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Old 12-11-2005, 01:35 PM
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Default Re: How much do you smoke?

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Some people have an enormous amount of stress in their lives and cigarettes may help them relieve it.

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This is quite simply wrong. I was a smoker for 15 years and finally realised that the only reason cigarettes relieve stress is because they take away that nicotine induced desire for a cigarette. This nicotine imposed desire adds to stress, not reduces it. By having a cigarette you take the edge off it though, and thus feel you have relieved your stress. People who are not addicted to nicotine find that cigarettes do not relieve stress in any way. It took me a fifteen years to figure that out, but once I did I felt rather liberated and was finally able to give up.

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Also, what about people truly peer pressured into smoking or people that grew up around it and smoke because of that? They may now see it is "stupid" in a health sense but are addicted and have tried everything in attempts to quit. I have a hard time believing you are smarter than the next man because you don't smoke cigs.

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I agree with this though. People who have never been addicted don't understand just what a major hold it has over you. People will jump all sorts of mental hoops to justify it to themselves and even those who fully accept the health implications and that they are addicts still struggle greatly with stopping.

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I meant the stress part more of as a stress-relieving mechanism. Whether or not it actually reduces stress is a different story.
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