"j-pop and cigarettes"

Getting off of nicotine: tips and otherwise.

Giving up nicotine was difficult. Why?

[n.b. You obviously can smoke. However, unless you have veritable knowledge that you will not become addicted (a matter a temperance and prudence), I’m not sure that you should begin smoking, as that may be a choice which enslaves you. If you are already smoking, temperance is your guide to moderating that pleasure so it does not enslave you. I don’t mean to preach.]

Well, for one thing, it’s important to understand how addiction works. It’s important to realize that, with nicotine and many similar substances, you do not biologically/psychologically need whatever they are delivering to you. What I mean is that (unlike food, water, music, etc…) there is no gland, organ, brain, or muscle, that needs what nicotine provides in order to live a very fulfilled and healthy life.

This may be obvious to some readers. However, its the key to understanding how many drugs are able to latch themselves on so parasitically to their hosts: nicotine must carve a place for itself inside the host, synthetically creating a false ‘need’ which, in reality, did not preexist the drug. In brief, nicotine creates a void satiated by one thing and one thing only: itself.

So when you’re weaning off nicotine (or dropping it cold turkey), you’ll find yourself sitting alone in your room, attempting to distract yourself from… what?

It’s not attempting to distract yourself from the unpleasantness which cigarettes saved you from—it wasn’t like you spent your days racked by unpleasantness before cigarettes entered your life. No: you are attempting to distract yourself… from cigarettes!

Yes, you are attempting to distract yourself from something which is not a medicine (the beneficial effects of nicotine notwithstanding). I mean that you do not sit and wait in anxious eagerness for aspirin (or aloe, or cough syrup, or anything else that makes you healthy). No, nicotine created a void which it alone can fill. It is not “helping” anything (save a disease it itself created).

Giving up nicotine was difficult. It is difficult. I sat alone in my room, waiting for the feeling to go away—only to find that nothing in my life was more interesting than nicotine.

Odd! It didn’t used to be that way. So what’s the trick?

1. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to fill the nicotine void with something else.

   1. It won’t work. Coffee, food, energy drinks… all these things (if used to satiate the nicotine desire) will fall short of it, because the nicotine-void can only satiated by nicotine. Now, if you drink coffee as coffee, you may find some success. Because you aren’t attempting to satisfy the desire created by and for nicotine; you’re merely enjoying some (more-or less) innocent pleasure that is not (in the same way or to the same degree) carving out a void in your heart, though I’m sure for some people it does. Do not sit in your smoking chair with a Red Bull and attempt to retrieve the feeling of a cigarette: you will neither enjoy a Red Bull OR a cigarette. You need to let the void—the synthetic need—to die out first. Essentially what I’m trying to communicate is that no “weaning” off of cigarettes by attempting to replace them will work—not with coffee, zyn, patches, energy drinks, running, gum, or anything else. These will only make cigarettes look so much better by comparison. Don't pursue these goods as “cigarette alternatives.” They are just different goods entirely, so treat them as such.

2. Run and dash back to those pastimes which brought you joy before nicotine.

   1. Simple as stated, yet almost impossible. What on earth did you do before smoking? Seriously—you sit down, and are immediately uncomfortable. Your hands fidget. People become nauseating and stupid. Your brain is silently screaming at you; where do you go from here? The trick seems to be in quiet release: you will never get back the joy you get from nicotine, because it’s not the joy you’re after. You want real joy; rugged, unmistakable joy, that arises from artistic and physical experiences. You are not here to synthesize something—you’re through with that. You are terribly uninterested with anything that is phony. But the bottom line is that what is offered to you by nicotine no longer interests you. Note that I did not say no longer entices you (because it does); rather, the buzz you experience through nicotine is no longer something you’re pursuing in life anymore—much like how you don’t pursue Legos or Pokemon. It’s just not something that catches your fancy anymore. It doesn’t further you onward. It’s not a part of your experience. You want to have a one on one experience with reality—an intimate look at nature and people without a foggy, addicted brain. You find it exhilarating, and infinitely more exciting and scary than anything else you’ve experienced.

3. Do not be with people who will enjoy or use nicotine.

   1. This one is difficult, and it only applies to people struggling with nicotine addiction. You cannot, under any circumstances, go outside while your friend who is either (1) actively smoking or (2) will be potentially smoking. The temptation is too great. You will intellectually justify—in every way, manner, and kind—the use of nicotine. The deep darkness of the night; the pale languor surrounding your friend’s nose; the milk from the window light; the hesitant breath and subsequent smoke swirled mist from your mouth. These are the nights Kerouac was speaking of… Byron is here, in spirit… the ghosts of Wilde and Newman and Jack Frost and Ficino and Hermes are all awaiting you—IF (and only if!) you indulge in “a drag.” It is never “a drag” (meaning one drag). You will only have one drag if you are unceremoniously yanked away, whether by your conscience or some force.

   

4. De-Romanticize nicotine use.

   1. Yes—it its extremely aesthetically pleasing to see someone using nicotine. It would be aesthetically pleasing for YOU to use nicotine, if you weren’t addicted. But you are! You claim that you enjoy it occasionally, like Robert Frost or Carl Jung. You don’t! You wait impatiently, squirming like a heaving lung, for your next buzz: no, you’re not a chainsmoker, but it controls your life. It is not aesthetically pleasing, as Nietzsche pointed out, if you are writhing in pain; you cannot produce the artistic correspondence to your state if you are in a state of discomfort. The unhoused man is only aesthetically appealing to the housed man. Perhaps at one point in time, when chemical strains were absent from nearly all cigarettes (American Spirits are no exception, nor are Dunhills, Benson & Hedges, etc), the pastime was less addictive and harmful and could be used (relatively) safely and so could be romanticized. That is not now. Your heroes (David Lynch included!) does not save you from the rule. He died from triggered emphysema. God rest him.

Okay, these are some initial considerations for anyone trying to drop the habit. Let me know if you have any additional thoughts on the subject, from experience or theory.