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Wellness Wednesday for August 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Personally, I believe that the dose makes the poison and that people are different, and it's telling that the medical literature on the topic is clearly searching for downsides out of a puritan sense that they must exist while not having clear examples of any.

But, I'd imagine that they wouldn't be great for your teeth/gums, especially if you used a lot of them a day. And I'm pretty sure nicotine is addictive, though I've seen zero sign of it personally.

I tend to use a Zyn more or less exclusively when I'm on a long drive, or I need a pick-me-up on a boring workday and don't want to drink another coffee. Two to three times a week at most. I don't notice any craving for nicotine on days I don't, and I've sustained that pace since Easter more or less. They're very pleasant, in that it gives me a bit of a nicotine buzz and a little bit of energy, along with a little pop of flavor and a sense of "something going on" that on a long drive or boring doc review I might otherwise fill with a snack.

That's where knowing yourself comes in: while I've never really used hard drugs, I don't tend towards addiction to the soft ones I have used. I notice the pattern of behaviors in other people's descriptions of their relationship with weed or alcohol or nicotine, and I don't identify them at all. My relationship with alcohol, weed, kratom, modafinil, nicotine has mostly been one of having a vague idea of trying it or "getting into" it, then ignoring it entirely and forgetting about it in my cupboard. While my wife, who is by no means a person "with a problem," will tell me a couple times a year that I need to hide the weed from her. My friends, who I don't think are alkies, will talk about fighting the urge to have a drink as soon as they get home from work. I don't feel any of that.