Junkie Logic

Did you ever smoke? My friends and I tried it one time when I was in the 8th grade. All of us were athletes. We were at Gary Hamill's apartment. We all left coughing. That was it. I never did it again, mainly because I don't like coughing, and I wanted to be in the best shape for athletics that I could be.

Ace of Spades got hooked on cigarettes, and he writes about what it was like to quit. He recommends a self-help book by Alan Carr entitled The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Ace writes:

I'd really recommend the book. I don't know what it is about it.

I guess that most of what it says is obvious, if you bothered to think about it,, but as an addict, you are deliberately avoiding thinking about the basis of your addiction, so it's helpful to have someone else state the obvious to your face.

The book, by the way, stays away from the scary stuff about smoking, almost entirely. There are no pictures of diseased lungs or gums or that sort of thing. The author's notion is that making someone nervous immediately makes them reach for a cigarette so discussing the dire health effects of smoking is actually counterproductive.

Instead he sticks to a softer approach -- won't you be happier when you don't have to to worry about only having three cigarettes left?

You owe it to yourselves to quit. And not just "try;" let's face it, "try" is how people announce "I intend to fail at this, and not even put in much effort towards it, but I want the moral consolation of having supposedly 'tried.'"

It's really not that hard. But it is necessary that you decide that you're going to stop. Not that you'll try, but that you will.

Definitely read the book. Like any other addict, you probably get a little stressed when you think about going off the drug that has its hooks in you. But just like a junkie doesn't actually need heroin, you don't actually need tobacco, though the Junkie Centers of your brain are probably making a pretty strong case right now that you really do need Your Friend Mr. Cigarette.

But you don't. Of course you don't. Every aspect of your health, including your alertness and mental acuity, was stronger before you started smoking, and they can get back close to their Factory Default settings if you quit.

Smoking has literally made your life worse in every way, but, like most addictive drugs, it has got a little foothold in an important part of your brain getting you to convince yourselves that it's somehow "pleasurable" being sicker and weaker than you would be without the drug.

...All the crap that you "need" cigarettes or that they're somehow "good" or a "reward" is just bullshit. It's just Junkie Logic. All a lie. Not an ounce of truth in it.

Anyway, I don't want to give the book away, but it does kind of get you pissed off at cigarettes, and makes you want to quit them, out of spite, if nothing else.

Read more here.