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Confessions of a Middle Aged English Hashish Eater
The Word on the Streets
Stand clear of the doors!
Religious indoctrination is child abuse
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You don't want to sell me deathsticks.I don't want to sell you deathsticksYou want to go home and rethink your life.I want to go home and rethink my life. |
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Primary, secondary and tertiary smoking
Most people know about secondary smoking, the effect of breathing in the smoke that other people's smoking causes. It is now rightly regarded as a major form of dangerous pollution. But the bad effects of smoking don't end there. There is also tertiary smoking, the effect of sharing a living space with people who have been smoking. You don't need to breathe in the smoke to be affected by the stench, the filth, the litter, the sound of hacking coughs and the great globules of spit that smokers leave behind them. They might go outside to do it, but they don't leave it outside.
Smokers: who needs 'em?Phrases you never hear:As fragrant as a public telephoneAs charming as an ashtray.As considerate as a smoker. |
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My favourite advert on TV is the one featuring John Cleese who asks us to look at how much ash a 20-a-day smoker produces, then he adds cheerily that not all of them are cremated, some are buried.
Why do children take up smoking, as some form of cock-eyed rebellion against their parents? Everybody knows it is expensive, dangerous, dirty and smelly. It kills many people in middle age and blights the health of people in their forties and fifties. It makes people smell of smoke, a smell that clings for hours. It ages the skin of the face prematurely, especially on thin women, it is often easy to spot a female smoker of 45 from across the street (of course, on a still day you can smell them from further away still.)
Smokers don't just smell when they're smoking
The main reasons given by smokers simply do not make sense. People do not smoke things because they like the taste of the smoke. There is no society on the face of the Earth that has a culture of smoking any substance that is not a drug. Herbal cigarettes make up an infinitesimal section of the market. People smoke for the drug effect. But they smoke a substance, tobacco and nicotine, that is a poor drug. It is very addictive, it is very poisonous but it is very bland. Its effect is so slight that I, as an ex-smoker, struggle to recall what it felt like. The effects were all negative. I felt better. What happened was the nicotine counteracted the effect of the lack of nicotine. When, as an addicted smoker I felt tense through lack of a cigarette smoking a cigarette cured that feeling. It didn't make me relaxed, it eased the tension caused by the lack of nicotine. On its own a cigarette or a cigar didn't do a great deal, certainly nowhere enough of a buzz for me to lay down my life.
Are you actually enjoying your smoking? Did you enjoy your first smoke or did you endure it under social pressures? Did you teach yourself to endure a smoke? Is normality so bad that it is worth killing yourself to escape such a little way into a world of deadly drugs? I can see the appeal of heroin, it makes people feel fantastic while it addicts them, but fags? Come off it!
We all know that smoking kills but there is still a conspiracy of silence. It isn't “done” to point out that certain people smoked themselves to death. Sod that. George Harrison, Jerry Garcia and Carl Wilson, you killed yourself and are just as responsible for your untimely death as if you died of heroin. John Wayne, it wasn't God or some demonic “Big C” that killed you, it was you, you smoked yourself to death. Pointing out hard facts like that isn't rude, it is a public duty.
Not every smoker dies of a smoking related disease. Only half of them. Flip a coin. Hold that cigarette in your hand, there is a 50/50 chance it will be the death of you. Half of smokers will die of smoking, half will die of all the other causes the world offers. You like those odds? Evens.
If you are British you have a great advert for the benefits of not smoking living in Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother was a widow for FIFTY YEARS because her husband smoked, and she buried her own younger child, Margaret, who looked old and ill for more than a decade compared to her healthy elder sister the Queen.
Youth, immortality and smoking
Young people are very confident of their own immortality. You can't scare them. Evolution has made young people well aware that they only stand a 50% chance of making it to the age of 27 and so a high-risk lifestyle is the right way to live, being cool and popular is far better than being cautious, being a popular hunter gives you the chance to lead your band. Oh, hang on, isn't that knowledge a bit out of date now? The cocky attitude of the young is as ill adapted to modern life as our taste for fatty, sweet and salty food. It worked for the first couple of million years, it worked up until about a single lifetime ago. Now it isn't valid. It is maladaptive. We should be living as if we have an excellent chance of being seventy years old. We should be living as if there is a tomorrow. Forget the messages of your body: your body, your instincts and your inner you is out of touch, reality has left it behind. Don't be a victim. Don't take stupid risks with your life because your life is worth more than your body knows. Just for once think with your brain and not with your instincts.