“Someone is either a smoker or a nonsmoker. There’s no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that. If you’re a nonsmoker, you’ll know.” – Dead Again
I sense a contradiction in these signs . . . can anyone help me figure this brain teaser out?
One of the more notable downsides to being a human is that there are numerous activities that you can do that (apparently) have no significantly bad effect on you. Smoke? Sure. You might cough some tomorrow, and your mouth might taste pretty ugly for a day or two, but everyone knows that smoking’s not bad for you, right?
Smoking even has some pretty good immediate impacts – smokers weigh less than non-smokers. And a smoker who quits – gains weight, so there’s a direct negative effect tied to giving up smoking. Plus, when you have a smoker who quits smoking, their brain has to rewire itself. Huh?
If you’ve been using nicotine regularly for any length of time your brain changes. Nicotine has an impact on almost everything you love by increasing the level of serotonin in your brain. What does serotonin do? Not much: serotonin helps to regulate mood and social behavior, appetite and digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire and function. Oh, and it increases your mental acuity and speed of thought processing. And (early on in using it) it gives you a nice buzzy feeling of peace.
I’m not sure about you, but if you add in football and beer, well, that’s most of life. Just “quitting” nicotine means impacting . . . everything about your life that you like. I’ve heard it said that nicotine is tougher to quit than Wonder Woman®. Oh! That’s heroin, not heroine. My bad.
Yes. Your brain has to rewire itself. Full disclosure: I’m a former tobacco user (not a smoker) so I know about this personally. I takes three days for the immediate nicotine to drop to nearly zero in the bloodstream. It takes three weeks for the brain to not be foggy every day, and three months for the brain to (more or less) completely rewire.
Second full disclosure: I really like nicotine. When I turn 65 or when the doctor gives me a short timespan on the Earth? I’m going to take in all of the tobacco. Get a tobacco suit. Bathe in tobacco water. Use it as toothpaste and underarm deodorant.
Nicotine is easy to start, easy to love, and has some great short-term properties. What’s not to like?
Well, there might be some longer term problems – not so much with nicotine (which might mess with your heart after decades – but probably isn’t much more of a risk factor than being fat) but with the delivery system. Inhaling buckets of smoke daily for thousands of days in a row might be bad for you. Who knew? And chewing tobacco and vaping appears to have (some relatively minor) increase in risk of several cancers plus some heart stuff.
But when you’re feeling that wonderful feel from tobacco, 23 year-old-you doesn’t care a bit if 65 year-old-you gets lung cancer, because 23 year-old-you is pretty sure that aging is what happens to other people, and not to 23 year-old-you.
That’s the other thing about the brain – it prioritizes things that are happening to you, right now, today over things that might happen to you in the future. And each of us values that future differently.
The “different value” of the future is apparent when we look at different deals. Would you prefer $50 today from me, or $50 from me three months from now? Everyone (except three-year-olds) will pick “now”. Tons of things can happened in 90 days. You might spontaneously combust. You might get hit by a tiny asteroid while out walking your pet penguins, poodles, and parakeets.
Okay, what if I offered you $100 in three months? That sounds like a deal many people will take. You realize that spontaneous combustion and tiny asteroids aren’t all that common. You decide that a risk is worth it to double your money. But even this deal is situationally dependent. You might really need that $50 to buy more trashbags so you can throw away all of your Star Wars® dolls action figures after that horrible last movie.
This is what economists call a “discount rate” – it’s literally how much you discount the probability of a future event versus your present needs. Most often it’s used with money and a specific percentage is used, but in the end, it’s all about how different people value the future.
Why do we value the future differently? Beats me. And, I think it beats everyone. And it’s certainly not the whole story (LINK):
The first study examines health-related variables associated with making tradeoffs between the present and future, including body mass index (BMI), exercise frequency, dieting, and smoking. The authors find that the discount rate is a significant determinant of BMI, exercise, and smoking and that it can explain 15 to 20 percent of the variation (or differences in these variables across people) in each of these measures. Interestingly, no other variable explains as much of the variation as the discount rate. When the authors create an index of these four health variables, the results are even more striking – the discount rate explains one-quarter of the variation in the index, while no other variable explains more than one-tenth.
Thankfully, our tax dollars went to study the correlation between how people do deals involving money and whether or not they exercise. In the end, the answers appear to be pretty messy. People smoke, because . . . maybe . . . they like it?
Some people might even need it.
80% of schizophrenics smoke versus 20% of the population. The one (actual, diagnosed) schizophrenic that I knew smoked constantly. It turns out that the nicotine from the cigarettes regulates the dopamine thingys in their head/brain thing, and is a pretty substantial benefit. Schizophrenics smoke a lot, and are (from everything I’ve heard – from real doctors) actually amazing good at self-dosing with cigarettes to provide themselves meaningful benefits, and, well, not be as crazy.
Humans are complicated in their behavior, even when not schizophrenic.
What is the impact of a choice today versus an outcome in the future? Does the first bite of cake care about the second? Not really, but your discount rate may tell you how much you eat.
Oh, and back to tobacco:
So why did I quit? Three reasons: to (1) see if I could, to (2) lower future health risks (self-diagnosed) and to (3) stick it to the man. Tobacco products are heavily taxed. If I can voluntarily lower tax payments and then live longer so I can drain Social Security?
Yeah, count me in!
(John Wilder is NOT a doctor, except in an amateur, Civil War doctor sort of way when extracting splinters from Pugsley and The Boy, so please don’t consider this medical advice.)
