Smoking NOT the Worst Coping Option? (Possibly Triggering Pics)

I love it when I find an article that just inspires me to write!

I found this article on my Twitter feed and got a little angry at it. It’s from Psych Central and it’s called Smoking Isn’t the Worst Coping Option.

I began smoking when I was around 14 years old. I quite smoking 2 years ago when I realized that on weekends I was smoking almost a pack a day and wasn’t pleased! I have also engaged in other forms of coping such as drugs, drinking, and self harm.
We would NEVER think to tell someone that by doing drugs, drinking or by self harming that they are doing their best to cope and that they “could be doing worse things”.

These three coping mechanisms are looked down upon by society. So is smoking but I think we can all agree that is it way more acceptable. We have drug addiction, alcohol addiction and a new upcoming self harm disorder but nicotine addiction is not usually, if ever, treated at a rehab or the typical places we would assume coping turned illness would go. (No self harm pics because they’re all triggering as shit)

Drugs, alcohol and self harm are seen as dangerous. Alcohol can kill you. Drugs can kill you. Self harm is just “weird”. Cigarettes should not be put off into its own category of “you could do worse” just because you may die 30 years down the line! This is excluding the fact that even if you do not die you may still have heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems, mouth and gum disease, skin issues, and well you just are not healthy!

I don’t want to encourage smoking. I will never look down on someone for smoking but I do not like the attitude this article is sending out. For me, in comparison to  reading, writing, singing, dancing, being with friends, smoking IS ONE OF THE WORST COPING MECHANISMS!

If I want to go a tad morbid for a second, I could cut for the rest of my life, until the day I die, and I will never be at a higher risk for death than if I continued smoking. Could I get a serious infection from cutting, yes I could and that could be lethal. But, given that I practice harm reduction everything I use is clean and my cuts are cleaned. This minimizes the chance for infection. You can’t do that with smoking unless you are barely smoking (which seems like a waste of time to me. I’m very all in or all out).

I googled "coping skills" and found a picture of a bunny

Smoking is dangerous and I don’t like that there are articles out there saying, “Hey, you know what? It’s not that bad!”  Especially when we wont hear that about drugs, alcohol or self harm. I’ve been trying to compare self harm to smoking because they do serve the same purpose in regards to coping but most of the time people disagree with this comparison. Cutting you can see right away, smoking takes a few years to rear its ugly face on your body. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that it’s better for you.

This all mostly comes down to societal perceptions. It’s ok for people to smoke when they are stressed. It’s not ok for people to do drugs AT ALL. It’s not ok for people to self harm AT ALL. It’s ok for people to drink to deal with stress but tread very carefully cause that can immediately look like an addiction!

Hypocritical if you ask me.

(I am not endorsing any of these coping methods. Just trying show that they are all not healthy and that smoking is just as bad and we shouldn’t fool ourselves thinking that we could do worse than smoking)