In 1998, there was a landmark settlement between four tobacco companies and what was deemed as deceptive and deviant practices against the taxpayers. Today, we have new threats developing in the open and we are willingly participating. I talk about the tactics that I see being used to keep us coming back.
Tag: Addiction
September 13, 2023 – Once I Start, I Can’t Stop
This must be how addicts feel. Once I start doing a puzzle, I can’t stop doing it. I will literally skip eating, sleeping or anything else to keep looking for pieces. I have to physically force myself to stop. Sometimes even then, I don’t stop. Just one more piece turns into another hour.
Puzzles are something that we occasionally do (fortunately). It is usually a long weekend/holiday activity. In our climate, it is also a beach activity. I guess what I appreciate about them is that it is a family activity. Since I despise most TV and movies, I am not interested in sitting around for hours for little gain. So, it is also an activity that we can be in close proximity.
There must be some sort of connection in the brain between puzzles and programming. When I used to do that, I would get the same sort of feeling. I would start writing a routine and I couldn’t stop. Just one more time would turn into hours and pretty soon it was two in the morning.
I have to believe that it must be good for the brain. I know that my grandfather used to do a lot of puzzles. He was also a big reader and not much of a TV watcher. So, maybe it is in the genes. I was curious, so I did some quick research and here are some links.
https://fortune.com/well/2022/10/02/mental-health-benefits-puzzles/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-workout/200904/puzzles-and-the-brain
It also turns out that this kind of research can be a real rabbit hole. I started watching videos on how to do puzzles quickly. Back on topic! I observe that there are two kind of methodologies. I observe my wife doing a lot of brute force. I some cases, that may be all you can do when everything is the same color or you are just starting. I actually look at both the color and the shape. This allows me to automatically rule out certain sides of even pieces.
I have been accused of finishing the puzzle without my partner. For that reason, I try to focus on the most difficult aspects of the puzzle. I will do the sky or the water because it slows me down. Granted, it is not the most fun part of the activity but I feel like I can really dig into the lessor appreciated aspect.
One thing that I am getting more and more familiar with is that lighting makes a huge difference. I find that when it is daylight, I can see so much better than under artificial light. A lot of that is aging and over the last couple of years I have noticed a significant decline in my eyesight. Fortunately, it is not bad yet but I do have to strain a lot more than I used to. This isn’t great news for that rainy Saturday night.
I wouldn’t call it a tradition, but it is becoming something we routinely do during Christmas vacation. It makes a good family gift and we spend time working together. If your kids are ho-hum about it, the subject can be something that they are interested in to kind of get them going. At least, this is what we do.
End Your Programming Routine: It would seem like this is a good activity to keep doing considering what experts are saying. I am not really much into word games or soduku but maybe I should be as an aging person. It seems like puzzles along with games provide good stimulus to combat some of the worse effects of aging.
April 15, 2020 – Admitting your darkest secrets
I am a very private person. I like to share ‘edutainment’ or an editorial political piece, but I have put very little out about myself personally. Today, I want to write about addiction. I want to put it into an abstract way so as to be approachable to others. I also cannot claim that I know everything, just my brand of problem.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a well established fact that tobacco caused health problems. That being said, every man I knew was well into his addiction of nicotine. Some later beat it and some did not. My generation was at the crossroads of medically wrong but socially acceptable.
In high school, I had a friend that I used to joke around with. It started with a ‘ha ha, look at me chewing this tobacco’ to lets get together and do it some more. This progressed to not a huge deal physically but mentally I started looking forward to this and associating tobacco to fun and reward. My first physical symptom that I was heading toward a problem was I was in math, the first class after lunch. I literally could not keep my eyes open. This went on for about a week and somehow I associated nicotine after eating as the solution to nearly falling asleep in class.
My other problem was that this behavior wasn’t legal. It drove that activity underground so to speak. Pretty early on I learned that if I spit my first mouthful out, I could swallow the juice the rest of the day. I even learned that I can swallow the tobacco. So, now this became like a candy. In my twenty some years of tobacco, there have been very few people that I have ever visibly used around, even though it has been constant for that entire time.
I tried smoking for a little while, but I couldn’t deal with the smell. The buzz was more intense, but it was also shorter. That led to smoking more but it was harder to hide and required more effort. Eventually, I moved exclusively to smokeless tobacco.
You tell yourself that you can quit if you want to. To a degree that is the absolute truth. You will only quit if you want to, and some days you really have to want it. You of course try half-hearted efforts to quit. Ironically, I think that it is harder to quit when no one knows that you are doing it in the first place. But, every time you fail it is some excuse you tell yourself that is the reason that cant do it. I made it thirty days once and to celebrate I bought some tobacco. A lot of the time, it was something to focus your energy.
What is the psychology of addiction look like? A coping mechanism – What I realized is that this is how I have been functioning for the last twenty some years.
- Don’t know what to do…
- When I am done with this…
- I am glad that is over…
- This is going to be very hard/stressful…
I believe that this why quitting is so hard, you cant undue all those years of training overnight. I have felt mental fog, a shaking like being cold and a sudden urge to use the toilet. The consistency of the symptoms fade and I have observed acute triggers like stressors. There has been some cases where I have told myself, ‘I don’t have time to quit’ because I didn’t want to attempt with withdrawal symptoms for a particular day.
I have tried patches, gum and cold turkey. After trying to calculate how much nicotine I consumed, I tried the 1st step patch (21mg) and supplemented with 4mg gum. After the patches ran out, I went to straight gum and was using 32mg daily. That lasted three weeks, during Christmas and New Years.
Recently, I went straight gum for nine days (24-40mg) and went cold turkey. This morning is day six. I am definitely not out of the woods on this. I am having strong urges still at times but I know that giving in today means going through this again. So, I am inclined to make this one stick. I suppose that this is one thing about quarantine has been a positive.
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