Why are smokers so stubborn?

[Michael569]

Yes i know this is a judgemental statement and it is a generalisation as well and a distraction. I'm curious about your thoughts on the topic anyways. 

Why is it that you can show smokers any gross pictures of fucked up lungs, take them to oncology clinic, bring up 10000 studies showing indisputable link between smoking and lung cancer...yet what they do? Laugh and blow the smoke into your face saying their grandma smoked and lived up to 95. 

What drives the person to be so ignorant to their health? Is it the ego trying to prove that it knows better? Is disputing smokers only making them more stubborn? 

[ajasatya]

@Michael569 chemical dependence is something else. smokers use cigarettes to relief anxiety.

[Michael569]

@ajasatya true but most of them will say they can quit tomorrow if they wanted to , something I find quite ridiculous and hard to believe

[ajasatya]

9 minutes ago, Michael569 said:

@ajasatya true but most of them will say they can quit tomorrow if they wanted to , something I find quite ridiculous and hard to believe

they're lying. they're too addicted to the easy way out of anxiety.

growing up is a lot harder than ditching cigars.

[bejapuskas]

@Michael569 My dad used to smoke. Twice... Once I convinced him by being a newborn baby and then, when he started smoking again, I cried and yelled at him, that I don't want him to die of cancer. It helped.

[Zigzag Idiot]

I started smoking when I was 14. In my late 30's I finally made up my mind to quit. It was as nearly difficult as quitting alcohol. My grandparents and uncle were the defiant smokers you alluded to. Most of there lives it was glorified in media and the health consequences were always swept under the rug by the tobacco lobby. My cousins who lived in Wichita, Kansas and worked in a hospital overtime were forced out into the cold and eventually forbidden to smoke even on hospital grounds outside. 

My grandparents felt like smokers were always demonized and scapegoated. Although smoking is very ignorant, there is a part of me that agreed with them. My grandmother is 96 and in the nursing home. She still smokes whenever she can get someone to roll her wheelchair to an outside gazebo. When this generation started smoking is completely different from today. They smoked for most of their lives before the truth really started coming out. The habit was just too ingrained. Not an excuse I know. Young people today who smoke should know better. I can't really judge though. It's a very difficult addiction to overcome. When I quit, I craved smoking everyday for a solid year. Actually, I cheated and fed myself pain pills for the first three months to deal with the anxiety. I got sick of those things and managed to leave them alone and the cigarettes too but it was a real bitch of a year. I learned again that I could endure suffering and eventually things get better.

 

[Matt8800]

1 hour ago, Michael569 said:

Yes i know this is a judgemental statement and it is a generalisation as well and a distraction. I'm curious about your thoughts on the topic anyways. 

Why is it that you can show smokers any gross pictures of fucked up lungs, take them to oncology clinic, bring up 10000 studies showing indisputable link between smoking and lung cancer...yet what they do? Laugh and blow the smoke into your face saying their grandma smoked and lived up to 95. 

What drives the person to be so ignorant to their health? Is it the ego trying to prove that it knows better? Is disputing smokers only making them more stubborn? 

@Michael569 Nisgardatta was asked once why he was attached to smoking. His response was to ask why the person was attached to non-smoking.

[TheAvatarState]

@Michael569 because they're deeply unconscious. You're asking, "Why does this person who does this unconscious thing actally deny his unconsciousness?" Because they must! That's what their unconsciousness is based on, that's the only way they can continue.

Accept that they might not want to change, and that was the way it was meant to be. Tough pill to swallow

[Charlotte]

My response would be 'ignorance is bliss' followed by self deception. When someone forces them to shine the light of awareness onto their habit by asking questions, they no likey and become defensive to 'protect' their sacred cigarette's/joint.

[Cudin]

If you still judge smokers, that means you haven't faced your own addictions yet. Believe me, you do have addictions.

Smoking feels good. It's a social lubricant, and I dare say tobacco is a sacred plant for several shamanic traditions. Every sacred plant has something to teach. I've learned a lot myself dealing with nicotine addiction. 

I feel like there's a perfect order of sacred plants teachings:

tobacco => marijuana => mushrooms / peyote => ayahuasca

The shamanic path is, nevertheless, a dangerous path.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Cudin

[Leo Gura]

@Michael569 Why are you so stubborn and ignorant?

When you realize your own ignorance, you will understand the ignorance of others, and that it cannot be otherwise.

[michellew]

I struggled with smoking after starting when I was about 11 years old, continued smoking mostly on but managing to quit for up to 4 years at a time.  I got breast cancer at age 38 and managed to smoke all the way through chemo etc., then again when I was 44 when it came back on the other side, I smoked through treatment.  I genuinely thought I was doomed to die a smoker and couldn't understand why, even when I'd quit for some time, that I kept falling prey to smoking again.  It wasn't until I found a particular website about quitting that I finally understood what it was that was tripping me up every time.  You will not find the right help to quit by attending your doctor or pharmacy, it's very rare that they actually understand how to help.  I've now been free of nicotine for 2 1/2 years and am confident that I have all the tools I need to stay that way, even when I get the odd craving (i.e. once or twice a year!).  What made all the difference for me was understanding how nicotine trapped me in the first place, how it was keeping me there and the effects it was actually having on my body.  Crucial also was understanding all the mythology and sheer bullshit involved with cigarettes, whether you smoke or not - we all believe an astounding amount of rubbish about nicotine.  You also need to realise that there is a huge industry out there in whose interest it is to maintain that smokescreen of bullshit - ever notice how someone will post about 'personal choice and freedom' when it comes to such issues.  Funny how it isn't socially acceptable to say the same things about heroin addiction.  You need to understand that smoking is an addiction, no one would ever inhale those toxic fumes otherwise and most smokers are snared before their powers of self preservation are fully formed.  I can post the website address if that is permissible?  It's the first time I've posted on here, not sure what the protocol it.  It's a totally free website with all the information any nicotine addict needs to quit and stay quit.

[Jkris]

@michellew pls message me the website

[Jkris]

Smoking addiction is very difficult to quit

It becomes an unconcious habbit too assosciated with tension negative emotions. So when ever negative emitions occurs smokers do smoke. Even otherwise due to reduction of blood level nicotine creates the craving to mainain the nicotine level. 

Hopefully will try to quit smoking today. 

[Jkris]

@Matt8800 I remember something like this Nisargadatta Maharaj said yes the body is addicted to smoking and I don't deny its craving. 

But atlast his body suffered and died due to cancer.