Comment by dayvigo
1 day ago
> I can't doubt that I want to eat a doughnut or that I want to be healthy or that I want a world with less cruelty in it.
The common case of the smoker (or someone around them) doubting whether they "really" want to quit cigarettes or not, after claiming they do want to quit and will quit, and then failing to do so, shows this is coherent though. It's just not applicable to the two examples you gave, because that's not what is meant.
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.
I 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.
“Just say ‘no.’”
Where 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.