The answers you give friends when they question your smoking are, when you think about them dispassionately, and when the smoking persona is not in control, wrong. To look at the first one critically. "It's my only bad habit, everybody is allowed some pleasure in life". This is obviously not true, you have at least one other bad habit, that of lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself every time you tell yourself that smoking is not a problem, you are also lying to yourself when you associate smoking with pleasure. Smoking is only pleasurable in that 'actually smoking a cigarette' frees you from the need to resist the inner demand for a cigarette thus releasing you from the need to fight your addiction which reduces your inner stress levels.
- I Am A Non-Smoker
The Prozac revolution provides an example. With antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs so common, critics wonder whether we're losing the ability to overcome problems through force of will. Many an uncomprehending spouse has asked, "Why don't you just snap out of it?" But depressed people don't have lazy souls. The parts of their brains that could "snap out of it" are not working properly. To depressed people it is objectively obvious that their prospects are hopeless. Tweaking the brain with drugs may sometimes be the best way to jump-start the machinery that we call the will.
- Steven Pinker, How to Think About the Mind
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
- Eric Hoffer
Perils of Generalizing from One's Social Group
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