(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best health recovery books

hey this is long, so feel free to take your time reading this, just don't ignore it cause i'm about to suggest something to you that might help your addiction.

first off, i hope you're doing well friend. i may not know you, but i do care. if you're feeling suicidal, i urge you to talk to someone. this is from the reddit suicidewatch faq.

secondly, good on you for throwing away the cigs. if you're having trouble quitting smoking nicotine, i suggest reading the book "Stop Smoking Now" by Allen Carr. if you don't mind reading a pdf version, you can use this, otherwise you can get a copy on amazon for cheap here. the great thing about the book is that it's short, only 100 or so pages.

if you have doubts about quitting through reading a book, trust me, i had the same doubts. you don't even have to quit right away, the book tells you you can smoke as you're reading it. it was incredibly hard for me to go cold turkey, until i came across this book. i tried lots of different things (substitutes like gum, vapes, even more weed) to help me quit, all to no avail. then i picked up allen carr's book, and by the last page i was done smoking. i had no need for another one.

the other great thing about the book is that i believed it helped put me in the right mindset to quit smoking weed. it might not work the same for you, but i highly suggest reading this if you're having trouble with nicotine addiction. if this book doesn't help, then read his other book which is also very helpful, link is here. it's a bit longer, but it goes even more into depth and solidifies the points in his first book.

NOTE: make sure to pay attention to all the points that he makes in his first book, otherwise you might find yourself smoking again, meaning you'll have to pick up the second book. that's what happened to me, but the second book still helped me quit. i thought that i could smoke a cigarette during a night out drinking cause it had been months past since my last one...

everything one step at a time

So this is probably way late and you may be gone, but perhaps someone can relay it to you some time:

I'm gunna be a bit pig-headed and assume you haven't read this book otherwise you would be over the struggle. I wanna just tell you it's magic, it feels like it. It's basically CBT, anyone who has believed me enough to read it has quit smoking - it's beautiful, it's genius.

I wish you luck regardless.

Also, you're fucking brill at what you do. I appreciate your skillz.

I love this book . "Writing on Drugs" by Sadie Plant. No pun intended in the author's name! It's really fascinating in its discussions of drug use and their influence on famous writers and contemporary culture. It's one of my must-read recommendations to people :)

These are some of my favorites:

[Living Sober] (http://www.amazon.com/Living-Sober-AA-Services/dp/B0048C7TFA/ref=pd_rhf_gw_s_cp_43_WD8V?ie=UTF8&refRID=1EFFBA3G6THH9QT9G6BG)

Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety

Drinking: A Love Story

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Buy this book called Easyway to stop smoking and read it. It was the only thing that worked for me. And do not put it off thinking that you will have to stop smoking if you buy it. You can keep on smoking as long as you are reading it. In fact, there are certain places in the book where the author will ask you to light up.

The book points out that the willpower method that we use to try to quit smoking doesn't work. It only makes you feel like you are sacrificing something you enjoy and makes you feel deprived. This feeling of deprivation makes it harder for you to quit. Which is exactly what I faced. The real secret to quitting is to not feel like you are depriving yourself.

I do not know how it worked or why it worked (I have my retrospective theories, of course) but it did. As I was reading the book, it became harder and harder to smoke a cigarette. By the end of it, I was not smoking because I didn't want to. Not because I had to stop. It really worked for me. Hope it works for you too. All the best.

P.S. I suggest you buy the book and a 20 pack of smokes and start asap.

This is a fantastic resource: https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Men-4th-Lowell-Seashore/dp/0971995834

Actually yes. But I'm also going to tell you a whole other bunch of things about how smoking really is, beginning with it being a drug just like heroin and that there's no other way you should think about it.

That said, there is a faster way to prevent yourself from ever wanting to smoke. Buy a pack of 20, tape them together and smoke the lot in one go. I guarantee you you will never want to smoke again.

Or finally there's this.

Ah ok. You should read [this book] (http://www.amazon.com/After-War-Drugs-Tools-Debate/dp/0955642809/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1374653214&sr=8-2&keywords=after+the+war+on+drugs+tools).

Try reading EasyWay to stop smoking by Allan Carr. It's my 9th day without smoking after 3 years. I know 3 years isn't 28, but it's worth a try. It really helped me understand my addiction.

Except that the science doesn't all disagree with me.

Case in point: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200,00.html

EDIT: Also this book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Drinking-Enemies-Kari-Poikolainen/dp/1626526788

They only way to know is to take a big sword and bisect her in half and look inside to find only human there.

Just kidding man.

If you are standing up for the current EIIR, then I believe you're account has been compromised or you need to hit the books, specifically this one

I smoked for 10 years and have been quit for a year now. Just read this book. You won't even miss smoking after you read it. http://www.amazon.com/Smoking-Permanently-Penguin-Health-Fitness/dp/0140244751/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289210048&sr=8-1

You could try "The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" and "Living Sober" - they both helped me a lot and were written 15 and 30 years after the "Big Book" Alcoholics Anonymous.

But the one book (that is not published by AA) which told me the most about AA and really helped me come to terms with practicing the 12 Steps as an Atheist is the book "Not God" by Ernie Kurtz

https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Literary-Agents-2018-Published/dp/1440352666

Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How Big Tobacco Affects Our Health, Pocketbook and Political Freedom--And What We Can Do About It

He has a 2nd book for people who have read the first and still went back to smoking. He also suggests to reread the first if having cravings.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smoking-Permanently-Penguin-Health-Fitness/dp/0140244751/ref=pd_sim_b_3/276-7832747-0908409

> ...und gebe Geld meistens für irgendwelchen Schwachsinn aus, den ich meistens sowieso nicht brauche.

Was denn zum Beispiel? Und unter welchen Umständen?

> Ein großes Manko ist auch, dass ich rauche. Und da im Monat bestimmt 100,00 € für Kippen drauf gehen.

Aufhören ist das Beste, Empfehlung dazu der Klassiker von Allen Carr, gibt's gebraucht für unter 10 Euro. Ansonsten ist drehen finanziell ne Alternative.

Read the book.

I went from 30 a day to none without any side effects, patches or vapours about eight years ago and haven't craved or relapsed since.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0718194551

http://www.allencarr.com/

This worked for me

It would be this one!

Oxford has a series of books called "Very Short Introductions" and there is one on how drugs work

Drugs: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198745796/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5OJTCbGBXVRFD

Well most addictions are BS, read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Opiates-Revised-Paperback-Pharmacological/dp/1594032254/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229511737&sr=8-5

It's all about choice. We always have one. It's not right to try to make the lack of willpower into a medical condition.

Read this book

The only way to quit smoking

I cant recommend it enough, I quit smoking almost 5 years ago

And that's why I quit smoking nearly 4 years ago, after 17 years going nuts. I read this book, btw. Took a few more years to finally sink in though.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Easy-Way-Stop-Smoking/dp/1402736592/ref=pd_sim_b_2

This book is magic. But she still needs to want to quit for her own sake, not yours.

EDIT: Also, being an ex-smoker I really doubt she's only smoking two a week... Something to consider.

No secret, just self control and fail safes .See here

I did also lead a small group last school year and went through this book with 5 other guys. If anyone fell, they had to tell what happened and we would try to help think of ways to prevent it in the future.

You NEED to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Smoking-Permanently-Penguin-Health-Fitness/dp/0140244751/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1318252675&sr=8-11

Helped me stop over 6 years ago -no cravings! Most important book I've ever read.

I'm a little late to the discussion but hopefully this helps someone.

I only see one post about Alan Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking and it is a shame because if you smoke or have quit it is immensely useful. It is a book, there is also an audio-book available. The book can be useful whether you've already quit, want to quit, smoke and don't want to quit. No matter your disposition after reading it you will see smoking in a completely different light.


You continue to smoke while you read the book, when you've finished the book you can decide to quit or read it again. I listened to the book once and still wasn't ready to quit so I listened again. After the second time through I quit and haven't had a cigarette in 37 days. I can smell things again, I can run further and faster, I freedive and finally broke my previous record of 55ft, now I can get to 60 and swim around for 10 seconds before coming up. I've saved over $200, I don't have a constant cough, and I don't smell like stale smoke.

The main points of the book are:

• You aren't giving up anything, you are in fact gaining a lot of things (better lung function, reduced cancer risk, etc.)
  
• Cigarettes do not relieve stress, they aren't necessary to make a meal complete; the only thing they relieve is the withdrawal from the last cigarette.
  
• The withdrawal is mostly mental, you may not believe it now but the physical withdrawal (for most people) is actually very mild. The mental withdrawal is what can be excruciating. If you think of it as "quitting cigarettes" you will see people smoking cigarettes and envy them because while they can have a cigarette, you are being deprived of one. That is not the case, they are compelled to smoke cigarettes to relieve the withdrawal the previous cigarette caused; just as anyone who is addicted to nicotine is.
  
• Every reason you think you need a cigarette is bullshit and this book debunks them all.
  
• Nicotine replacement and other replacements such as gum and toothpicks only prolong your pain, they aren't necessary and will only make you think about cigarettes even more. If you feel you must use them then do it, most things are still better than cigarettes.
  
  I quit cold turkey and all I had was a few times where I thought I would like a cigarette, the craving was easy to dismiss. I drank during the first week and unlike the other time I had quit didn't fail then and there, I didn't even realize I never felt like having a cigarette until the next morning. Buy the book - even if you read it and decide you want to keep smoking you will have a much better understanding of why you smoke.
  
  
  tl;dr - One time I stabbed a guy for a cigarette.

Nicotine and alcohol are both addictive drugs, if you can't quit then it's a dependency problem not a discipline problem. If you ever feel like you 'need' a drink, see a professional - just because you're not a full blown alcoholic doesn't mean you have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

As for smoking, not sure if you mean weed or cigarettes. If it's the former, mixing weed with tobacco means you're probably addicted to nicotine anyway. I personally quit smoking with this method, I'd recommend it, but whatever works is fine. Weed isn't chemically addictive, so if you quit tobacco and buy a bong you'll be able to keep using it in moderation. It will fuck up your ability to be productive though, so it's probably a bad idea until you're back on your feet.

As for sleeping, just set your alarm early and stay awake when it goes off. Move your alarm so you have to get out of bed and stand up to turn it off. I'm a heavy sleeper, so I have an app that means I have to answer math questions before the alarm stops too. Find something that works for you - do not stop looking until you find it. When you change your sleep pattern, you'll be exhausted for a week or two. That's just how it is, you can't change it, you just have to suffer. No naps, no days off.

Finally, if you've been unemployed for a year, you need to watch out for depression. Stay active every day, even if it's just walking around your neighborhood. Stay social every day too, face to face communication is hugely important to your mental wellbeing. Find a creative hobby to keep your mind active - writing is free if you already have a computer, everyone has a phone camera so there's photography too, drawing, guitar, whatever interests you. Just staring at a screen all day pushing buttons on a remote/gamepad is not healthy, make something new every day even if it's just an insragram photo or a doodle to start off with.

EDIT: Finally, don't beat youself up when you fail. Everybody who tries, fails. If you want to succeed, don't use failure as an excuse to stop trying.

"Some dude with an opinion" really denigrates the ability of the average person to grasp the situation.

It's been well over 100 years of the so-called 'War on Drugs'. An utter failure that has prevented neither people using or selling drugs in any way whatsoever. There has never been a shortage of drugs on the street nor dealers available to sell them.

These fantastic 'hauls' that customs officers and police take photos of, grinning about a massive seizure means absolutely nothing in the scheme of things.

Record breaking 2 tonnes of heroin found in old womans matress


Who cares?

All that time, money, man power the result is a newspaper headlien that says.. 'massive smuggling ring smashed'.

Not a single user noticed any difference waiting in the alleyway for their guy.


When you consider just one man, Pablo Escobar the archetypal model for what drug smuggling can achieve at its peak.. was making $62,000,000 smuggling 15 tonnes of cocaine per day.

He spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to hold his stacks of cash together and wrote off 10% of his earnings ($1.3 billion a year) on not storing it properly and having it either rot, get eaten by rats or just lost because he had hidden it in so many places.

People aren't going to stop using drugs. The police can't prevent that many people from using them and the whack-a-mole technique of quashing drug dealers only to have another two pop up in their place has never worked either. Where there's money to be made - there are people willing to take the risk in order to make it.

And that fact applies to any profession. Including sex. Which is another vice that will eventually be legal and regulated.

Answer to your question, this is a clear example of a situations were you don't even need to be an expert to see just how plainly the government has fucked the situation up. You only need to open your eyes and read the statistics to see a failure and desperate need for a new route.. Regulation is the only way. Just consider the money flying out of the country into the hands of terrorists, cartels, our enemies, general scum bags that fund other criminal activities - worse activities - ones that the police really ought to be focused on like people trafficking or anything to do with children. Who cares about someone smoking a joint when there are kids being harmed. The choice is clear as to which should take priority.


Whether you're living on the streets as a victim of addiction, a middle class blue collar worker that hurt himself on the job and is now absolutely stuck with a life on pain pills, high functioning self prescribing doctor to a rock star with multiple doctor signing off on your weekly supply of legal adult candies..

The drug usage and abusage is far and wide and the desire to alter out consciousness, experiment and drug supply and demand is so firmly written into our DNA its absurd to try and manage that desire with laws.


Okay - BOTTOM LINE
-------------------

This isn't just my opinion..

I arrived at my conclusion through my own dealings with people, my own knowldge of what its like out there on all sides of the fence but mostly, from reading.

My entire bookshelf is filled with books on the history of humans, out relationship with chemicals, our desire to refine and distil, to make stronger, to invent techniques to improve, to alter, to experiment - our entire pharmaceutical industry is built on fiddling with chemicals and experimenting with them to determine their effects - both for recreational and medicinal purposes. Asprin and Opium used as a painkillers - then as a weapon when we flooded china with it in order to conquer them while they were docile.

It's only now after all this time that we are allowing scientific work to be done on what seemed like recreational drugs - LSD, Magic Mushrooms, Ketamine (despite its uses in medicine already) that they are psychic medicines to be used in PTSD, Anxiety, Addiction problems..

All drugs are tools in their own way, but they need to be used correctly and in the right setting for the right reason.

Even amphetamines have their uses in ADHD, Cocaine in local aesthetic..

The fact that tobacco and alcohol - the two most useless, BIGGEST killers and cause of more than any other health problems (with obesity close behind - because sugar is an addictive drug, and people that don't smoke or drink are probably finding that they need something to alter the way they feel once in a while - and eating seems to have taken over their brain without them realising).. the fact that these are LEGAL is insane. While everything else isn't.

Its nuts. Totally nuts. It makes no sense. Hence the reason so many people chose to ignore the governments rules and laws on whats good and bad for you. And as soon as they smoke their first joint and it doesn't kill them - it probably is a gateway to realising the laws are people pushing them are full of shit and what else is there to try! I don't want to drink every weekend after work, a huge cancer risk, and peer pressure means that its all I have as an option with my friends. I'd say peer pressure to drink and be social, as its the only option available is worse than anything else.

Regulation is the only way.

All other methods have failed and for the fundamental reason that people don't want to stop using them and there is too much to be made from selling them. Full stop. Period.


The last century is a chapter of failed history on something we have only just tried to force on people. Humans don't want to be sober all the time. We want weekends, recreational time, an escape from the constant existential crisis that is living.


Some of my favourite and most interesting books on drugs in general from human history to the more lighthearted but nonetheless fascinating world of Howard Marks' smuggling misadventures:

Chasing the Scream is an excellent book

Writing on Drugs

PiKhal You can ignore the chemistry lesson, the beginning of the book about his contact with the DEA and his views on the essential therapeutic nature and benefits of psychedelic drugs in so much as it prompted him to pursue a lifelong career until his death into the chemistry and invention of thousands upon thousands of new drugs (all listed in this book and it's sequel 'Tihal') that he then tested on himself and friends, also writing quantitative notes and summaries of each new compound.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I found the comments on the police and the culture surrounding drugs in the era that this was written - just after the 60s summer of love and into the 70s, where the experiment failed, peaceful student protesters were beaten by police and the vietnam war started.. it felt like 'love' had failed, and this is a reflection more on that than getting high - although that is the haze through which the story is told!

The Doors of Perception Perhaps the most important book on tripping ever written - goes hand in hand with Heaven and Hell, the book he wrote shortly after as a reflection on the first book. They need to be read together.

Nobody has since done it better. the fact that it was legal at the time meant that its written with a completely clear and objective conscience about the effects. The stripping away of the filters than normally function in our day to day lives in order for us to cope with the floor of information that comes in through our eyes every moment of every second. Without dulling the beauty of nature down to a tolerable level, we'd get nothing done - as he points out after spending 20 minutes describing a tablecloth.

But from this you an infer that so many people are perhaps so overly dulled, lacking compassion and empathy for the beauty in life that they perhaps have more hate or lack or care for ripping up the countryside and covering it in highways.. you get the point. Sure, its a hippy perspective, but its true. Humans don't fit into nature, we pave over it in the pursuit of small, green pieces of paper..


I have MANY, more.. our history with drugs both natural and man made is amazing, culture surrounding it is facinating, hallucinogens in ancient culture is prolific, including native indians, shamans in puru, coca chewing, Khat chewing.. its everywhere.

And we only tend to think of the last 50-100 years because its all we are aware of, but its goes back 1000s of years.

You know all of those crazy dangerous and wrong ideas about germs and medical proceedures we have about the victorian era - well our drug laws stem from around that time too.

It's time to update our thinking about all of it.

We even have the skills to develop safe recreationsal drugs for the weekend, non addictive, better than alcohol, safer..

I mean, why not MAKE new safe drugs instead of regulate what is illegal right now? Psychedelics that only last an hour or have an antidote.. etc. The possibilities to quell the black market are huge.