[wordup] You can quit smoking or else you can quit quitting smoking

[Adam Shand]

Zen ... just so very zen ... :-)

Adam.

Via: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/21786
From: http://www04.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/gb3/kenji-ts/translation/smoke.html

You can quit smoking or else you can quit quitting smoking
By Kenji Tsuchiya

Recently it has become difficult to experience pain. Dentists have 
improved so much that patients need not suffer pain. Children are taught 
how to avoid tooth decay. Patients in a dentist's waiting room are 
confortably reading magazines, listening to background music, and do not 
feel frightened any more.

But pain polishes human beings, and makes them aware of the deeper 
meaning of life. It would be a pity to finish one's life with no 
experience of pain. Fortunately, I have never felt short of pain thanks 
to my teeth, but I cannot help but regret that I cannot exchange my 
experience for that of another who has not suffered enough pain.

Given this situation, it is fortunate that there remains an opportunity 
to suffer pain, sadly a unique one. It is quitting smoking. It gives us 
a pain which is physical, mental, metaphysical and ethical, --a pain 
which is quite many-sided and complicated.

In order to experience it, it is necessary to have developed a habit of 
smoking at least 40 cigarettes a day, hopefully for 20 years. Then pain 
will be yours. Even if you are unfortunate enough to get cancer before 
you start to quit smoking, you can suffer the pain of cancer instead.

Generally speaking, a habit, once established, is extremely difficult to 
cut off, or to replace with a new one. I can say from experience that it 
is very difficult to form the habit of walking backward on all fours 
instead of walking forward on foot, and that it is virtually impossible 
to form the habit of holding chopsticks in the foot instead of the hand, 
or of seeing with the ears instead of the eyes.
On the other hand, there is a principle that things can only get worse. 
A compromise between this principle and the principle that a habit can 
not be replaced with a new one gave rise to the principle that a habit 
can easily be replaced with a new, worse one. Bad habits are easy to 
form, such as drinking, gambling, shoplifting, jogging, toothbrushing, 
taking a bath every day and so on. Smoking is among them. One has to 
endure only a little to form the habit of smoking, and it takes enormous 
pain to get out of it.

But the more difficult the achievement, the greater the reward. When you 
have quit smoking, a new world spread out before you. Foods become more 
delicious. Air becomes more refreshing. Above all, cigarettes become 
more tasty.

The effect extends to mental life. You can stand on the side of justice 
and glare at a man who is smoking, inhaling lungfuls of the smoke (which 
is very delicious). It is a spiritual revolution from always feeling 
guilty to feeling healthy and confident. You can even devote your life 
to promoting the right to avoid passive smoking.

You may think I exaggerate, but once you have succeeded in quitting 
smoking, though it might seem exagarated, you gain deeper insight into 
life, or rather you gain the illusion that you have gained deeper 
insight into life. One who previously felt no feel any sympathy with 
those who suffered from pain comes to look scornfully on them on the 
grounds that their pain is nothing compared with his own. He comes to 
think that those who have not had experienced enough pain are 
contemptible because they have experienced only a half of life. He comes 
to think of those who can not quit smoking as lesser than dogs. He then 
thinks that ultimately the only one who deserves the name of human being 
is himself, and reaches spiritual peace.

How, then, can one stop smoking? Many methods have been proposed, but 
there is one thing to keep in mind whatever method you may adopt: You 
should never be too conscious of quitting smoking. You must avoid the 
situation where you make too much conscious effort to quit smoking and, 
as a result, keep thinking of smoking all day long. This is similar to 
the case where you try so hard to forget something that you have to 
summon up frequently what to forget in order to make certain to forget 
it and, as a result, inscribe it firmly in memory.

The first crisis comes when you determine to quit smoking. The thought 
that you can't smoke any more makes your attention focus on smoking and 
stirs up hunger for smoking. In such a case, it is not a good idea to 
persuade yourself that if you overcome the temptation now, it will make 
smoking much tastier later. It is true that the longer you have stopped 
smoking, the tastier smoking becomes. But this only makes you love 
smoking the more, although it can be said to have had a good effect on 
you, since it is better if you smoke anyway to enjoy smoking than to 
smoke unwillingly.
What is important is casualness. If you become oblibious of quitting 
smoking, you have almost succeeded in quitting smoking. To become 
unaware of smoking when you smoke, is a big achievement. If you forget 
consciousness, forget yourself, forget you should stop smoking, and so 
transcend the distinction between smoking and stopping smoking, it would 
be nothing less than spiritual enlightment.

There is another method which does not cause much pain. This is to 
replace cigarettes gradually with lighter ones and finally to get 
satisfaction from the smoke other people exhale, the smoke chimneys 
belch, the smog, or sulphurous acid gas, namely, anything poisonous. To 
replace them gradually with lighter ones is to be recommended, since if 
you replace cigarettes with much lighter ones suddenly, you will end up 
smoking more cigarettes. If, on the other hand, you replace them 
gradually with lighter ones, the number of cigarettes you smoke will 
increase only gradually.
But as you can easily see, the problem with this method is that you will 
somehow try to make up for the amount of nicotine lost by the 
substitution of lighter cigarettes. Even if the number of cigarette you 
smoke remains the same, you will smoke them down closer to the filter 
than before. In extreme cases, you may end up smoking the filter. 
However, if you get satisfaction from smoking only the filters, you can 
be said to have succeeded in quitting smoking in a way. But you must 
beware, because in some cases people don't remain satisfied with 
filters, and get addicted to smoking their finger tips. It is difficult 
to light a finger tip.

There is another popular method, which is to reduce gradually the number 
of cigarettes you smoke. But I can't recommend this method 
wholeheartedly. Suppose someone who smokes 40 cigarettes a day has made 
up his mind to reduce the number to 10. He might be able to restrict 
himself to 10 cigarettes for a couple of days. But he will soon be 
borrowing some in advance from tomorrow's 10 cigarettes, thinking he 
will return them tomorrow, and will end up smoking the cigarette which 
is supposed to be smoked in 6 months time. Of course he can persuade 
himself to feel he has succeeded in reducing the number on the grounds 
that he is only borrowing future ones. But it causes the problem that 
the calculation will become more and more complicated and one will have 
difficulty in remembering how many years later the cigarette one is 
smoking now was supposed to be smoked.
It is not impossible to work out a way to avoid this problem. One who 
smokes 40 cigarettes a day need only make a long (or thick) cigarette by 
joining 40 cigarettes together. In this way, one can control freely the 
number, whether it may be one a day or one a month. The problem is that 
it will be difficult to make a very long cigarette and, what's more, it 
will be difficult to smoke it. If you make a long one by joining 40 
cigarettes together lengthwise, you will not be able to light it by 
yourself. If, on the other hand, you bind 40 cigarettes into one bundle 
of cigarette, it will be so thick that only exceptional people will be 
able to smoke it. Thus, we must conclude this method is not desirable.
There is another method not to be recommended. This is to restrict 
oneself to smoking a cigarette after each meal. I can say from 
experience that as a result of this method, you will have 20 meals a 
day, which will ruin your health. However, you might be able to persuade 
yourself that your broken health is not due to smoking.

The method which might seem the worst one is that you never buy any 
cigarettes yourself. He who adopts this method declares to others at the 
outset that he will quit smoking. He has taken into account human nature 
that people want to offer a cigarette to those who are going to quit 
smoking. When offered a cigarette, he will smoke it hesitantly at first, 
saying, "You are discouraging one who is going to quit smoking", and 
then will smoke some more as it were desparately, and end up taking some 
more for smoking later. Those who offer him cigarettes hate to walk 
along the way to lung cancer without his company. That is why those who 
are unwilling to lend 10 pence to a friend offer cigarettes generously. 
Thus, this method makes use cleverly of the psychological fact that if a 
danger is shared by many people, it is diluted. Moreover, it strengthens 
fellowship and saves money as well. So it can be said to be the best 
method. Of course this might not be called quitting smoking. But with 
such a good outcome, what difference should it make, whether quitting 
smoking or smoking?
There is an extremely effective if impractical method. It is to 
substitute something more habit-forming and ineradicable, such as 
marijuana, drugs, or pop corn. People believe that it takes stronger 
will to quit drugs than to quit smoking. So you might think one can 
expect more sympathy from people when one can't quit taking drugs than 
when one can't quit smoking, but in fact one would be treated as a criminal.

By the way, is the reason why drugs are banned that they are 
habit-forming and ineradicable? But far more habit-forming and 
ineradicable are water, food, sleeping and breathing. When water or 
breathing is cut off, withdrawal symptoms are so severe that death may 
result. The reason why drugs are banned is probably that they are 
harmful. But then why isn't having more harmful things such as potassium 
cyanide banned legally (e.g. "The maximum penalty for ingestion of a 
lethal dose of potassum cyanide is capital punishment")?

After one has experienced severe difficulties in quitting smoking many 
times, the moment will finally come when one cannot help asking the 
crucial question: why should one quit smoking? Is it really proved that 
smoking is harmful? Of course there is a flood of books claiming the 
harmfulness of smoking. But what is written in a book is not necessarily 
true, as evidenced by this book. Moreover, if you search carefully, it 
will not be impossible to find a book claiming benefits for smoking, 
especially when you search through old books and the publications issued 
by cigarette makers. Even if you can't find any, there is a surer way: 
you can write such a book yourself.
Is it possible to prove the harmfulness of smoking in the first place? 
If a smoker has a tendency to get cancer, why should that prove the 
harmfulness of smoking? It might prove that people who are fond of 
smoking are constitutionally liable to die young, and yet, thanks to 
smoking, live long enough to get cancer. Or it might prove that smokers 
are unlikely to be killed by traffic accidents.
It is true I have a feeling that I heard from someone who claimed to 
have read a report in a newspaper that experiments on mice showed that 
those mice that are forced to smoke incessantly for days or months got 
cancer. Needless to say, such indirect evidence lacks reliability ( 
Especially as my memory is utterly unreliable). Even if the experiments 
really produced that result, it only proves that they produced that 
result. The most you can conclude from that fact will be that when you 
don't have rat poison you have only to force mice to smoke for months.

It is impossibe in principle to prove the harmfulness of smoking. If it 
is true of animals, it does not follow that it is true of human beings. 
Heraclit, an ancient Greek philosopher, said that fresh water is harmful 
to fishes but not to human beings. What is harmful depends upon the kind 
of animal. Thus you can easily show that eating meat is harmful to a 
herbivorous animal, by forcing it to eat meat. It may survive, but if 
you keep forcing it to eat meat persistently for many years, it will die 
at last.
There is a great difference between animals and human beings. A human 
being can never grow as large as an elephant, however much grass or hay 
he might eat. He can never make his legs as thin as those of a crane, 
whatever special diet he might stick to. He can never become as diligent 
as an ant, however hard he might try. So it is meaningless to carry out 
a lot of experiments on various animals such as hippopotami, whales and 
pheasants.

It does not take experiments on animals to see smoking is harmful to 
them. The evidence is the fact that no animal likes smoking. Here I am 
making the assumption that animals in nature avoid harmful things. But I 
believe no animal would object to this assumption. In fact, some animals 
have bodies which are structually unsuitable for smoking. Some have 
mouths unsuitable for cigarettes (crocodiles, cranes, pelicans). Some 
can not said to have any mouth at all (earthworms, amoebae, shellfish). 
Some live in unsuitable places (fish, sea anemone, colitis germ). Some 
are of an unsuitable size ( whales, ants, mosquitos). Some have 
difficulties in lighting a cigarette ( chickens, tortoises, and 
especially snakes ). Some don't have enough money to buy cigarettes 
(almost all the animals and toddlers). Some can't learn how to buy 
cigarettes (almost all the animals and toddlers). They are born 
non-smokers. So it is impossible that smoking should not do them harm. 
Is there any one who has seen earthworms or grasshoppers smoking? 
(Though it is possible they are smoking without being noticed.)
By contrast, we can produce as many proofs as we like that smoking is 
not harmful.

*Proof (1)*
If one has been smoking for 50 years, then one has lived for at least 50 
years.
Therefore, the longer one smokes, the longer one lives.

(You can produce an infinite number of proofs by substituting '60', 
'98', '230' etc. for '50'.)

*Proof (2)*
One cigarette does not cause death.
One cigarette added to some number of cigarettes does not cause death by 
itself.
Therefore, by mathematical induction, no cigarette can cause a death.

*Proof (3)*
One ought to do what one can do today, because the future is uncertain.
One cannot quit smoking today, because stopping for one day cannot be 
said to be quitting smoking.
By contrast, smoking can be achieved in one day, in fact in a few seconds.
Therefore one ought to smoke today.

*Proof (4)*
Life expectancy has increased since Columbus brought the cigarette from 
America.
Therefore, in the long run, smoking has the effect of increasing longevity.

*Proof (5)*
An ill person can get well by quitting smoking.
On the other hand, it is impossible for a non-smoker to get well by 
quitting smoking.
Therefore a smoker is more liable to get well than a non-smoker.

*Proof (6)*
One quits smoking in order to be healthy, and tries to be healthy in 
order to be comfortable.
But nobody knows what the pourpose of confort is.
So the ultimate purpose of quitting smoking is unknown.
Smoking, by contrast, has the definite and valuable purpose of giving 
pleasure.
Acts with a valuable purpose are more valuable than those with no purpose.
Therefore smoking is preferable to quitting smoking.

*Proof (7)*
By nature the body gets pleasure from what is good for it.
The body gets pleasure from smoking.
Therefore somoking is good for the body.

*Proof (8)*
He who cannot quit smoking is weak and sinful.
Shinran, a great Japanese Buddist monk, said that since even virtuous 
men can go to Paradise, then how much easier it is for sinful men.
What Shinran said is true, because he is a great thinker.
Therefore he who cannot quit smoking is easier to go to Paradise than he 
who doesn't smoke.

( This does not mean, of course, that it is easier for him to die.)

*Proof (9)*
The things you can only get for money are more valuable than those you 
can get for free.
To inhale cigarette smoke needs money, whereas to inhale fresh air is free.
Therefore inhaling cigarette smoke is more valuable.

*Proof (10)*
Socrates is a human being.
Every human being is mortal.
Therefore smoking is not harmful.

( You can get this proof easily by applying to smoking the following 
proof which you can find in almost every textbook of logic.

Socrates is a human being.
Every human being is mortal.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

You can produce an infinite number of proofs by replacing 'Socrates' 
with 'Plato', 'Sherlock Holms', etc., and 'mortal' with 'immoral', 
'harmful', 'immoral, harmful and harmful' etc. )

Thus, it can be seen that we can think of as many proofs as we like that 
smoking is not harmful. We can think of even more if we don't mind 
whether the proof is correct or not.

The most effective way to defeat those who claim that smoking is harmful 
is to show them the above proofs and to insist that the harmfulness of 
smoking can not be claimed to be decisively established until they 
refute completely the above proofs. This strategy accords with the iron 
rule of competition that if there is no hope of winning, one should aim 
at a drawn or called match. As long as the above arguments are not 
refuted completely, the controversy over the harmufulness of smoking is 
not settled, and so you can smoke with no worry.

However, there might be a tough theorist who refutes these completely. 
In this case, there are some manoeuvres possible.

(1) to remove to a place where there is no such smart guy, or, if 
necessary, to a foreign country where you don't understand the language.

(2) to refuse to reveal a new proof no matter what happens, until you 
are given assurances that your smoking would never be disturbed.

(3) to get incurable cancer. You will get free from the worry that you 
might get cancer someday. Then you can put the harm of smoking out of 
your mind and smoke as much as you like.

These manoeuvres will enable you to dodge the danger of defeat. Be that 
as it may, won't the time come when all the controversies and discord 
disappear and people can peacefully and amicably smoke?

It is sometimes said that you must undergo a medical examination 
periodically, if you smoke. In answer to this, I want to say, "Don't 
talk nonsense. What if any disease should be discovered!". The type of 
person who is willing to undergo a medical examination would not have 
been smoking in the first place. A smoker lives a life of secret 
anxiety. Every time he discovers a worrying symptom, he can't disclose 
it to anyone and every day puts off until tomorrow having a medical 
examination, making a firm promise in his mind that he will go to a 
doctor as soon as he is convinced that no disease will be discovered.

You can now see what type of person the smoker is. He is the type of 
person who as a child spent the summer vacation keeping his hands off 
the homework, and since then has never lived a day without anxiety, 
adhering as he has to the basic principle of avoiding whatever he should 
do. That is to say, he is a likeable person. Unfortunately this type of 
person is appreciated only by another of the same type.
Obviously it is impossible for this type of person to quit smoking. Even 
if he succeeded, he could not help making up for it by starting to do 
something even less constructive than smoking.

I have now quitted smoking. This is an absolutely true fact, not a fake 
such as that I have not smoked in the last 30 minutes. I gave up a year 
ago. Thanks to this, my physical condition which was so poor before has 
become even worse. But you can't achieve the hard task of quitting 
smoking, if you are afraid of injuring your health. I think this 
valuable experience of quitting smoking cannot be replaced with anything 
else, though a bit of me wishes it could.

As a person who has succeeded in quitting smoking, I have now reached 
the mental state in which I would like to help as many people as 
possible break the habit of smoking, and to open an stop smoking clinic 
in an isolated place. And when an client cannot bear the pain of 
quitting smoking, I would like to sell him a cigarette for 5 pounds.

Last night I dreamt I was smoking. Of course, even in the dream, I was 
forced to smoke by someone who threatened to kill me unless I didn't 
smoke, and I can remember clearly I smoked only one and a half 
cigarettes. I swear that I didn't inhale the smoke deeply into my lungs 
but only half way down the windpipe. Nobody could misunderstand the 
meaning of this dream. It tells me that my body is requiring me to get 
into the habit of smoking again in order to experience onece more the 
pain of quitting.

I have just reexperienced that familiar numb feeling I used to have 
before when the nicotine ran out. Probably I have got conscious of 
smoking, writing abut smoking. The voice I hear from the innermost part 
of my body is shouting unmistakably, "The pain of quitting smoking, once 
again!". Perhaps it is time once more to launch into the long process of 
savoring that pain.