My new year resolution is ...
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 11:48AM I have a good relationship with my 18-year-old son and I encourage our communication by using openness and honesty with him when he asks me questions.
Because of his mathematical mind, I also must ensure that my answers are logical and make sense. So, when he asked me why I smoked, I could not simply dismiss it by saying it was "because I wanted to" although, caught napping, that's exactly what I said.
He is fit and powerful and sports driven and, I'm happy to say, he doesn't want to ever smoke himself. He also wasn't letting my dismissal of a perfectly good question go.
I have mentioned before on this blog that I have never tried any of the cocktail of illicit drugs available on the black market, save a drag from some sort of fat tobacco-filled reefer in 1975, which did nothing for me.
But I have frequently asked users of same to explain the attraction to me. Words like the "buzz" or the "high" mean nothing to me and when I enquire closer I discover that some experience violent illness while others become so docile they could be robbed and not care. I never heard a description that sounded in any way attractive to me and, indeed, most of it appalled me.
But, like me, my son was simply asking, "What's the attraction? Why would you knowingly suck smoke of any kind into your lungs, just to blow it back out again?" When he heaped on the cost and potential dangers of all of my years of smoking, it began to seem utterly stupid.
Then I recalled a research project I'd read several years ago that claimed that the act of smoking releases a surge of the body's natural opiates: endorphins. These are the body's natural pleasure inducing chemicals that are responsible for other things such as orgasms. (For the benefit of non-smokers, I hasten to add that the sensations are not similar between the two. though smokers will swear by a cigarette after sex.)
My lad laughed heartily at the endorphins and speculated that they must be set off by glue too as a friend of his loves sniffing the stuff (not snuff!).
By way of illustration I was able to trot out the various pleasurable smokes. The relief one after an exam, the good cigar that always complemented a good meal, the last reflective one at night etc. I left out the one after sex because, as we all know, parents do not have, nor have they ever, engaged in sex.
As an exercise, though, the conversation was very useful. It forced me to think the thing out and I arrived at a few clear personal conclusions. I like smoking - it gives me pleasure. I don't want to give up smoking, though I do want to control the amount I consume daily.
Having read the available science from both sides of the argument, I do not believe my smoking harms anyone but myself.
Lastly, therefore, I will not be forced to quit and indeed my resolve to continue grows firmer the more I am pressurised. And that is my New Year's resolution!
Reader Comments (4)
Good for you John. I feel exactly the same. I was controlling my tobacco intake to a level that suited me - less than 10 a day - but since the ban it has year on year inexplicably crept up to 40 a day.
I am also a parent of a teenage son as well so obviously I don't have sex either.
However, in case you are not aware, smoking and sex are intrinsically linked for some who have a smoking fettish. I had no idea such a thing existed but then I've learned many things since I joined this fight including that as a lifelong smoker I am more likely to die young if I quit suddenly after 42 years as a smoker from childhood.
If smoking fettishsm does not prove that smoking IS cultural - and restrictions calling for the social exclusion of smokers IS an attack upon a minority culture - then I don't know what is.
It annoyes me when non smokers ask smokers 'whats the attraction' as if we were flesh eating ghouls or something especially when they follow it up with a lecture in economis or the danger to your health.
Does anyone ever ask a drinker or alcoholic a foodie or a chocaholic that obvious question.
No they do not, because everyone partakes in both these pleasures to some degree.
But the poor marginalised smoker is thrown further out in the gutter and made feel more outcast than they already are with moans about tobacco smells or taunts that only the 'lower classes' smoke.
With over 500 people gridlocked on hospital trolleys and the country scraping its bum along the ground, I hope that the anti smoke brigade and fanitics find someone more deserving to pillory and taunt other than the 'live and let live' ordinary easygoing smoker.
Before the smoking ban came in I used to smoke 8 cigs a day.
But now I smoke 20 a day.
Thats what the smoking ban achieved for me.
And my new years resolution is to continue smoking.
Pat,
Scrapping the 10 pack of cigarettes was the most stupid thing they could have done. They may as well have done away with the sale of the bottle of wine and insisted instead that you buy by the case, or do away with the pint in favour of the keg.
If, as you suggest, smoking and sex are intrinsically linked, then I'm a pervert. I roll my own (with loving care), I have a lot of them, I'll smoke dark or light tobacco, I love an odd cigar, I've even tried a pipe, I used to blow rings when I was younger, I share my cigarettes with others and I always have one, first thing every morning and last thing every night.
Ann,
Don't let anyone make you feel bad about making free choices around your legal consumption of anything. Happily, I'm a big cross looking six footer and don't attract adverse comment from strangers. But, in the case of my son, or any good friend asking me a serious question about smoking or anything else for that matter, I would always strive to to answer properly, out of good manners and simple respect for them.
I agree with what you say John, but it depends on the way some people ask me a serious question especially about smoking because in my case when it comes to friends and family the usual tamant is always 'would you never consider giving up' or 'are you still smoking do you not realise the dangers....... 'etc
Like the last time I visited relations where you could always smoke before and who were smokers themselves, when I was directed out the back garden to a table with an ashtray.
Like I said, I was never a heavy smoker pre ban because when out for a meal or a drink in those good old days, then a cigarette in a relaxed atmosphere was a pleasure and not an endurance test like it is now.
With the result I dont go to pubs or restaurants any more because I refuse to stand outside in the freezing cold being forced to suck up petrol fumes or being approached by beggars.
Ireland should never have obeyed a total EU smoking ban, thanks to Mickey Martin scoring brownie points for himself, because our climate does not allow for humane protection from the elements, unlike continental europe, where even though some countries comply to a smoking ban, the majority of their citizens can still enjoy a cigarette sitting outside under proper protection but from the sun in their case, which is a hell of a difference to wind, rain and snow that we have to suffer.