Stop thinking about it like that and you'll have a better chance of getting beyond it TS. Nicotine is possibly the single most addictive drug in use on th planet. I remember the day our boy stopped by to grab something he'd forgotten and forgot he had a cigarette behind his ear. Dad very casually mentioned "So you're smoking now, are you?" The chagrined boy snatched the stick from this head, shook it in disbelief at his stupidity, and brushed it off with a casual "Oh, I can quit this anytime I want" with that cocky late-teen attitude.
"Sure you can son," Dad replied, "I've been quitting for the past 30 years."
The boy broke the cigarette in half, and as far as I know, never lit up another. I always warned my children to choose your addictions wisely. Me? I'm addicted to loving unconditionally and being joyful. And sugar. That's probably the next compulsion of mine to fall.
I used to think of cannabis as my chosen addiction, but now I understand biology enough to know that's propaganda talk, not reality.
It's got me a little more down than usual, of course. But not to an extreme (I think?). It's easier for me to write this "try" off and begin looking forward, in a hopeful manner, to the next "try" to come. Maybe, with just a wee bit more preparation...
Maybe?
I am undecided about how addictive nicotine really is. Some, absolutely. But there are a lot of other things in the average cigarette, and they've been fine-tuning them to make us purchase more of them for many decades. (And it wouldn't be the first drug that I ended up learning through... personal experience that it isn't the drug itself that sinks its teeth into the back of your neck so horribly but, instead, the... fillers :rolleyes3 .) Plus - speaking of decades - even a junkie ends up taking a break now in then, if only because they're in jail and haven't made a connection yet (or haven't sunk to the level of trading the only thing they have left for drugs), have to go boost a few $500 car stereos so they can sell them for $20/each and pay their dealer, et cetera. But I've been buying cigarettes without hassle for all of my adult life and a big chunk of my childhood (if it was the only other drug that has been compared to cigarettes in therms of its addictiveness, surely I'd have died by now). Smoke smoke smoke. I stayed at a job that I hated like nothing else for, IDK, an additional five years or more mostly because I could smoke smoke smoke the entire time I was working. Boss probably figured they wouldn't kill me any faster than all the chemicals in the work environment would, lol (he may well have been correct, it turns out). So it's like I picked up a cigarette 37 years ago
and never put it down.
I suppose that there are a great many substances that we (mostly
) just
joke about being addictive, that - if we lived and breathed them most every waking moment for that many years - might end up being substances that we'd have to check into rehab to deal with. I know, for me personally, I drank pop once in a while growing up, but mostly just filled a glass from the Coleman water jug full of ice-water that was ALWAYS in the kitchen, every time I went by (shame we didn't know that our
water was poisoning us here at the time, huh?). I probably had the clearest urine in the state, by average, lol. I just wasn't all that interested in that sweet syrupy crap. Then after I had my big <CRASH> and was left with basically daily, often debilitating headaches, I read that caffeine can help with headaches, and started drinking more of it, along with COFFEE(!!!) all the time. Fast-forward 29 years or so, and... I've been out of pop, cigarettes, and food, gone to the store with just a pocket full of change - and had a real problem figuring which one I needed ("needed") the most. And it has often ended up a tiebreaker between the pop and the cigarettes. "I really NEED a cigarette, NOW! But if I buy Dr. Pepper(*), that's got calories in it, I can go without dinner tonight."
.
(*)I got to the point some time ago where if I drink Mountain Dew, it feels like it's eating its way through my belly.
Now, if I get lucky enough to be able to buy a two-liter of Dr. Pepper in addition to the groceries (I've overcome this enough to always buy food first *improvement!!!* ), and drink it, the next day or three (week, maybe) is a little horrible. But it's
no big deal. By that, I mean I can - and do - manage to not go looking for change on the sidewalk in the middle of Winter (whilst fighting a bear, in freezing rain, etc. lol) to buy another bottle, you know? It's just a PitA like anything else that part of me doesn't want to put up / deal with, as opposed to this cigarette thing.
...and I'm still not convinced that this is a result of the
nicotine. Not all of it, anyway. Nicotine plus
MENTHOL plus everything else in it, multiplied by the life of doing it seems much more likely. I had some success cutting down without going nuts by using generic menthol cough drops (but they only put 100 in a bag, what am I going to do
tomorrow?
) and using the cigarette-shaped vaporizer pen. My brother has a coupon to get two "bold" menthol/nicotine refill cartridges for a dollar that he's supposed to drop off soon, and I'm going to try to find a tiny $4.99 10ml bottle (which lasts me quite a while) of the "juice" that I can stand the taste of to do redneck refills of the cartridges with instead of paying seven bucks per two-pack. Those will help, methinks. Kind of crutches for my crutch, lol.
See? Planning ahead for the next battle in this war. Which I intend to win, eventually.
Please stop and pat yourself on the back, Sue! It's thanks to you - and your positivity - that I managed to get past that whole "I've just given up" phase of my life. In terms of smoking cigarettes, and more. I hate like the dickens to use the word, but there's some hope now and then, now.
I got a little over four hours of sleep on this night!!!
My dad used to say, "I'll quit when I'm dead." (Or maybe that was, "I'll be able to quit when...," I don't remember which. He managed to beat that by about a year or so, IIRC. But he was begging for a cigarette on the day before his last one (couldn't do anything but make horrible no-pause attempting-to-breathe noises on his last one, and pat Mom's hand whilst trying to somehow give comfort to her). So I know what Dale meant, I think.
I do not even know your son,
but I'm proud of him. My ex-wife was much the same way. Came home one evening, said she'd been to her checkup and her doctor said things were fine but suggested she quit smoking. She then said, "Oh, that reminds me," and then grabbed her purse, took out half a pack of cigarettes, and dropped them into the trash can (and tossed me her lighter). That was... '95 or '96, and I was annoyed by the ease at which she'd quit (once I realized it wasn't some kind of joke) even then - because I'd already tried. Then I tried a few more times during her marriage. Heard "just go buy a pack of cigarettes, FFS!" a few times, too :rolleyes3 . I was always nice as could be to her - but there was some collateral damage now and then. Temper so short I drove foot-to-the-floor into the @sshole in front of me because he wouldn't go when the light turned green, stuff like that (wait, who's actually the @sshole in that memory, lol?). "Hey, where's your buddy?" "IDK, I guess he got mad when I knocked the p!ss out of him." "WHAT?!?!" "Yeah, he was... He said... IDK, but it must have been
something."
Karma. Anyone need any? I have extra
.
Nice guy nice guy nice guy nice guy <SNAP!> . Nice guy nice guy nice guy <SNAP!> . Got examined with the implication that I might have been bipolar somewhere around then. Nope, just a <BLEEP>. LMAO. I like to think that I've... grown? since then, matured. The, ah... beast inside is chained much more securely. I don't even recall the last time I even yelled at someone in anger, but at a guess... ten or fifteen years? And, aside from one attempted mugging, one drunk who insisted on acting like I used to, and a cousin that a woman (bad dating choice :
: ) kind of invited over to my house to hang out with us one night and decided to attack me when I caught them trying to steal what little I had of value, I haven't gotten into any physical fights, either.
Karma, get yer Karma! Special, three for a dollar, no wait, endless supply, Karma, get your Karma!
:rolleyes3
Ohwaitaminute, this is your
grow journal, not personalized online therapy by the hour at
really friendly rates <SLAPS FOREHEAD>.
Makes sense Hash Hound. I'm just beginning to realize that I can take season into account if I want to manipulate color. Those shots garner more votes in the
contests.
I used to dislike "purple strains." The ones I encountered always seemed to be "rough" in flavor and not overly pleasing to the head. But this must have changed since the '80s/'90s, because people sure seem to like them now. And, I agree, the purple (/blue/red) buds do provide such wonderful photograph material.
It was thanks to you, Sue, that I'm optimistic about the DDA. I wonder the DDA seed I've got soaking has sprouted yet? Or the SSDC, the White Widow Auto, the Purple Skunk Mass Auto, or the Northern Light Auto? I ran out of stable places to stick a Solo cup on my oven rack at that point, but there'll be a Train Wreck Auto, an Auto Jock Horror x Auto Amnesia cross, and maybe others soon. Will probably go the green two-liter bottle route again for most, but with perlite (hempy) instead of soil. I seem to have more luck in some kind of hydroponics setup than in dirt, for some reason. If they haven't germinated by tomorrow, I'll pour a capful of H
₂O₂ into each cup for an O₂ boost and to ward off any possible random pathogens. Might have to pull them out to use the over for its intended purpose tomorrow evening, too. Note to self: Remember to remove cannabis seeds from oven before turning it on to preheat to 375°F
this time. I've already lost one from this batch when I was pouring water into the DDA cup and my right hand failed on me. Never found it, too small to see I guess. The broom and dustpan will tomorrow and the trash man can have it. Good thing I have a fair few left of that one, because you really do have me psyched about trying DDA (and, perhaps, seeing some lovely coloration before I get to that stage).
I had to take a few more pictures.
Oh, yes, please. We love it when you take - and post - pictures!
Mine isn't anywhere as pretty overall as yours was
Overall, I am always impressed by what your pictures show, Sue. Especially since you seem to take a more "natural" approach to growing cannabis than I generally have. Lol, I don't naturally expect to see the greatness that I always end up seeing. *kudos to you*