piebald crow smoking a cigarette

Nicotine is a common way for people with certain conditions like ADHD to self-medicate...but you'll almost certainly become addicted. Then again, the benefits may be a fair tradeoff for the cost and health risks.

If you do have ADHD and have medical insurance, Ritalin, focalin and Adderall are better options.

i still have an entire pack. i didn't smoked anymore from
new Year's Eve, so i don't know

Don't smoke. Not worth it.

Benefits? Fair tradeoff? Why not alcoholism then? Heroin's a great way to become zombiefied.

Same with those meds, everyday for life when writing "I will not talk in class" a 100 times used to suffice.

Thanks Modda, I always figured I was better off dead.

Than alive?

I threw away decades by crawling into a hole. Still, even that's better than letting death win,,,

Living to spite death is a great way to play oneself, considering death always wins in the end.

We all have our demons, battles and baggage. My default (unmedicated) state is so unbearably miserable that if I was forced to live in it, I would have done away with myself decades ago. A sampling of psych meds of every stripe aren't the only reason I'm alive, but they're the only reason I don't dissect my carotid artery with a pair of surgical scissors.

I realize we're talking about two different things, but this is where I come from with regard to weighing the pros and cons of drug use.

maybe you're right... you convinced me

I fell into the bottle myself, was lucky to get out of it 7/12/96.
Most of my friends then were the fellas who hung out in the alchie and druggie corner in the park. Quite a few of them are dead now, at least three AFTER they quit and got their lives back. Others, I lost track of them.

It gets to where you ain't doing it to feel better, but to wallow in it, punishing yourself for living but pretending this shit is gonna make it endurable somehow when it ain't.

Granted, this is the extreme end of addiction and cigarettes ain't hardcore drugs, but for some - too many - one leads to another, then another, and another,,,

Better to face into the wind then to try to hide from it, because there ain't any hiding from it, and life is too precious to throw away,,,

My takeaway from people dying after getting clean is, why bother? You know why Scott Weiland's death was so tragic? It's because after battling heroin for his entire adult life, he finally kicked it, and then overdosed on a combination of coke and meth, alone in the back of a tour bus.

The only conclusion I'm able to draw from that is when a person is depravedly dependent on a substance, ride that addiction into the ground. You're going to die anyway. May as well let it be from something you enjoyed. Then again, I don't have dependents and I do have a death wish, so ymmv.

Because death is a heckuva lot worse than self pity a star bathes themselves in like it was tha shitz. Homelessness ain't fun either, or selling your mouth for $5 to be able to go smoke a crack, or going to prison because you beat 2 elderly men upside the head - one already in a neck brace who was perpetually looking down as he couldn't lift his head up - for money they ain't got.

Weiland was a dickhead a band of idiots picked to replace their singer who was a dickhead and who had ditched them, keeping the band name those leather-clad pretend street urchins signed over to him in exchange for....... nothing. Yeah, smart going there, fellas. But at least he sounded just like Eddie Vedder and wa almost as annoying, so kuddos for that.

"ride that addiction into the ground. You're going to die anyway"

My attitude too, till one day crossing our quite street here on the way to catch the train to school without looking because what's gonna happen that ain't because I'm so awesome, right? a car sent my backpack that I was holding with my hand flying, my skin feeling the whoosh as it was that close to being scraped.
I looked before crossing after that.

Life is beautiful.
There's no such thing as going to die. Ya either dead or you ain't.

The tragedy of Scott Weiland's life is he existed in the shadow of another more popular douche, and spent his entire career being accused of ripping off someone he didn't give 2 shits about.

Val Kilmer said he doesn't believe in death. I can't help but wonder how many people shared that same sentiment before they died. Andy Dufresne's quip about "get busy living or get busy dying" notwithstanding, there's nothing wrong about acknowledging and facing down hard truths. Willful ignorance and self delusion have their perks too, but existential authenticity ain't one of them. I know you're not a fan of Fight Club, but I feel there is value for everyone in knowing--not fearing--that someday you're going to die.