, so trusting and clean. He never took food, left a mess anywhere or was every selfish. In over a year we had one argument and that was whilst we were both drunk at the time. The thing is, he use to grow weed for personal use. A few plants every harvest so for me it was hard not to smoke weed as I use to wake up and he would shout up stairs to me, 'joint!'. He use to smoke all day every day basically, living in a haze.
I can remember the rush coming over me like crashing waves, I get nervous just thinking about. I honestly think I was on the edge, of what I don't know possibly insanity. That night was a turning point for me, I'm still deeply affected by it.
I read about the loss of the ego or self on acid on the net afterwards, and found a lot of material and reports of people who have gone through it. Some people said it was a beautiful experience to lose the self and having to rebuild the notion of I back up again from scratch.
You use to be able to buy single cigarettes at the local shop? lol. I never use to smoke but at school some kids use to buy them and sell them for 50p each to the younger kids LOL. Not exactly morally correct, but a lucrative business none the less.
Addiction? Most definitely.
I really need to stop smoking, but it's extremely hard to even explain the addiction to someone who has never been addicted to anything. They say nicotine is as strong an addiction as heroin
I smoked a bug. Not on purpose, my friend played a joke on me lol
When you remove the source of nicotine there is not enough acetyle choline produced to interact with all the new receptors, so your brain cells go a bit wacky (to use the technical term). This why you feel the craving for nicotine, and why when you try to give up you feel so rubbish and irritable.