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SilasBarta comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong
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I remember being in a similar argument myself. I was talking with someone about how I had (long ago!) deliberately started smoking to see if quitting would be hard [1], and I found that, though there were periods where I'd had cravings, it wasn't hard to distract myself, and eventually they went away and I was able to easily quit.
The other person (who was not a smoker and so probably didn't take anything personally) said, "Well, sure, in that case it's easy to quit smoking, because you went in with the intent to prove it's easy to quit. Anyone would find it easy to stay away from cigarettes in that case!"
So I said, "Then shouldn't that be the anti-smoking tactic that schools use? Make all students take up smoking, just to prove they can quit. Then, everyone will grow up with the ability to quit smoking without much effort."
[1] and many, many people have told me this is insane, so no need to remind me
I'm afraid I don't have anywhere near as awesome a personal story as that; I can say that my family seems to have a tradition of making kids drink some beer or alcohol a few times, though, and it seems to work.
Right, because no one actually likes the taste of alcohol, nor the inhalation of smoke; and then eventually they decide to take up drinking, or smoking, because of the psychoactive effects such as relaxation, loss of inhibitions, or getting high.
Just kidding, I'm not starting that debate again! ;-)
I met someone who started smoking for the same reason you did once and is still addicted, so you couldn't have been at that much of an advantage.
I am torn between telling you you're insane and suggesting you take up crack on a sort of least convenient possible world principle.
Eh, I don't claim to be immune from addiction and addiction-like cravings. It's just that, AFAICT, I can only get addicted (in the broader sense of the term) to legal stuff. See this blog post for further information. I still struggle with e.g. diet and excessive internet/computer usage.
And, in fairness, maybe I needed to smoke more to make it a meaningful test, though I did get to the point where I had cravings.
Your experiment seems to me to prove less than you'd hope about people in general-- afaik there's metabolic variation in how people react to nicotine withdrawal.