"Aspies don't smoke"

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I agree with you their my friend

I enjoy a good smoke occasionally. It has nothing to do with the need to fit in because I always smoke alone.
Yes I know it bad for my health. I just don't give a damn.

I just enjoy it, its the only explanation I need.

I have a logical reason not to smoke because it causes cancer. It's always been a "black and white" thing for me, along with drinking and other drugs. On top of that, I don't have a strong inclination for peer pressure. Apparently it's not as categorical with other Aspies, but there's still marginal credence.

NTs prioritize social conformity over their own health. Very strange...

Until about midway through this thread I felt like a complete degenerate. My housemate has a medical card and in the words of Snoop Dogg I light trees like every day is Christmas, partly as a coping mechanism, partly because its a habit and partly just because if you're a fairly socially awkward kid who plays heaps of video games and internet poker , loves cartoons and isn't running a marathon anytime soon it makes everything just fantastic.
I also smoked cigarettes for a while, but that was mostly because when I was really uncomfortable it always gave me something to do with my hands and mouth and if you're not very good at small talk going to smoke a cig with someone is a great icebreaker. Not recommending it, ultimately the health drawbacks were enough to make me quit, just joining the not every Aspie does (or does not do) anything crowd.

I don't smoke.

I don't get drunk.

I don't take drugs, unless for medicinal purposes.

As someone said, I have never felt the need to follow peer pressure, and doing the above three things just doesn't make logical sense. They're all bad for you.

If I want to feel good and make myself happy, I can think of plenty of other things I can do, that don't have such horrible side-effects.

Out of curiosity why does the assumption that people with aspergers don't willingly risk their health exist? Also, peer pressure is not the only reason people smoke...it never really played a role for me. But I suppose there is variation in all groups of people.

I started smoking at 21.

I was working at a garbage dump, and one day we started getting trucks loaded with cigarettes whose tax stamps had expired. My coworkers and I started loading bins full of them.

I looked at my absurdly large stock of cigarettes, and thought "Hey, why not start smoking? Not like I will be buying cigarettes for a while."

It was nine months before I actually had to buy my first pack of cigarettes. This, even as I went up to about 5 packs a day and developed a habit of handing out an entire pack of cigarettes to people who asked for a cigarette. These people were often awed into silent worship at my magnanimity.

I rapidly cut down to a pack a day, and have maintained that rate since.

A few months after starting, I decided to surprise my mom on a visit to her, by lighting up out of nowhere. Her comment: "You're supposed to start smoking like everyone else: at 12 years old out of peer pressure! Who just decides to start smoking as an adult?!"

I find nicotine does help with stress, while communal smoking is a wonderful way of socializing.

Here is my theory, backed up with science. Caffeine does not actually heighten one's attention and intelligence, so much as shift its peak from where it is relatively useless (around evening), to where it comes much more in handy (one's work hours). In a way, we have a limited daily quota of attention, which a cup of coffee only shifts around to where it is most needed. Similarly, we have a limited quota of patience and even-temper to be distributed through the day. A cigarette can do wonders for distributing one's patience from where it is not very useful (reading a book in the wee morning) to where it can be effective (immediately before or after a stressful activity such as meeting a stranger).

My morning coffee and cigarette are somewhat like tiny, incredibly addictive Doctors able to temporally displace those traits which make one sane, to where they will do the most good. And like little Doctors, the universe itself will end without them.

It's always been a logic thing for me. I don't want cancer so I don't smoke. It's really that simple. I don't really bother with anything other than the facts.

I guess alot of people smoke out of peer pressure, some others just don't care about their health, but If you're willingly risking your health, then that's something I don't really understand. It's really irrational to me.

Well that makes sense, and I know smoking can cause cancer.......but I don't really care, which is why that does not really stop me. And well I have pretty severe depression so the thought of 'i could die sooner if I smoke this' is actuallly somewhat appealing.

That is a really fantastic thing, and if that were true for all people then there would be very little recreational drug use, but there you are.

^^^ I suppose it comes down to one's cost-benefit analysis.

For me, the expected utility of a cigarette (a high probability of a few minutes of calm, a chance to relax, and general euphoria) outweighs the expected disutility (a relatively low probability of long-term health effects). I can't really argue with those whose expected value calculus leads to an opposite decision, it just shows they have a longer time horizon than I do.

It may help that I am hoping I will see the Singularity.

Note that in my expected value calculus, the disutility of drinking alcohol and using other drugs does outweigh their expected utility, and I hence have no interest in trying them. In many threads during my archive-binging I noticed that quite a few here have made the opposite decision, seeing the short-term effects on socialization to outweigh their long-term effects.

Cuz we're super logical cyborgs doncha know? Seriously, logical does not equal being absolutely risk averse. And hell people have said drinking is irrational. Sure it is if you're a alcoholic, but if you're talking about moderate drinking or maybe getting drunk once in a while, then how did you reduce the logicality of that to a simple risk/reward ratio for you so called super logical aspies? Just cuz you're extremely risk averse it doesn't make you logical. It is illogical to assume you are so certain of the risk/reward of everything when it isn't even that cut and dried.

I started when I was 13, and found it DID help me relax, and was pretty useful when I needed a quick excuse to get out of a conversation. Quit cold-turkey when I was 15, after I got asthma.

I live below the influence

Had one cigarette, hated the taste it left in my mouth. Never picked up another cigarette again. Didn't drink until the alcoholic energy drinks came out, and even those I drunk few and far between. But now, Four Loko, Joose, and the rest are banned in the Pacific Northwest.

Come to think of it, didn't the FDA ban alcoholic energy drinks nationwide?

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