Comment by latexr

> Your cigarette addiction might have started because of social pressure or because of advertisement, but every choice to light another one or not was entirely yours.

This is contradictory. Once you are addicted, the choice is no longer “entirely yours”. That’s what being an addict means, your physiology and your wants are in conflict and require constant active vigilance to contradict. Your head begins to rationalise and you’ll even forget you wanted to stop. If it were simply “entirely your choice”, addiction wouldn’t be an issue.

The advertising and other factors which caused you to become addicted don’t stop after you are addicted. So if you’re willing to admit that external factors may trigger the problem, you must be able to comprehend those factors also contribute to stopping you from solving it. But now you have your own biology as another obstacle.

I agree with you that the previous commenter made unreasonable assumptions about you, but I agree with them that at least in this particular conversation you’re not demonstrating empathy for the addict. What you’re essentially saying, repeatedly, is that they’re choosing to be addicts because they don’t simply choose to stop. This is not true, and you’ll quickly realise that if you engage with addicts, especially if they’re someone you knew from before. There is a transformation, addiction turns you into a different person you don’t always recognise.