[ishmaeel]

I was a smoker for several decades. I would describe being away from a cigarette as "an acute feeling of thirst, but in your chest."

And when you decide to quit, it takes quite a while before you stop feeling that strange thirst.

[tmp-20210218]

for heroin it's ... hard to describe? one thing about heroin though is it is motivating as hell, at least in terms of motivation to _obtain heroin_ and you're going to do stuff that ranges from ill advised to ... very ill advised? anyway, thing i discovered is that if you stop taking the stuff, it takes a long time to find a replacement motivation. e.g. found myself waking up, discovering i didn't have an immediate need for heroin, and then, well that's it. nothing important to do here. it was ... annoying? fucking terrible? still is, so there's that.

[nemo44x]

Good way of putting it. It’s in the chest for sure. I’ve always thought of it as something missing in your chest - a type of emptiness. “Thirst” is a good metaphor.