E-Cigs?

I still dont know what the fuck e-cigs are.

 

E-cigs.

 

I gave up drinking for a year, and the most difficult part about it was not drinking around other people who were drinking. To me, that meant that the social factors were dominant, which might be why alcoholics are advised to get a whole new group of friends.

 

All this time, Gross, I thought Hookah was a kind of pipe through which to smoke pot.

 

I always thought that a hooker was a kind of pot in which to put my pipe.

Yes, he was an alcoholic, until he gave it up. Or maybe he was still an alcoholic, depending on your definition of that word, albeit one who didn't drink any more. He said that the thing that kept him from drinking again was fear - that he would lose himself. He was afraid of the hold it had over him. In other respects he was quite a strong character.

 

Personally I've found the social aspects of drinking to have a slight edge over the physio or psycho-logical ones. True, there are occasions where I feel like a drink because of a shit week or whatever, but those situations are a lot easier to evade rather than those where your "friends" are pressuring you into drinking.

I can relate to wanting to replace entire friendship groups as well, but of course it's not that easy in a culture where alcoholism is the norm, and people that don't drink are either regilous zealots of a sort or are on their deathbed. Replace one group with another and find yourself pressured into another act -- subculture upon subculture has lead to this parasitic society where each person is leeching off many groups within a culture; each group with its own role to play, and each wants to play it with their friends.

I doubt that it is likely to change either, western (and indeed other) societies are centred on capitalism and want rather than need, the barbarism of each want increasing from generation to generation with the "old" ideals of stoicism, duty and spartanism fading nearly as fast. I don't think it's an exageration at all to claim that civilisation as a whole is in a downward spiral even if it is a slow decline. But even then, being the cynical pricks that most of us are, we probably won't even mind when things do inevitably crash and burn; it'll just be yet another level for people to lose themselves in.

Truthfully, I think total isolation is the only real way to fight addictions that are tied to social aspects; but removing yourself from society to such an extent results in such notions as civility and morality fading just as quickly as the construct of society fades. In such a situation you are exposed to choices and courses of actions, previously thought to be taboo, that eventually turn into addiction and take you down a road that removes you further from peer groups. So although you might win in the short term, eventually you find yourself fighting a similar situation but one far more diffucult to seek advice before due to it's questionable nature. Maybe then you end up Gross, persistantly asking for support (and you do seem to be pulling things together) in a relatively anonymous internet forum where a drunkard can type a rant about the nature of addiction.

I guess the tl;dr of all of that is that every sane person has some sort of ritual or routine (substance abuse or otherwise), conscious or not, that prevents them from slipping into a self-destructive spiral where the constantly re-evaluate their ideals and priorities in life. Maybe the insane man is one who failed to maintain addiction, or one who's addiction is avoiding them.

On the other hand, you could argue that the creation of civilisation was nothing more than man hiding from their own nature, and that the continuing reinvention of lust is the resurgence of that nature; the struggle between the two threatening to bring it all down.

Cheers, and drink up!

 

Is that snus? I've never actually seen it prior to it being stuffed under someone's lip.

 

Yes, that second picture is much less homosexual.

 

The first pic looks like pillow cereal with chocolate-flavoured filling.

The second one looks like a chocolate cookie.

Mmm... Chocolate.

 

While it has been adapted to this particular use, the Hookah was originally created around 400 years ago by the court physician of Emperor Akbar in India to allow said emperor to smoke tobacco in a "safer way" than simply burning it. The emperor had heard from a foreign emissary that smoking tobacco was "pretty damn cool" and "all of the other nobles are doing it". It was thought that by passing the smoke through water, it was somehow purified and made safer to inhale. While this isn't true, it does make the smoke easier on the lungs by cooling it and mixing it with water vapor. Only recently has the hookah been made into drug paraphernalia. Unfortunately, doing this is actually detrimental to the hookah, deteriorating it much more quickly than if simple tobacco were used. It's also fairly wasteful of the cannabis if it's smoked in this way, unless the entire bowl is loaded and a lighter is used as opposed to a lit coal.

 

That second picture looks like topsoil.

 

I can personally testify that isolation does work to eliminate social temptations ... while failing to eliminate individual temptations.

Not that I choose to isolation myself; my family moved alot when I was young. After each move, it became harder and harder for me to "melt the ice" within my heart that was my defense mechanism. Can you imagine how cold my heart froze when, on the day that I finally found the courage to tell a girl that I loved her (after a three year crush), I was told that we were leaving? I was 16, old enough to love, young enough that the adults who control your life don't even realize it; (but it was decision that should have been made when I was 14, so I can't really fault them. Life goes on.)

So, anyways, what's the point of eliminating the social temptations only to face the temptations to that are worse because they are no witnesses to your darkness? I think that it is better to have the friendships than to be face your demons alone. But then I haven't lived the other side of the coin yet, so what do I know.

Not my brand of crazy. I am addicting to downloading. Doesn't matter what. And most of it ends up deleted. Though one advantage of my addiction is all the humor and games I have on my computer that I can play offline. One of the reasons I took up posting is that it takes up most of the time that I would other use for downloading... then again, maybe it is my brand of crazy.

If I could I would download the entire internet, only to delete all the stuff that I wouldn't what to look at anyways.



And btw, does anyone have another way of expressing the idea of emotional ice? I know what it feels like, but I don't think I have ever heard its proper name.

 

I tried snus in pouches and liked it. Then I tried American snuff, which was great, considering it was wintergreen and my sinuses were clogged.
Then my friend in the navy said he'd gotten turned on to chewing tobacco, and with his unflappable logic, "Dude, you got me to smoke pot. It's only fair that you try some chew," I tried it.
Having smoked hookah for such a long time, the "great buzz" he said he got whenever he stuffed a wad into his lip never happened. I accidentally swallowed my own saliva and almost puked.
The pouches of snus are apparently interwoven with fiberglass to make micro-lacerations that allow for a much more efficient absorption of nicotine. It's more of a special occasion thing for me, though, like a cigar or even hookah now (though the "special occasion" regarding hookah is spending time with friends).
Met a "model" (in quotes because she looked the part {and said so under no provocation}, but I never saw her portfolio or anything) who was straight up angry at people who were addicted to cigarettes, because it would make them uglier in the long run (as well as more serious health risks, blah blah). You know, yellowed teeth and all that. She smoked cigars at special occasions, so I asked her what she had tried (unspecified Cubans, Cohibas, and Macanudos), and I began listing other brands to see what she may have smoked. I stopped after 4 brands (which includes the Cohibas and Macanudos, because I asked if she had those while she never mentioned anything past Cubans), because she was visibly annoyed that I actually knew about different brands of rolled tobacco.
There is actually a much safer way to take in nicotine straight from tobacco leaves, however;
Vaporizers. More famous for pot related reasons, the vaporizer can be used to volatize the active ingredient in any plant without burning it. With ground up tobacco, a person could simply use a vaporizer to cure a nic-fit.
There are also various other types of cigarettes;
Kreteks; Made with tobacco and cloves, and no longer marketed as cigarettes in the US. They're sold under the brand name Djarum. The idea to mix cloves with tobacco came about in the 1880's; the man who invented them believed a compound within the cloves, eugenol, helped to quell his asthmatic spasms.
Old Timey Asthma cigarettes; No tobacco involved. Actually made completely with cannabis, as THC is a bronchodilator as well as an anti-inflammatory agent. Marketed during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

 

I describe emotional ice in terms of the chakra system, Gross.

At it's simplest: Belly, Heart and Brain, or at the next simplest division: 1) Survival; 2) Pleasure; 3) Power; 4) Love; 5)Expression; 6) Insight and; 7) Everything.

In this system, there is a remarkably coherent neural map related to the length of the spine and the muscles, nerves and organs it connects to. Eg, based on what you say about being sixteen, I'd wager your muscles were very tense around your shoulders, lower-middle back and lower back. That is, you were horny, powerless and shy.

The very interesting thing, to me, is that acupressure or shiatsu etc, actually affects those parts of consciousness just as the state-of-mind affects the muscle tension. It works both ways; the spine is almost like a keyboard which programs the mind.

Anyway, in the chakra system, the 'emotional ice' would be expressed as 'the #4 (heart) chakra is blocked'. The prana - the breath or blood-flow - is constricted to the bindu (muscle) in that part of the body, as a result of and/or leading to, emotional detachment from others.

 

You mean I went through all that trouble to talk about tobacco and the topic switched to a proper term for emotional ice?
Well, it's not like being cold towards others isn't somewhat addicting.
Also, you were talking to Xyle and directed your comment to me.
Seriously, it took so long for me to compose my post that two people got theirs in ahead of me.

 

What? Sorry dude. If I'd realised it was Xyle I wouldn't have answered so deliberately.

I recommend the chakra system to anyone with aspergers' though, as it's one way to give emotions some substance and logic.

Re-railing, I am a tobacco whore.

 

I've been dealing with emotions as though they have physical causes, i.e. a literal chemical imbalance, or some form of nerve-signal interruption that could cause eventual injury. Dietary changes and exercise have helped greatly in this respect, but I'm now wary of chiropractors, because my last one hurt me pretty badly.

Tobacco whore, you say? You could get paid in tobacco, rolling papers, and filters and make a tidy profit by selling the completed product. Just make sure you're your own pimp. No need to get smacked around by some dude cruising in a schlampenschleffer. He'd get pissed that you were dealing in leaves that were brown in the first place.