Disclaimer: What I am about to share is my own two loonies worth of experience, thanks to inflation, and of the people I smoked with. This is not a scientific take. Do not let that title mislead you. Do not solicit evidence. It is just for sakes. I don't smoke or endorse nicotine in any form. And while we're at it, I am also not a seasoned writer.
I smoked cigarettes for many years. I quit it as many years ago. I never looked back since...no, as a matter of fact, I do regret doing harm that way to my health. I feel like I would have been a lot healthier if I hadn't smoked. Even worse, every so often I fear that the tar I recurring-deposited in my lungs will come back to haunt me in my boomer-esque days.
Then yesterday, just like that, I felt like smoking again. To be honest, I don't enjoy it anymore. Today I regret doing it, which is good, because I am least worried I would once again catch the habit. But those few minutes out in the Canadian cold, smoking a fag, brought back a strange hit of clarity, as nicotine often does, about what could be the psychological pull for a smoker.
Cigarette's greatest USP as a product, other than its ubiquity, is the way its romanticized among youth in social settings, the age most people get the habit. I don't know if its a real quote, but back in my college days, I heard this quote attributed to a rockstar like Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison that goes like - " I want to smoke the very last puff of the very last cigarette" and was instantly attracted to the eternality (is that even a real word?) of its appeal. For most, this looks like a meaningless one, but for a young guy like me, diving into the chasm of existential questions and paradoxes, these are great aesthetic punchlines. It appeals to a wide swathe of worldview too. Even someone who does not give a flying frack about that existential itch would think it's cool too.
But the IRL influence, smoking has on the mind is when it's alone. Cigarette is a lone man's best friend. So are books but that's not where I am getting at. What I talk about here, is a man's point of view, because culturally, where I grew up, only men smoked (what amusing ways to privilege!). And for the majority of my smoking years, I lived in a man's world. There were no women to learn from through those years in my life which is another cultural folly but I digress.
Let me posit it in a different way. Considering you are a nomad, as most young males are, living with a bunch of friends or roomies, yet alone in their headspace, does anyone really take five minutes of their life to sit and ponder. It turns out smokers unwittingly get to do that a lot. Smoking turned out to be the only thing that I would do alone when I was a young adult. Some might wonder, well you take a shit alone too. To which I say, yes but with a cigarette at the tip of my fingers. Guess what you don't get by taking a shit, the nicotine hit. That sudden jolt to the synaptic connections across the entire neurons in your brain. Or do you?
Today people my age take 15-20 mins out of their time everyday to do meditation and mindfulness exercises. But back then all you had to do was light a cigarette when you are alone, and you are suddenly aware exactly where you are in the space time continuum and you didn't have to lift a finger to do it. Well technically you do, but you catch my drift here. The larger point is you get to think things all by yourself irrespective of your intellectual coordinates. And these are very important moments in life if you aren't already Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant et al.
That's scenario one. Scenario two is when you are smoking with a buddy. Same fundamentals here too but now you have to produce some output too in the form of conversations. Coincidentally, that's when you talk your heads out but not your hearts. What I mean is you might not spill the entire can of beans / worms out of your life as you would boozing but if it happens enough times, which it most probably will, there's a real chance to have honest conversations. That's not to say smoking buddies turn out to be the best of pals. But you can get a pretty solid idea of what the other person's thinking patterns are from all those short but sweet (not literally because cigarettes taste awful) smoking sessions.
Scenario three is in a group setting. Well anything done in a group is a disastrous mess; cue the war, arguably the largest random collaboration of people, just to fight the other group. Smoking is no exception. Yes I concur it can be fun (not the war), but so can a game of curling or at least finding a place to play it.
Think about this for a sec. I, a wildly busy and stressed dad of a school-aged and a newborn with no prior experience in writing to speak of, desperately squeezing out ten minutes of life every day to meditate, just walked out the door, smoked a cigarette for five minutes all alone and went back inside with a clear head. And if you are reading this yet, this is what came of it. Not too bad, eh?
I smoked cigarettes for many years. I quit it as many years ago. I never looked back since...no, as a matter of fact, I do regret doing harm that way to my health. I feel like I would have been a lot healthier if I hadn't smoked. Even worse, every so often I fear that the tar I recurring-deposited in my lungs will come back to haunt me in my boomer-esque days.
Then yesterday, just like that, I felt like smoking again. To be honest, I don't enjoy it anymore. Today I regret doing it, which is good, because I am least worried I would once again catch the habit. But those few minutes out in the Canadian cold, smoking a fag, brought back a strange hit of clarity, as nicotine often does, about what could be the psychological pull for a smoker.
Cigarette's greatest USP as a product, other than its ubiquity, is the way its romanticized among youth in social settings, the age most people get the habit. I don't know if its a real quote, but back in my college days, I heard this quote attributed to a rockstar like Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison that goes like - " I want to smoke the very last puff of the very last cigarette" and was instantly attracted to the eternality (is that even a real word?) of its appeal. For most, this looks like a meaningless one, but for a young guy like me, diving into the chasm of existential questions and paradoxes, these are great aesthetic punchlines. It appeals to a wide swathe of worldview too. Even someone who does not give a flying frack about that existential itch would think it's cool too.
But the IRL influence, smoking has on the mind is when it's alone. Cigarette is a lone man's best friend. So are books but that's not where I am getting at. What I talk about here, is a man's point of view, because culturally, where I grew up, only men smoked (what amusing ways to privilege!). And for the majority of my smoking years, I lived in a man's world. There were no women to learn from through those years in my life which is another cultural folly but I digress.
Let me posit it in a different way. Considering you are a nomad, as most young males are, living with a bunch of friends or roomies, yet alone in their headspace, does anyone really take five minutes of their life to sit and ponder. It turns out smokers unwittingly get to do that a lot. Smoking turned out to be the only thing that I would do alone when I was a young adult. Some might wonder, well you take a shit alone too. To which I say, yes but with a cigarette at the tip of my fingers. Guess what you don't get by taking a shit, the nicotine hit. That sudden jolt to the synaptic connections across the entire neurons in your brain. Or do you?
Today people my age take 15-20 mins out of their time everyday to do meditation and mindfulness exercises. But back then all you had to do was light a cigarette when you are alone, and you are suddenly aware exactly where you are in the space time continuum and you didn't have to lift a finger to do it. Well technically you do, but you catch my drift here. The larger point is you get to think things all by yourself irrespective of your intellectual coordinates. And these are very important moments in life if you aren't already Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant et al.
That's scenario one. Scenario two is when you are smoking with a buddy. Same fundamentals here too but now you have to produce some output too in the form of conversations. Coincidentally, that's when you talk your heads out but not your hearts. What I mean is you might not spill the entire can of beans / worms out of your life as you would boozing but if it happens enough times, which it most probably will, there's a real chance to have honest conversations. That's not to say smoking buddies turn out to be the best of pals. But you can get a pretty solid idea of what the other person's thinking patterns are from all those short but sweet (not literally because cigarettes taste awful) smoking sessions.
Scenario three is in a group setting. Well anything done in a group is a disastrous mess; cue the war, arguably the largest random collaboration of people, just to fight the other group. Smoking is no exception. Yes I concur it can be fun (not the war), but so can a game of curling or at least finding a place to play it.
Think about this for a sec. I, a wildly busy and stressed dad of a school-aged and a newborn with no prior experience in writing to speak of, desperately squeezing out ten minutes of life every day to meditate, just walked out the door, smoked a cigarette for five minutes all alone and went back inside with a clear head. And if you are reading this yet, this is what came of it. Not too bad, eh?