Having quit nicotine, I can say that it's simply a matter of wanting to quit. I do love smoking still, and have a pipe or a cigar roughly every two weeks, but my half-a-tin of 12mg nicotine pouches a day habit is gone.
replyI miss it, and I didn't want to quit, but it was financially a little silly and that much nicotine causes health effects. You can desire to stop something but also not want to. It seems fair to allow both to be true.
I think its better to say that people can have multiple, competing, desires, especially at different time scales. Nothing about the human condition as I can understand it makes this unreasonable, since I don't subscribe really to the idea that people really are a singular, coherent, entity.
reply“Just say ‘no.’”
replyWhere have I heard that, before?
In my experience, compulsive people can often be totally unable to quit; no matter how hard they want to.
That’s one reason that I don’t dis fat people (I could stand to lose some weight, myself, and I’m working on it).
Drugs like Ozempic, have been making big differences, here, as they attack that reptile-brain compulsion that makes quitting so difficult.