usually trying to improve things worsens them for me. but not always, in every way.

I spent some time trying to design a machine that would dispense nicotine to me in response to me doing behaviors I chose to reward. the plan was to put it in a steel box so I couldn't reach the nicotine any other way than meeting the behaviors. i'd never tried nicotine before.

I bought many parts for the design, and took nicotine to support building it, only when I tried to make progress, but eventually stopped, unfortunately. it seemed like it was fine until I thought something small and specific about it, and then my experiences latched on and every time I did it after that it got much, much harder. it's weird to take nicotine and get _less_ interested in doing it. I felt like I could kind of feel my mind engaging the nicotine feeling to counter the behavior, rather than support it.