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Wellness Wednesday for October 23, 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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There is a genuine cognitive boost / sharpening, but this gets less and less the more dependent you become on it in my experience. There is also some evidence for it being neuroprotective against things like Parkinsons. Nicotine is also extremely habit forming to the point where some people deliberately use it to try to form a habit (e.g. exercising regularly), but I don't think this can really work if you've already built a tolerance. Check out this Andrew Huberman podcast on nicotine for a good overview of the pros/cons - https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/nicotines-effects-on-the-brain-and-body-and-how-to-quit-smoking-or-vaping

Using nicotine regularly at any high-ish dose really is making a deal with the devil, as you quickly become dependent on it - the withdrawals are pretty bad. I used nicotine for years occasionally, maybe three to four times a month, then eventually fell into daily Zyn use and now am trying to dial it down with little success. You're probably already addicted to some extent if you are using four a day. It's not like caffeine which seems to have a decent effect no matter how long you've used it - once you've built a tolerance, at high doses it becomes more sedating than stimulating (Nesbitt's paradox). I feel little to no cognitive benefit nowadays beyond knocking back withdrawal.

I'd recommend using it sparingly to keep the maximum effects. Also using a low dose (<=2mg) rather than a high dose - high doses (>10mg) felt similar to cocaine to me when I first started using them, so I got addicted. Maybe roll a dice each day and only use it if you roll a six? If you defer whether you use it or not to some external random variable, it should be harder to become addicted without noticing and you'll keep the benefits.