THE UPSIDE OF BAD HABITS

Posted on November 24, 2020November 25, 2020 by vlaw759

I’ve long maintained that people always do things for a reason—or more than one. Even habits are not “just habits.” There are reasons people repeatedly do something—often non-consciously—and this includes bad habits. At this point, most writing on the topic of bad habits would veer off into a discussion of ways to break them. But this blog is about what people get out of their habits that might not be immediately obvious.

A bad habit is that action which causes problems for our health, income, career, or relationships. Something that is bad is unpleasant, harmful, or undesirable.

Note: Some of the behaviors listed here might not be considered bad habits by everyone. Anything done to excess can become harmful, after all. Drinking too much water can lead to hyponatremia. Spending too much of your time helping others can lead to ignoring self-care.

Here, in no particular order:

Smoking

Create an image
- Sophisticate with a cigarette holder
- High roller with an expensive cigar
- Macho man
Pausing to think before responding without obviously pausing
Get an energy hit
Creates situations for social connections that might not otherwise happen
Provides a brief break from work or stressful situations

Drinking

Relax in a socially tense situation
Create an image of sophistication, wealth, etc., depending on the drink
Regularly drinking heavily increases tolerance, making it less likely the drinker will make a drunken misstep
Moderate drinking reduces likelihood of a heart attack by about a third
Alcoholic beverages are sure to be free of water parasites in places where other beverages are chancy

Negative Thinking

When things go bad, “I told you so”
When things go well, pleasant surprises

Eating Junk or Fast Food

It’s handy, so no effort
It’s relatively inexpensive, so easy on the wallet
Service is fast, so it’s an efficient choice
Higher levels of fat, salt, and sugar provide temporary dopamine surges
Can become family ritual, if eaten infrequently
Create positive associations with otherwise negative experiences (lollipop at the doctor’s office)

Anger Outbursts

Intimidates more timid people
Creates the impression of passion or strong feelings
Less likely to bottle anger and turn it inward, resulting in ulcers, high blood pressure, etc.

Indulging a Greedy Nature

Gets one more of the good stuff (sometimes)
Incite envy/ jealousy in others

Telling Lies

“Little white lies” ease socially awkward situations
- E.g., “Of course your new haircut is flattering…”
Avoid punishment
Shift blame
Keep positive secrets, such as a surprise party

Excessive Screen Time

Keep up with news and fads
Have the topics for conversation
Avoid boredom
Improve hand-eye coordination (video games)

Always Criticizing

Builds one’s self-esteem by comparison
Intimidate potential critics
Temporarily look like a subject expert

Nail-Biting

Makes paying for manicures unnecessary
Shows intense feelings
Is less destructive than other bad habits
Occupies hands to prevent other, worse habits, such as smoking

Gobbling Food

Eating quickly is fairly common in some circumstances. Gulping down a meal within a few minutes is a bit less common.

Saves time for other things
Demonstrates that food is not important
Potential future in speed-eating competitions

Not Maintaining Hygiene and Cleanliness

Saves time and energy
Saves money on grooming products
Allows focus on things other than personal appearance

Procrastination

You never have to feel like a failure because “I could have aced it ill I’d spent more time on it”
If you procrastinate but succeed or excel anyway, you’ve saved time to do more/other things
If a procrastinator is successful, it’s a big boost to one’s self-perceived capability

Keeping Late Hours

Fewer people around to interrupt
Hours when no one is criticizing what one is doing
Easier to conduct a clandestine affair
Boosts one’s self-concept as a non-conformist
Minimize hours spent with unpleasant spouse or other family
Night shift workers are often paid more
Facilitates communication with people in other time zones

Swearing

Substitutes for more physically violent anger outburst
- (E.g., throwing things, punching the wall)
If conducted at great volume, it’s good for one’s lungs
Can encourage verbal creativity
Is typically a sign of honesty

Fidgeting

Tapping toes, drumming fingers, or other incidental movements

Relatively safe way to release nervous energy and creativity
Makes it easier to maintain weight, heart and lung health
Unconscious form of drilling for musicians and dancers

Avoiding Exercise

It saves energy
It allows more time for other things
If conscious decision, can save money on exercise clothes/ equipment/ memberships

Humming or Talking to Oneself

Self-soothing when anxious
Clarify thinking when facing a difficult decision
Relieves the silence for those living alone
May be the only way to have an intelligent conversation

Interrupting

Express more of one’s own opinions
Stop an opponent from making points
Shows enthusiasm for topic
Can prevent someone else accidentally divulging sensitive information

BOTTOM LINE: The downsides of bad habits have been well-documented. But everyone gets something out of every act, especially repetitive acts.

Smokers Drink and Drinkers Smoke

Posted on January 18, 2019January 18, 2019 by vlaw759

Indeed, people who drink the most, as a group, also consume the most tobacco. According to NIH research, between 80% and 95% of alcoholics smoke cigarettes, and approximately 70% of alcoholics smoke more than a pack of cigarettes per day (compared to 10% for the general population. Drinking influences smoking more than smoking influences drinking, but even so, smokers are 1.32 times as likely to consume alcohol as are nonsmokers. So, consider this linkage when bringing in alcohol and/or smoking in your writing. Why might your character indulge in one but not the other?

Recovering alcoholics have told me that it’s harder to kick alcoholism than addiction to other drugs. In the U.S., alcohol isn’t just legal, it’s ubiquitous. Even so, approximately 30% of American adults don’t drink alcohol at all. This number includes recovering alcoholics, but also people who don’t drink for health reasons, for religious reasons, from not wanting to feel out of control, etc. Why might your character choose not to drink at all?

Many situations are loaded with expectations of alcohol consumption. Think of New Year’s Eve, wedding receptions, anniversaries, sporting events, fraternity and sorority parties, etc., etc., etc. How would your various characters respond to those situations?

The last thing I want to say about smoking and drinking is that using both multiplies the effects of using either alone. For example, compared to nonsmoking nondrinkers, the risk of developing mouth and throat cancer are 7 times greater for those who use tobacco, 6 times greater for those who use alcohol, and 38 times greater for those who use both tobacco and alcohol.

The strong link between smoking and drinking is the result of chemical changes each causes in the brain. If, by chance, that brain chemistry is relevant to your writing, you can find a number of ALCOHOL ALERT papers at www.niaaa.nih.gov which offer more details and references. Suffice it to say, there is evidence that stopping alcohol and cigarettes simultaneously is more likely to succeed than trying to stop one or the other.

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog, “Why Smoking is Good for Writers.” In July of 2015, I wrote a blog “Alcohol for Writers.” For your convenience, I’ll excerpt some of that blog here:

…although I don’t advise writers to drink, I do advise knowing about alcohol. It’s such an integral part of life in America—celebrations, business dinners, relaxation, sports events, picnics, parties, all sorts of gatherings from weddings to funerals—that one can hardly write realistically without scenes involving alcohol. So here are a few basic facts you should be aware of and ready to justify if you go against them.

Why Smoking is Good for Writers

Posted on January 15, 2019January 15, 2019 by vlaw759

Not that I’m suggesting starting or continuing smoking. But consider how your writing could benefit. (In reporting statistics and research findings, I’m not going to include academic citations. They clutter up the writing, and if you want to pursue something in more depth, you can easily find it online.)

As a Character Note

Given the general disapprobation of smoking today, chances are your hero or heroine will be a non-smoker. However, other characters are surely fair game.

A ten-year longitudinal study has reported that higher levels of openness to experience and neuroticism were each significantly associated with increased risk of any lifetime cigarette use. Neuroticism also was associated with increased risk of progression from ever smoking to daily smoking and persistent daily smoking over a ten-year period. In contrast, conscientiousness was associated with decreased risk of any of these.

Neuroticism is not a good thing! It is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.

Other, less comprehensive research nevertheless is consistent with the above study. In this study, smokers had higher scores on measures of depressive symptoms, novelty seeking, and histrionic, borderline, passive-aggressive, and antisocial personality symptoms and lower scores on a measure of avoidant personality.

Not surprisingly, quitting smoking improves personality. Among adults 35 and under, those who quit smoking scored lower impulsivity and neuroticism than when they smoked.

Which Characters Are More Likely to Smoke?

(Compared to an overall rate of 15.5%)

men, 17.5%
people aged 25-64, 17.5%-18%
non-Hispanic American Indians/Alaska Natives, 31.8%
non-Hispanic Blacks and Whites, 16.5%
Hispanics, 10.7%
non-Hispanic Asians, 9%
living in the Midwest, 18.5%
living in the South, 16.9%
being lesbian/gay/bisexual, 20.5%
those experiencing serious psychological distress, 35.8%
those with disability/limitation, 21.2%

More Frequent Occupations of Smokers

Actually, the field is pretty wide open here. But consider the likelihood that your smoker would be “different” from his/her peer group.

mining
construction
manufacturing
transportation industries
business contract (promoters, salesmen, retail and wholesale dealers and buyers)
business executives of all ranks
editors
educational administrators
museum curators
entertainment and recreational services

There is a notably smaller proportion of smokers among farmers, engineers, surgeons, elementary and high school teachers, and clergymen.

What is smoked varies, too. Pipe smokers are more frequently found among research scientists, lawyers, college professors, and schoolteachers. Cigar smokers tend to be business executives, bankers, editors, attorneys, and those in technological fields.

In general, more education is associated with less smoking, with the rate dropping to 4.5% for those with a graduate degree. The only anomaly is that those with 12 or fewer years of education have a smoking rate of 24.1%, while those with a GED certificate have a rate of 40.6%

Smoking is higher among those living below the poverty level, 25.3%. Besides everything else, a poor character who smokes would have the added burden of the cost of cigarettes. It is an expensive habit. A pack of cigarettes can cost as much as $10.45 (in New York state). But even the least expensive state (Missouri) has a cost of $4.38. FYI, in Virginia it is $4.78, second lowest.

As a Source of Tension

The most recent data I could find (from the CDC, 2016) indicate that more than 15% of adults 18 and older currently smoked. That leaves approximately 85% non-smokers, so lots of opportunity for negative comments, nagging, scolding, and downright arguments about everything from the smell and messiness to health risks to the smoker and to those exposed to secondhand smoke.

Perhaps the most obvious source of plot complications would be the known health effects. More widespread smoking as well as increased life expectancy during the 1920s made adverse health effects more noticeable. In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published formal statistical evidence of a lung cancer–tobacco link, which subsequently led a strong anti-smoking movement in Nazi Germany. The harmful effects came to notice in Great Britain in 1954 with the British Doctors Study, and in the United States with the Surgeon General’s report, 1964. So, writers, choose your illness!

heart disease
stroke
cancer anywhere in the body: lung, bladder, blood, cervix, colo-rectal, kidney, liver, larynx, oropharynx, pancreas, stomach
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
cause or exacerbate Type 2 diabetes
rheumatoid arthritis
exacerbates asthma
weakens bones
poor tooth and gum health
cataracts
increased inflammation
decreased immune function

Smoking increases problems with fertility and pregnancy. Smoking can make it harder for women to become pregnant. It increases the risk for early delivery, stillbirth, low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, ectopic pregnancy, and orofacial clefts in infants.

Men are not immune. Smoking can reduce a man’s fertility and increase the risks of birth defects and miscarriage.

If you write historical fiction, know about smoking in your time period. Although smoking can be traced back to 5000 BCE in the Americas in shamanistic rituals, it wasn’t until the 16th century that the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco spread. Before that, smoking was primarily opium or cannabis in the far East.

The modernization of farming equipment and manufacturing increased the availability of cigarettes in the United States. Mass production quickly expanded consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s. In 1962, research indicated that 78% of civilian men had a history of tobacco use.

From the 1930s through the 1950s or so, smoking was often presented and perceived as being sophisticated, sexy, and daring. In a time when smoking was not established as a health risk—when smoking was much more prevalent—the relationship between personality and smoking was probably less pronounced. I.e., a higher proportion of non-neurotics smoked.

Bottom line: You don’t have to smoke to benefit from smoking!