3 Packs a Day

[Brant Gaede]

One thing I really hate are the damned anti-smoking ads on TV. I think they might be a Florida specific thing, there was a big legal settlement here that involved the tobacco companies being made to fund these things. If you're trying to not smoke, these commercials make you want to light up just to spite them.

They come from the CDC. If they don't stop I'll cancel my cable tv.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Oh, gruesome topic. I smoked from age-17-33, then quit for 20 years. I took it up again at age 53. Why, you might ask. The reason is that I am stupid and dumb.

Carol

1 pack a day.

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

[jts]

I have from time to time wondered why people start smoking. I can understand doing a bad thing out of not knowing better but how can one not know that smoking is bad? To me it seems obvious that a rational person at least tries to make good decisions and to avoid bad decisions within whatever limits of knowledge and intelligence. I have difficulty understanding how it is possible for a rational person to voluntarily and deliberately do something that they know is bad for them. I'm not talking about the case of the person who is addicted and keeps on because of the addiction; I'm talking about starting.

My guess is that, as Ayn Rand says, the faculty of reason is not automatic like the beating of the heart but is volitional like the movements of the arms and legs. So no matter how intelligent a person is, he must -choose- to think, otherwise he does not think. So at the time he smoked his first cigarette, he did not -choose- to consider the evidence and conclusions, the pros and cons. How many people would start smoking if their decision whether to start smoking was as well thought out as a business decision or a move in chess?

But reason being volitional is probably not sufficient explanation of why people start smoking, because even if he does not think about it he knows it's bad.

Slightly related to the subject of why people start smoking, there is a story told by Charles Darwin about a baboon who drank a bottle of brandy and then had a terrible hangover and after that experience refused to touch the stuff. Charles Darwin writes (from memory) "demonstrating greater wisdom than that of many men".

[Brant Gaede]

My father and step-mother smoked unfiltered Camels. She died not from that, but Dad died of lung cancer at 83 after an adult lifetime of smoking. For the last several years of his life I gave him 30,000 IU of beta carotene/day hoping it would protect him from cancer. After he died I read it might have been the catalyst for his cancer. Two months diagnosis to death. Fortunately, he wasn't tortured by years of surgery and treatments. Generation to generation different layers of knowledge pile on and what wasn't worried about in the 1950s is commonly worried about today. Give Rand a break.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

I mostly started smoking in the army. "Take five!" meant smoke a jag. This was the 1960s. I knew it was bad for my health but I figured I might be killed in Vietnam so WTF!? 18 months after discharge I stopped on or about my 25th birthday, the day Gen. Eisenhower died. I had spent 13 nights with him in 1965 after he had a heart attack in Georgia and I knew his smoking had a lot to do with his health. So I used that event to hang my stopping smoking on. I didn't want to smoke for 25 more years and discover I had ruined my own health. I also had reason to know I was allergic to tobacco smoke and was afraid of emphysema, something I was well educated about because of my medical training. For two months after I stopped inhaling, I puffed on small cigarette-sized cigars without pulling the smoke into my lungs. Smart. That I stopped in 1969 has always been a source of self esteem to me. Self esteem comes not from bs you tell yourself, but from what you do. What you do can also destroy or damage your self esteem. Depends, of course.

--Brant

[syrakusos]

... but Dad died of lung cancer at 83 after an adult lifetime of smoking.

In the "Muvver Tongue" episode of The History of English, they went to some small town where people still talk like Shakespeare:

"Hard cider kilt me faether. He drank it every day for 83 years and it it kilt him!" (All the old guys laugh...)

There's a lot to health: genes and environment; choices and spirit.

The Bible says the God gives you 72 years.... give or take...

The Pharaoh was allowed 75 years, then they killed him.

83 is pretty good for the previous generations. Me, I'm going for 120... but only God knows how long I have. I think of the Three Blind Fates: One spins the thread of your life; one measures it out; and one cuts it; and even they do not know.

Myself, I think of James T. Kirk... "Oh, my..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BgY3VklH_k

[Brant Gaede]

His brother died at 93 and his other will be 94 in April. He'd have lived into his 90s except for smoking. My Mom died at 96 and I'm genetically programmed to live into my own 90s. The problem is male-pattern baldness. My ancestors didn't have it. My bro. doesn't have it. I got it. I lay awake all night worrying about that. Can't sleep. What if I AM THE ONE?!!!!!

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

I have from time to time wondered why people start smoking. I can understand doing a bad thing out of not knowing better but how can one not know that smoking is bad? To me it seems obvious that a rational person at least tries to make good decisions and to avoid bad decisions within whatever limits of knowledge and intelligence. I have difficulty understanding how it is possible for a rational person to voluntarily and deliberately do something that they know is bad for them.

Why do people engage in any high-risk activities? Many sports are dangerous. Look at what happened to Muhammed Ali as a result of his boxing career. Look at how many professional football players do permanent damage to their bodies. People are killed or become seriously injured in various activities all the time. A long life free from risk is not the ideal for many people, myself included.

People start smoking because they enjoy it and because it has some desirable side-effects. If I am not working at the computer, I can go for long periods without smoking; but once I decide to write, cigarettes help me a great deal. I used to use other drugs, mainly small amounts of cocaine placed under my tongue, to achieve the same purpose, but I have no desire to do jail time, so I switched to cigarettes.

Ayn Rand took amphetamines daily for many years (from her late twenties to the 1970s). In today's "addiction" parlance, we would say that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were written by a speed addict. The common excuse that Rand was not aware of the effects, and took Dexedrine only to control her weight, makes her look like a moron.

During the early 1970s, while I was under grueling pressure to finish ATCAG, a physician friend of mine prescribed Dexedrine (under the guise of a "diet pill," even though I weighed around 165 pounds and stood 6'1") so I could burn midnight oil. One pill and I couldn't sleep for over a day. The stuff made me very jittery, so I threw the stash away after taking only two pills during a three day period -- and I had been given a small dosage. Rand took two pills a day for many years. There is no way that she wasn't aware of the effects of that very powerful drug.

I have absolutely no problem with this, btw, but I do have a problem with O'ist types who condemn all drug use while making absurd excuses for Rand's drug habit.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

George, what is the reference as to the amount and type of speed that Rand took? Her taking such could, of course, explain how "inexhaustible" she was with all nighters.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Oh, gruesome topic. I smoked from age-17-33, then quit for 20 years. I took it up again at age 53. Why, you might ask. The reason is that I am stupid and dumb.

Carol

1 pack a day.

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

My resistance was heroic. For about seven years after I quit puffing on the cigarettes I was plagued with very vivid dreams in which I dreamt was smoking. I even smelled and tasted the smoke in my dreams. I would wake up and look around for cigarette butts for I assumed I was "sleep smoking" Whew! None found. But it was years before the fell clutch of the habit eased up on me. It is a rotten bad habit. It harms most of the people who indulge in it with health problems and a statistically measurable shorter life. If the long cancer or throat cancer does not do one in there are the related breathing and circulation problems Better never to start than to start and have to quit, if one can quit. Not all who want to quit succeed. Such is the nature of the addiction.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

I think what Ba'al means is that the 'brain circuit' that was formed when smoking became an addiction can all too easily be reactivated if smoking is resumed.

[BaalChatzaf]

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

I think what Ba'al means is that the 'brain circuit' that was formed when smoking became an addiction can all too easily be reactivated if smoking is resumed.

Exactly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[jts]

Several points:

Point 1: On the subject of smoking or any other poison habit improving mental performance.

Whenever I hear that, I am reminded of a story told by Dr. Vetrano. A young woman believed that smoking marijuana made her more creative. She was an artist and she painted pictures. So what would "more creative" mean in terms of painting pictures? It would mean more and/or better pictures. Dr. Vetrano pointed out to her that during the time she was on marijuana, she painted no pictures. In terms of painting pictures at least, her creativity was zero. She had a subjective impression, a mere feeling, that she was more creative while on marijuana, but the objective evidence was absent.

If anyone claims that smoking or whatever poison habit improves their mental performance, I require objective evidence before I take that claim seriously, emphasis on the word 'objective'. Mere subjective impression is not good enough.

From the little that I know about drugs, they seem to take away mental performance. For example if you are driving under the influence of a drug, the police probably will consider you impaired.

Point 2: The Great Stimulant Delusion:

It is possible for a poison to temporarily increase output of energy of both body and mind. This is what Dr. Shelton calls "the great stimulant delusion". He wrote a chapter with that title. Unfortunately the book with that chapter seems to not be included in Steve Solomon's collection of ebooks.

soilandhealth - Solomon's collection of free ebooks

The energy output that results from taking a poison is not energy created but energy expended. The body revs up to fight off the poison. During that time you feel good. You think this is good, the poison increases my energy. After the poison is fought off, then comes the low. There is the high followed by the low. The high is necessary to recover from the poison. The low is necessary to recover from the high, because the high produces exhaustion. This is the "Law of Dual Effects", one of the original 8 laws of vital relation.

Do not be deceived by stimulants.

Point 3: What do professional chess players do? (Trying to end on a positive note.)

They make their living by playing chess. They have a strong motive to keep themselves at top mental performance. How do they do it?

Believe it or not, body and mind go together. When the body is ailing, it has a way of dragging the mind down with it. The top chess players in the world are mostly if not all athletes. Korchnoi prepared for a world title match with Karpov by running 10 miles per day. The great Bobby Fischer, who in 1971 won 12 games in a row against a grandmaster opponent, said if he gets out of shape physically, it's curtains for him. There are plenty of other examples.

[Brant Gaede]

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

I think what Ba'al means is that the 'brain circuit' that was formed when smoking became an addiction can all too easily be reactivated if smoking is resumed.

Exactly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You had it much tougher than I did. I wonder if being an Aspie made it tougher.

--Brant

[caroljane]

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

All power to the cigarette! Nuts. If you don't want to smoke, don't. Don't come with the nutty idea you've been embraced by an all powerful evil requiring heroic resistance.

--Brant

ex-smoker

I think what Ba'al means is that the 'brain circuit' that was formed when smoking became an addiction can all too easily be reactivated if smoking is resumed.

Exactly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You had it much tougher than I did. I wonder if being an Aspie made it tougher.

--Brant

My experience with quitting was just like Ba'al's. I had to objectify the addiction- I actually pretended it was the Nazis demanding to know where the Jews were hidden - I had to hate the tobacco companies, and bleakly suffer through the cravings. What I hated was being addicted and that alone. The health concerns were secondary.

I always heard that it takes six years to become a nonsmoker. I too had dreams of smoking for about three years, and in the dream I was terrified that it had got hold of me again. I had to see the addiction as an evil,, to feel like a hero for fighting it.

Whatever works, don't knock it.

[syrakusos]

Barbara Branden has an essay somewhere about how easy it was to quit -- once she got past the part where it was hard to quit. In other words, she used to go through anguish and not quit successfully, then something changed in her head and she quit effortlessly and painlessly.

It's mostly in your head.

[Reidy]

http://barbarabranden.com/smoking.html

[Ellen Stuttle]

Barbara went back to smoking at least temporarily after she wrote the article. She was smoking a lot when Larry and I visited her in Santa Fe a week or so after 9/11. I don't know if she subsequently re-quit.

About Nathaniel's smoking: Back in the late 90s, at which time I was having an email exchange with Nathaniel on various topics, the subject of smoking somehow came up. He told me that he never learned how to inhale when he smoked.

Ellen

[George H. Smith]

A classic by Tex Williams, from 1947. This remained #1 on the Billboard charts for 6 weeks, and placed #5 in the top 100 tunes for 1947. I heard this song countless times growing up. It was a favorite of my parents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6gB89aThM0

Ghs

[caroljane]

Another great one was "Just one more Cigarette" or some such name (was that another Tex, Ritter?) can't remember.

Long before the Surgeon General's report smokers called cigarettes coffin nails. I remember buying cigarettes at 16 and smoking them in public *well, outdoors where my mother wouldn't see me), and thinking, It's really crazy that people are allowed to take this stuff into their lungs and breathe it out again on other people. Of course I was glad that the world was crazy. By and large I still am.

[George H. Smith]

A classic ad from 1949, one that now qualifies as black comedy.

"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." That's good to know, since I also smoke Camels. 8-)

Ghs

[caroljane]

A classic ad from 1949, one that now qualifies as black comedy.

"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." That's good to know, since I also smoke Camels. 8-)

Ghs

Oh yes! We got a TV just in the last years of cigarette advertising on TV. I remember a lovely ad showing a calm winding stream forget the brand, tsk tsk MadMen of the day! The ad was sponsoring the popular sitcom "Father Knows Best" with the future Dr Marcus Welby in the lead role.

[George H. Smith]

Barbara went back to smoking at least temporarily after she wrote the article. She was smoking a lot when Larry and I visited her in Santa Fe a week or so after 9/11. I don't know if she subsequently re-quit.

About Nathaniel's smoking: Back in the late 90s, at which time I was having an email exchange with Nathaniel on various topics, the subject of smoking somehow came up. He told me that he never learned how to inhale when he smoked.

Ellen

I've never inhaled cigarettes. I puff on them as I would puff on a pipe or cigar. The net result is that I can go through a pack of cigarettes very, very quickly.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Oh yes! We got a TV just in the last years of cigarette advertising on TV. I remember a lovely ad showing a calm winding stream forget the brand, tsk tsk MadMen of the day! The ad was sponsoring the popular sitcom "Father Knows Best" with the future Dr Marcus Welby in the lead role.

I loved "Father Knows Best" as a boy. I recall the scandal when Billy Gray (the actor who played Bud) was arrested for marijuana possession. Gray also played the boy in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," with Michael Rennie.

I saw Billy Gray interviewed on a talk show during the early 1990s. He was racing motorcycles at the time, and he talked quite a bit about being an atheist.

Ghs

Addendum: Some interesting tidbits about Billy Gray from the Wiki article:

Gray's "Bud Anderson" character is a teenager prone to mischief but always brought in line by his understanding and all-wise father, James Anderson, Sr., with a lot of prodding too from his mother, Margaret Anderson. On December 18, 1977, Gray appeared in the television movie Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas, a reunion of the entire cast from the former series which had left the air seventeen years earlier, including Lauren Chapin, and veteran stars Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. Had the ratings been higher, CBS would have considered a revised Father Knows Best series. In a 1983 interview, Gray spoke disparagingly of Father Knows Best:

"I wish there was some way I could tell the kids not to believe it. The dialogue, the situations, the characters ­ they were all totally false. The show did everyone a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of the problems between men and women that we see today. . . . I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax. 'Father Knows Best' purported to be a reasonable facsimile of life. And the bad thing is, the model is so deceitful. It usually revolved around not wanting to tell the truth, either out of embarrassment, or not wanting to hurt someone. If I could say anything to make up for all the years I lent myself to (that), it would be, 'You Know Best.'"^[3]

Over the years, Gray maintained contact with former Father Knows Best cast members. Young died in 1998, Wyatt in 2006.

As the co-owner of a company called BigRock Engineering, Gray markets several products that he has invented, including a self-massager, high-technology guitar picks, and a candleholder for jack-o-lanterns.

He also hopes to revive Class A bike racing with a redesigned diamond-shaped course to permit sharper turns and to make the competition more thrilling. Gray raced competitively at dirt tracks in southern California from 1970–1995. He has since been a spectator and finds the sport is shrinking in availability.^[3]

Gray still resides at the house in Topanga, located between Malibu and Santa Monica, California, which he purchased in 1957 at the height of his Father Knows Best popularity. The house has over the years become something of a "motorcycle museum".^[3]

[caroljane]

Oh yes! We got a TV just in the last years of cigarette advertising on TV. I remember a lovely ad showing a calm winding stream forget the brand, tsk tsk MadMen of the day! The ad was sponsoring the popular sitcom "Father Knows Best" with the future Dr Marcus Welby in the lead role.

I loved "Father Knows Best" as a boy. I recall the scandal when Billy Gray (the actor who played Bud) was arrested for marijuana possession. Gray also played the boy in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," with Michael Rennie.

I saw Billy Gray interviewed on a talk show during the early 1990s. He was racing motorcycles at the time, and he talked quite a bit about being an atheist.

Ghs

Oh yes! We got a TV just in the last years of cigarette advertising on TV. I remember a lovely ad showing a calm winding stream forget the brand, tsk tsk MadMen of the day! The ad was sponsoring the popular sitcom "Father Knows Best" with the future Dr Marcus Welby in the lead role.

I loved "Father Knows Best" as a boy. I recall the scandal when Billy Gray (the actor who played Bud) was arrested for marijuana possession. Gray also played the boy in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," with Michael Rennie.

I saw Billy Gray interviewed on a talk show during the early 1990s. He was racing motorcycles at the time, and he talked quite a bit about being an atheist.

Ghs

I liked watching the show, mainly because it came on at 7 and I was allowed to stay up and watch it. I could not really relate to the relentless middleclassness though I did not think in those terms then obviously. I do remember the complacency with which I accepted that American people all had big houses and the married couples slept in twin beds, which even my twin cousins did not have and were forced to share a bed till they were 6 and got bunk beds. Yet the married couples never had bunks, unless they were on their honeymoons on a train. Twas a puzzlement.