Do Smokers Choose to Smoke?

No more than a cocaine addict chooses to take cocaine. The first time a youngster tries flirting with a drug it is a conscious choice. After that each intake is a desire instigated by the drug and is no more conscious than saying "I am hungry". In retrospection, as an addicted smoker, if you look back upon your life, did you ever want to feel this way? Was it a conscious choice on your part to get addicted to a substance, which creates a craving every time you have to do without it? No person dwelling in sanity would have ever made such a choice.

Any smoker would obviously justify his/her habit by saying that it’s his/her personal choice. But a smoker really has not more choice than a cocaine or heroin addict. Its time to face the hard reality, without the sugar coating it, smoking cigarettes or in other words being addicted to tobacco is no less severe than being addicted to heroin, marijuana, cocaine, or any other narcotic drug known to mankind. Tobacco is a drug and a smoker is a drug addict, he/she is as helpless as any other substance addicts when it comes to the choice of whether he/she should smoke? He/she has to smoke because nicotine makes him/her smoke.

Smokers never really realizes the power that nicotine wields on them and hence think that they are, and always will be, in conscious control. Any average smoker will have you believe that they are smoking for the enjoyment of it, the truth is far from it and every smoker inherently knows this. Does smoking really give you pleasure? Or did it create the craving in the first place and each smoke just causes the craving to subside for sometime, before triggering it again in a while? Smokers are just fulfilling a craving and the craving was not generated consciously, the craving got generated after the first few cigarettes that they tried, after that each cigarette was just to "scratch that irritating itch" which develops due to nicotine addiction.

A smoker feels that a cigarette is his/her reward and feels that a non-smoker lives a drab life devoid of any such rewards. But the fact of the matter is that a non-smoker does not feel the need for such a reward. A non-smoker does not feel the craving for a cigarette whereas a smoker does. A smoker is obviously not in the privileged position of having access to a tool of reward, which non-smokers don’t have, but it’s the other way round. The smoker has gotten himself/herself addicted to a craving which a non-smoker does not have and he/she just disillusions himself/herself by believing that every time he/she fulfills the craving it’s a reward. Can you really enjoy a craving, something which you have no conscious control over?

Digging The Smoker’s Pit

A smoker once has gotten addicted is comparable to someone who is made to live their lives in a pit or a jail as a prisoner, who is let out to enjoy the open world every few minutes or hours later. Let me explain this more clearly. Let’s say there is this one person who was living a free life, enjoying his/her freedom doing what he/she pleased. One day this person decides to dig a pit for himself/herself and chains himself/herself to the bottom of the pit. After every few minutes or after an hour or so this person would unchain himself/herself and get out of the pit. He/she enjoys the freedom outside the pit for 5 to 10 minutes and then returns back to the pit. He/she then chains himself/herself to the bottom of the pit and waits agonizingly for another hour before he/she can get out. After sometime his/her life pattern becomes something like this

. Gets out of the pit for 5 minutes ( compared to having a smoke)
. Get back into the pit and chains him/her up and waits desperately to get out (compared to the period when he/she is not smoking and waiting to smoke)
. Get out the pit again after a small period (a period which keeps getting smaller and smaller with time) and start again from step 1

If you are a smoker then this is your way of life. I am sure you agree because if you don’t you are just disillusioning yourself. You live like an addict because you are addicted to a substance called tobacco, nicotine present in the tobacco to be more specific. A smoker who says that he/she enjoys his/her cigarette is actually stating that he/she was banging his/her head against a stone wall for sometime and feels relieved when he/she can stop for a few minutes. Why did you start banging your head against the wall in the first place (withdrawal symptoms is what banging your head equals to)? Non-smoker live their lives without banging their head against a stone wall and you as a smoker live the same life for a few minute and return to the head banging routine. Do you still think you are more privileged than a non-smoker because you have the 5 minute break from your head banging? Don’t all smokers actually look at non-smokers in pity thinking about how difficult their life must be without the pleasure of a cigarette? The fact is your life, as a smoker, has become miserable because of your addiction and all you are doing is giving vent to an addiction, non-smokers don’t have that bane in their lives. Don’t feel any pity for the non-smoker, that’s ridiculous! A non-smoker never knows what it means to enjoy a smoke because he/she is not addicted to it and hence is not feeding a craving.

Accept Your Reality As A Smoker

If you are a smoker accept the reality that you are an addict. Whether you are smoking 40 cigarettes per day or 5 cigarettes per day it’s the same. You are an addict! Smokers who smoke 5 cigarettes a day and feel good about their low intake ought to realize that they are living in the same pit as the smoker who smokes 40 cigarettes. It’s just that the period spent in the pit varies. The smoker who smokes 5 cigarettes per day is no more strong willed than a smoker who smokes 40-50 cigarettes, it’s just that he/she is either not able to afford it or is scared to death about the health problems associated with smoking. There is also a possibility of their bodies not being able to take more than 5 cigarettes’ poison. Each person has a different smoking capacity. At any moment the 5 per day smoker can change into a 10 per day smoker because there is no difference.

Addiction, once it sets in, stays put. After every cigarette you smoke you can only look forward to the next. How quickly you have your next depends on your excuses. If you are worried about your health then the fear would cause you to delay the next cigarette for a few hours, but during those few hours you will mostly be feeling out of sorts waiting for the time when you can put a cigarette to your lips and light it. Like staying in a pit, you are just waiting to get outside for a while. It’s not a life of a free person but a caged life of an addict.

See this for yourself in your pattern of living, if you are smoker. Isn’t this how you live your life, day in and day out? There are instances when a smoker (male) would rather get the love making done with as soon as possible so that he can have a relaxed smoke (a smoker starts despising the prospect of having sex after a few years of addiction, soft erections, impotence, lack of stamina, lack of sexual drive and feeling of lethargy due to lack of oxygen in the most vital organs). Do you really want to feel this way? Everything in your life stops having meaning beyond the next moment that you can light up, is it not so? For a smoker his/her next cigarette is the only hope towards living a good life. He/she wants believe that he/she is enjoying his/her life thanks to cigarettes but that’s a totally delusional viewpoint. He/she is not enjoying life but has made cigarettes the meaning of their lives and this is not a conscious decision.

The nicotine addiction started by the cigarette smoking spree takes decision in your life from here on. You are a slave to nicotine, to put it in a nutshell. If you don’t realize it right now and are basking in the glory of thinking that you are in control, it won’t be long before the harsh reality dawns upon you. You don’t enjoy cigarettes but just fulfill a craving generated by the last cigarette.