Tobacco kills 50 Indians every hour

lotus blossom

speaking for myself, i consider us to be like a family here (as Nick as our father - don't deny it nick ). as such, we do sometimes use this forum to complain, about a great many things and its what keeps some of us coming back - the support of it. yes, sometimes, like a family, we have our sibling squabbles , but for the most part, we all get along pretty well. so, don't be a bratty brother with these sort of comments. they're really not necessary...

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Not all who wander are lost

CliveG

As some Imers clearly have a love of number crunching is it possible to calculate what the planets population would be now if some entrepeneur had not come up with the idea of smoking tobacco centuries ago or would this need a computer the size of Deep Thought?

tacita

and
kudos to you both. my sister persuaded me to start smoking as a teenager, to be "cool" like her. not! i smoked for perhaps 15 years and finally quit during what had to be the most stressful year of my life -- my first year of law school. i don't think giving up crack cocaine or heroin could be worse. it is unquestionably the hardest thing i ever did. (and like many reformed smokers, i am highly vocal with my disgust and intolerance for it now.) i quit by carrying around a brochure from the american lung association. in it were pictures of diseased lung tissue taken from people whose habits had killed them. when the cravings were at (yet another) zenith, i'd look at those pictures and my resolve was renewed. that was back before the patch, zyban and other such things. all i can say is, whatever it takes, do it, even if you've tried scores of times before--keep trying! kittah and buck and are are the proof. (this concludes our public service announcement.)
still? where? thankfully, not in new york--ick!
huh?
you state things succinctly in your first sentence, so the rest seems not to follow, IMO. i have to wonder, why is everyone so hell-bent on changing the 12-steps, which have saved the lives of scores of thousands of "hopeless" cases? you can't rewrite the 12 steps, anymore than you can "rewrite" the bible. you can use them as a starting point for something completely different, or reinterpret them. but that's not the same thing. how many of the people who loved the "rewrite" were themselves addicts or watched family members' drowm in the bottom of a bottle...only to climb out, up a 12-rung ladder, once because they admitted they were powerless over alcohol. (which is very different from saying one is powerless over one's actions and one's life.) this is where the "it keeps people stuck" analysis is fundamentally flawed.)

whatever one's background with addiction treatment, i sincerely believe that you simply cannot "get" addiction or "get" the 12 steps unless you've experienced it first-hand. and, moreover, 12-step programs are preciselywhere people learn to live clean and sober lives!

if someone else beats addiction by "finding their center" or some other way--great! but let's not try it by rewriting or improving upon the 12-steps. let's call it what it is--something different. besides, has it escaped everyone's notice that the 12-steps are a spiritually based program of recovery from this most insidious disease?

ok, OT, brief rant against my political nemeses here in the US...

...like senator craig, perhaps? or conservative right-wing wingnut carlson tucker, who recounted on national television (if the FOX network can be called television), how he and a friend beat up a man who allegedly hit on him in a restroom, as his two broadcast henchmen giggled? tucker left and came back with his friend to ram the guy's head into a wall, eliminating the possibility that he somehow felt he had to act in "self-defense". um...isn't this more commonly referred to as homophobic hate-crime?

now, can someone please direct me to the escalator down from this soap-box?

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Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. ~Helen Keller

PeakXV

You're right doubtful in NYC & Alaska more snus & dry snuff these days isn't it? ..... but I still wouldn't bet against Bubba and Skeeter in hoarking up some frothy extract from their chaw plug - way down south in dixie.

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We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

crvlvr

I am glad someone is doing the math. BTW Rama, you will have to half the number of deaths for India, as the article clarifyies that onlye half the cancer deaths are smoking related.,

A few years ago, there was a "report" of an aids "epidemic" in India. Immediately foreign funds rushed off to India to help with the cause. A few years later reports indicated that the problem was not as bad as it seemed earlier. In the interm tons of agencies/NGOs made a lot of money in India. Now, anti smoking seems to be inthe in thing. Anything that raises public awareness or draws attention to the NGOs will translate to more funds for them to spend. India has already passed many anti smoking laws inluding banning smoking from the silver screen. But, it is a free country, and people's rights should respected too.

http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web...119/nat14.html

lotus blossom

telling someone that they are "powerless" does not offer anything in the way of encouragement nor does it help empower anyone to live a clean and sober life. while AA may be able to offer some sense of support, in reality, it has not single-handedly saved the lives of scores of thousands of "hopeless" cases?, despite what sort of claims are made. i worked with a guy, a colleague, who went to AA religiously for 15 years. he was not drinking but destroying his health with loads of sugar, which is a commonly available item in the meetings, that and coffee. substitution is all it is. i ran into him a few months ago - he's using again. most people who only use AA, without dealing with the other components of their addiction, are "white-knuckling" it, because the craving is still alive and kicking.

being in the field for nearly ten years, you get to know the inner workings of the system. i'm not going to talk trash about AA, but the clients that i worked with revealed plenty about their issues with the meetings. you know what they say about going to jail and meeting new people and learning new ways to do crime? well, there is a similar sort of camaraderie that happens in AA. many people revealed that all of the talk of "using" that happens in the meetings - the 'euphoric recall" - spun them out of a meeting and right into imbibing in their substance of choice. there are a couple of books offering an honest assesment of AA, but its been too long to recall the titles.

as for rewriting the 12 steps, or rewriting anything for that matter, what's wrong with reinvention, of coming up with alternative views and ways of looking at something, especially given that many people in treatment vehemently disliked going to the meetings despite how much they wanted to get well. failure to rewrite those parts of history that are not working renders humanity hopelessly addicted and enslaved to someone else's ideas and version of truth. and yes, those who really liked the 12-steps i wrote, the interns that i was in class with, 98 percent were recovering.

PeakXV

Janice: - Fags are also cigarettes in the UK. I believe Buck was referring to them in this context. 'Fag' end being the smoke emitting end of the cigarette in his specific reference!?

robotvoice

I think it is the fear of becoming part of the typical ex-smokers intolerance of smokers that keeps me from quiting!

GauhatiBoy

But then there are those health fanatics dying of nothing in particular looking foolish

lotus blossom

forgot to address this -- this tired rant - that a person has to experience addiction first hand in order to understand or be able to effectively work with it - is often heard in the addiction centers. it's a sort of "terminal uniqueness", an exlusivity to addiction that many seem to want to claim and one that makes about as much sense as saying that a doctor who has not experienced a particular disease cannot properly work with it. and that is what addiction is, a disease. what makes it distinctive is the behaviors that go along with it.

the only arena where this argument holds any veracity is in the delivery room, with male ob-gyn's helping to deliver babies...

actually, some of the counselors-in-recovery that i've worked with were the most incompetent because they were still living an addictive lifestyle, despite being "dry", one reason why the system is sick.

lotus blossom

understandaby. i've never understood why this intolerance exists in someone who has experienced addiction first hand. what does warrant an intolerance, in my opinion, is when the addiction is spilling over in a negative way into the lives of others, which is generally the case with addictive alcohol and drug use. of course, lighting up in the presence of others is an issue, but other than that, it's generally a pretty benign addiction in re to the behaviors that it produces, unless someone refuses to see the harm of their second-hand smoke.

GauhatiBoy

I smoke and I am well aware of the risks. I quit for 6 years and then started again because I thought I could have an occasional smoke but no luck, hooked again.

I will quit again, just a matter of when.

Rama

Thank you for pointing that out, I did not read the article in full, just quickly glanced to make sure the figure corresponded with what was posted. This would actually make India really well off. In Europe, over 9 times more people die from smoke related deaths than in India, and in the USA, over 7 times more people die from smoking related deaths than in India.

True capitalism at work.

tacita

thanks, peak. yes, i knew this, and i knew buck was joking about "fags". the craig and carlson incidents just happened, so i naturally thought of their intolerance when buck made his astute observation about american homophobes. (not that americans have cornered the market on that, of course.

buck, if this wasn't clear, my apologies. and congratulations again on your success kicking the habit. do let us know when you reach your one-year anniversary date.

GauhatiBoy

So now smoking is equivalent to being gay