Smoking

Just a personal thought here. I know in Japan most people smoke yet they have a super long life span. I know natives used to smoke as well. I don't think its a particularly bad thing. I smoke. But lately it's been starting to feel bad when I smoke, like I feel ill. So I stopped. If you can't stop smoking when it no longer feels good, now that I think is a problem.

But the Jedi clearly depicts that smoking isn't encouraged in one of the movies, when Obi-Wan uses jedi mindtricks to convince a man to stop smoking "death sticks".

I know what you are saying, Dillanh ...

Tabagism (addiction to tobacco) is another addiction, and addictions are much more serious than most people understand. Albeit we tend to think in terms of what we are told : that addictions are sicknesses, that they are difficult to surmount, that one needs help ... But we tend to behave more true to what we feel on the ignorance level : that the addicted person just needs to "wise-up", use some will-power, &c &c &c ...

Addictions are in and among the diseases that tells the infected person that we don't have it. That it doesn't matter, that the behaviours concerning the addiction are an integral, indispensable part of our character, &c &c &c (again) -- in other words, addictions protect themselves.

We know that smoking is quite unhealthy and expensive, just like in consumer societies we know that finance-fed monetary-based "free"-market economic systems breed poverty and suffering. Knowing something is perilous, or even deadly, in the long-term doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent to reaping short-term benefits (whether real or addiction-induced psychosis). Moreover, not every cigarette we smoke is necessary ; it only requires 5 - 7 cigarettes per day to satisfy the addiction. As it were, most are just habit ... and that is a nasty bit of mental masquerade as well. (-- No hypocrisy, I promise. I'm smoking a cigarette while writing even this.)

Perhaps we could get a support group (gods, I hate that term) going here in the Temple. It couldn't hurt. Since having vanquished one addiction this year, I'm feeling very much the same thing you are describing here -- not wanting to want a fag, it making me feel a little sick while and shortly after smoking it, knowing that my smoking makes me a little (or a lot) undesirable to others - the smell, the stains, the mess -, as well as being utterly convinced that the quality of Life would be improved by not smoking (recurrent thought as recently as on my way home from the gym last night - no, I wasn't smoking then).

My doctor says to wait a little while before attacking on this front, but I'm not sure I want to. Being a slave to this frakkin' stuff is quite disagreeable, and at the same time - I dare say - not very Jedi.

If there are enough people to get a "stopping smoking" task force up here, we could organise it. It could do us collectively and individually, quite a lot of good. All I know is, I personally cannot do it alone.

What do you think ?

Alexandre, if anything we could start like a smoking log.

Record how much you smoked a day and your feelings towards it.

Perhaps having an objective view will encourage smokers to quit.

Or at least refine their pleasure to a place where one can manage without feeling ill.

I'm all for helping people quit though.

People can choose to do what they want with themselves, but I think it's important to know exactly what is going into your body. For instance, commercial cigarettes are basically poison, but you could smoke straight tobacco and that'd be different. There are other natural substances too... As long as a person is aware of what they're doing to themselves, and potentially to others, no one else can say whether they can or can't. I don't think anyone should poison themselves, but I also don't think it's anyone's business other than who's involved.

dillanh wrote: But the Jedi clearly depicts that smoking isn't encouraged in one of the movies, when Obi-Wan uses jedi mindtricks to convince a man to stop smoking "death sticks".

He actually just sent him away to rethink his life. The only thought he implanted was that he didn't want to sell them to Obi-Wan.

We all get to pick our poison. As has been said, as long as they know what the consequences are.

Which are helpfully printed on the side of the box.

I always love the people who light up and talk about drugs and alcohol being unhealthy, potentially deadly, and addictive.

Kind of like the people in fast foot places that order a crap ton of unhealthy food but then get a diet soda...

Just because it's very rarely covered in-lore: Death sticks in the fiction aren't cigarettes. They're closer to crack cocaine.

Alexandre Orion wrote: If there are enough people to get a "stopping smoking" task force up here, we could organise it. It could do us collectively and individually, quite a lot of good. All I know is, I personally cannot do it alone.

What do you think ?

Alex
I'm 13 weeks nicotine free this week.
I would totally love to be part of a stop smoking group to help keep me on track.

Desolous wrote: Aside from the addictictive property itself, there are zero benefits to smoking.

I am going to disagree with you here for a handful of reasons.

1. smoking killed my pain - I had horrible teeth growing up because of a combination of genetics and environmental factors, and the amount of aspirin it took to keep me standing was going to kill me if i kept it up. i found out clove oil is a numbing agent, and Djarum Blacks were (at the time) cheaper than clove oil, but produced the same result.
2. smoking is meditative - the act of carefully packing a pipe with tobacco is one that always causes me to slow down, think about life, and generally enjoy the small things in the universe.
3. smoking can smell nice - whether pipe tobacco's rich earthy scent, or a home-rolled cigarillo with a bit of clove or lavender, smoking has a smell. that smell can be used to trigger happy memories, or useful as a type of aromatherapy.

most of the negative health factors involved in modern smoking apply solely to manufactured cigarettes, because they pump them so full of rancid chemicals that it's a wonder no one dies just from handling them. a switch to home-rolled cigarettes (where you can control the quality of the tobacco), or--better still-- a switch to pipes, cigars, or cigarillos (none of which are intended to be inhaled, only tasted), or an electronic cigarette (which holds only the nicotine as a vapor, rather than the other disgusting chemicals) will reduce health complications quite a bit.

i am 100% supportive of anyone who wishes to quit smoking, personally, for their own benefit but i'm also highly annoyed that smoking is so highly stigmatized. i can be drunk/high/have sex in public, legally, more places than i'm allowed to smoke, and i think that's ridiculous.