Taco Takes Tuesdays

These takes are totally tacos

Sometimes random dumb shit comes to mind, but then it kinda sticks around in my head, rattling back and forth. Sometimes it leads to an interesting insight years later, especially when merged with something else (eg: my Peace of Westphalia post). Other times it’s just a small dumb thing that never pans out.

For the heck of it, I may post some. I don’t take these very seriously, they’re fleeting thoughts I haven’t put a lot of effort into. They could be extremely wrong! In some cases they’re just straight up tacos. 🤪 I don’t necessarily endorse or stand by any of them, they’re just to poke at intuitions or ideas. Won’t be that often or regular either, cuz this is for fun.

As an example, here’s my first one:

Nicotine Addiction Soothes Anxiety By Causing Anxiety

I used to smoke. The most common sensation felt by a smoker is the urge to go have a cigarette, happens 8-20 times a day (40+ for the really screwed ones, I guess??) It’s an uncomfortable sensation! You’re irritable and anxious and can’t focus. And you know exactly why.

Lots of people have generalized Anxiety. They’ll become irritable and anxious and can’t focus. They have no idea why this is happening! It sucks, and it spirals. Happens to me too on occasion.

The fact that I don’t know why this is happening is part of the frustration and crappiness. I don’t know what I can do to stop this anxiety cuz I don’t even know where it’s coming from!

As a smoker, I can displace a random anxiety spike onto a known source - oh, I need a cigarette. Even if this is not the true source, the believe that it is is soothing. Once I go outside and have a cigarette I will actually legitimately feel less anxious, both due to placating the addiction and due to placebo effects.

(Plus the actual physical affects of nicotine, of course, which are numerous and seem to actually help anxiety a bit, IIRC? I’ve seen reports that people high in mania/schitzophrenic-adjacent/anxious disorders smoke a lot and it seems to actually reduce symptoms.) But let’s ignore those and focus just on the addiction-satiation mechanism.

The Taco Take is that having something to blame your non-addiction-anxiety on and taking an action that sooths addiction-anxiety gives you greater feelings of control, and placebo-effects the non-addiction-anxiety away.

How true is it? Is it even more than 0% true? I don’t know! And it’s probably one of the worst ways to deal with anxiety, because it destroys your health, makes you smell bad, and makes you ugly. But it’s just a thought, not a recommendation.