How I plan to beat cigarettes--this time around!

[ValueChaser]

I have been a regular smoker of cigarettes for many years, with substantial periods of cessation punctuating my smoking lifestyle. I remember that since at least 2007, I have been smoking a pack of cigarattes a day. In January of 2008, I began what has become my tradition: setting the date of quitting for my birthday. I quit smoking for about a half a year that year, based on the application of a well-thought out moral principle to how I should treat the health of my lungs. The well-thought out moral principle is Ayn Rand's principle of being egoistic in the long-term, as I conceived it through hours of "chewing" selected chapters from Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand in the pages of my journal. After that, I quit for a paltry 3 or so months in January 2009, when I viewed myself more of a Sartrean existentialist in respect to the control we have over all aspects of happiness.

I would have more than likely told you then, at age 33 in January of 2009, that if I got cancer in five years and died, the cancerous cause of my death could not be averted by quitting "again." That is not entirely untrue from the biological perspective, since the amount of tar in my lungs would still exist a day after I quit, and take many years to mitigate. If you asked me then about what possible steps I could do at age 33 to lower my risk factor in the future, or whether I ever cared about the amount of tar that resulted from years of regular smoking in the first place, I would have shrugged with an attitude of "my life has always been bad anyway, so its just death, for Christ's sakes!"

I will quit smoking by the end of February.

What I have discovered is that the question of smoking cigarettes is not an entirely moral question. I am not the moral culprit for having smoked for so many years. It has been the available means of self-medication for many years in my life. Can one blame a person for taking nicotine via cigarettes when faced with pain which is the result of subconscious inconsistencies that cannot be resolved precisely because they are subconscious? No. But we can say that the person bears responsibility for turning his mind into a crypt, where one may peer inside but only sees the corpses of unanswered questions (here borrowing the "corpse" metaphor from Ayn Rand--I beleive it is in Galt's speech.)

The immoral judgment of smoking cigarrettes is not the fact of self-destructiveness per se, but the fact of making one's mind into a lower level of consciousness in the first place. A person who cannot resolve certain personal questions may not engage in substance abuse, but we as a society do not condemn him as strongly as the substance abuser. If you say that the self-destructiveness of smoking were a issue worthy of blame, then you say I am and have been a bad person. In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, John Galt states in the radio address, "It is not any crime you have ever committed that infects your soul with permanent guilt, it is none of your failures, errors or flaws, but the blank-out by which you attempt to evade them--it is not any sort of Original Sin or unknown prenatal deficiency, but the knowledge and fact of your basic default, or suspending your mind, of refusing to think." (This quote is copied from The Ayn Rand Lexicon, edited by Harry Binswanger.) But it is not the case that I have subverted my mind one hundred per cent in every single area of life, so I cannot in justice to myself say that I am "extremely morally lowly."

I plan on trying the patch. Does anyone else know of any practical suggestions? One thing is that I want to quit in February but do not know if there are any pagan holidays (in the "this-worldly" sense) in February?

Edited February 3, 2010 by ValueChaser

[Brant Gaede]

Well, VC, I stopped smoking on or right after my 25th birthday in 1969. Because of my extensive medical training and common sense I had a good idea what would happen to me if I kept smoking plus I had reason to suspect I was allergic to cigarette smoke. I had also spent 13 nights with former President Eisenhower in 1965 at Ft. Gordon army hospital after he had had a heart attack while on a golfing vacation. I knew his smoking was a major factor in his heart disease and it killed him exactly on the aforementioned birthday of mine, so I keyed off that, especially since I was no longer in the army or Vietnam. The first sight I had had of him was at night and he was sleeping in a blocked off corridor in this totally wooden one story hospital that must have dated back to WWII all alone in a hospital bed with an electronic monitor going above his head. Sobering to think how powerful he had once been and then so powerless in all respects.

I stopped. Period. For two months I puffed on those small cigars the size of cigarettes without inhaling then I chucked those also. That's what I'd do if you: get some cheap cigars to suck and puff on in lieu of smoking and then stop.

Another way might be to buy a year's supply, smoke one more pack and burn the rest. Or smoke one cigarette and destroy the rest of the pack and keep repeating. Every one smoked means 19 shredded.

You have to make a choice. Screw the end of February. How about this coming weekend?

--Brant

PS: If you stop smoking for good it will be a continuing source of self esteem the rest of your life.

Edited February 3, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[ValueChaser]

"If you stop smoking for good it will be a continuing source of self esteem the rest of your life."

I am inspired by the longevity of your cessation. Your common sense in quitting is truly strong, perhaps so strong that it is really uncommon in the world of smokers. Speaking of mindets, "common sense" is less an attribute than "nonsense"--nonsense held in my subconscious pops up and obviously grips me. Then doubt motivates me to spend long periods in self-reflection until I am satisfied that "all is well" over a given issue. This need to resolve everything, usually minutae, often overwhelms any motivation to decide to act on an action I really want to be doing. I have been told I have "pathological doubt" by a psychologist. So I say: in these periods, I will just let myself feel this way instead of thinking. Accept feeling without analysis when it comes to minor questions. I'd rather die having diverted my cognitive energy from questions without substance, than having died ten or twenty years before my time.

Edited February 3, 2010 by ValueChaser

[BaalChatzaf]

I stopped smoking cigarettes in 1962 after ten tries. The tenth and final try was Cold Turkey and no tapering off. Cold Turkey does it, but it is hard. Here is the secret --- do not "test" your self after you have stopped for a while. Stay away from cigarettes, period! Also do not refer to yourself as an ex-smoker. You will never be an ex-smoker. You will be if you are lucky and persistent a smoker who has not lit up since ----x date -----. Remember, once a habitual smoker, always a smoker.

The experience was interesting. For seven years I had vivid dreams that I smoked cigarettes. I could smell them, I could taste them. The dreams were so vivid that I got up and a looked around for butts. Eventually the dreams stopped.

My habit lasted from my 14 th year to my 26 th year. I did not quit for fear of lung cancer. I was just tired of the persistent bronchitis and the technicolor sputum (ugh!), the constant sore throat and the shortness of breath. Once I had quit, it was Good Riddance. 48 years and I am still a smoker who has not lit up since June of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[ValueChaser]

Your post is very instructive to me, Mr. Chatzaaf. The reason is that I have thought that I should not in the coming months of cessation admonish myself to stay off if I crave just one. Why? For fear that the moral pressure to quit will unduly cause more stress than whatever may be my probleme du jour. It's that psychological "Don't think of an elephant" scenario. This is why one must learn to leave the stress associated with the problem, with the problem--which is really very simple if you briefly consider it. All I must say in my mind is "you aren't a smoker anymore" and then cease to consider smoking as an alternative. Indeed, if I feel an obssessive need for further thought as to a solution to a minor problem, place the minor problem in a broad scope of measurements by saying, "I don't know the precise answer, but I know enough that is not as bad as it seems" and then stop analyzing the problem.

Thank you!

Sincerely, John

[ValueChaser]

Duplicate post--Sorry, my computer has a very slow connection, and I wanted to make sure it posted. Got to remember that the "post" link is not like a web page

Edited February 3, 2010 by ValueChaser

[Selene]

John:

Another vote for cold turkey with cigarettes.

Also, you will still crave. I still will get a whiff or waft of a cigarette as I walk past someone, or see someone inhaling and blowing out a plume.

I know that I could, right then light one up.

Then I remember the trip to the ER and almost having to be intubated and say to that person boy, let's pass on this one!

Stay the course.

Adam

[Backlighting]

John,

Barbara Branden recommends the book "Easy Way To Stop Smoking" by Allen Carr. She kicked smoking after reading it. Try Ebay, Half.com or Amazon. Good luck!

[ValueChaser]

It appears that a personal experience serves as a powerful encourager to stay off cigarettes, Adam, and I don't want to live through any of them first-handedly, so I'll live through them vicariously right now!

Thanks Las Vegas for suggesting half.com or e-bay, I read about that book when I visited Branden's site a couple or so years ago.

My regards,

John

Edited February 3, 2010 by ValueChaser