A letter to a friend from another land (i.e. yet another anti-addiction rant)

I’ll just jump straight into it, w/o any intro… straight out of my head, as if we were sharing the same brain and same thoughts… ☺️

Yesterday I essentially took credit for you and your folks potentially quitting smoking (in the future) by saying “that would be my biggest achievement”. Seems strange, right? For someone to make this kind of claim.

First of all – that would be your big achievement, not mine. Perhaps not the biggest, but certainly a big one. Statements such as the one above neither help the cause nor do they put me in a very favorable light 🥺 Probably quite the contrary. Uh, I gotta work on that approach some more…

You don’t know this, but I have this idea / goal on my list of life goals… to help as many people as possible “to live healthy lives and achieve in life more than they ever thought they could achieve” (among other goals, ofc). Yeah, sounds crazy, I might be having a bit of a Messiah complex thing going on, haha. Like Tony Robbins, only… completely different. 😅 I formulated this goal after I quit drinking alcohol and quit smoking, after I “woke up” and realized how crazy the very concept of consuming legal and illegal substances is (alcohol, cigarettes and all other stuff, incl. coffee).

There is literally the whole system of multi-national corporations behind this, making tons of money off of unfortunate ones who got stuck in some “life situations” at some point and didn’t know better than to look for an ‘easy way out’ or at least, a way to deal or cope with the situation they found themselves in. I guess some found comfort in heroin, others in nicotine, yet others got lost in the bottle… And once you’re hooked, you’re hooked…

Obviously, drinking alcohol (toxin / neurotoxin) or smoking cigarettes (don’t even get me started on toxicity of smoking cigarettes) is not a solution. Ever. And neither is heroin nor weed nor other substances of that sort.

For some reason, parts of modern “society” normalised consumption of particular substances such as alcohol and cigarettes (presumably heavily influenced by propaganda machinery of huge multi-national corporations). And in such social environment, those advocating against consumption of these horrible poisonous substances are percieved as weirdos or perhaps even enemies. John the Savage of the modern day, so to say (<- this even rhymes).

If you don’t care about your health – that’s… strange, but ok. I get it. We’re all different. We all have different priorities. That’s what makes this world such an interesting place to live in. Destroying your own health is one thing. We’re all gonna die some day, so I can undestand that argument. But completely ignoring financial side of substance addiction brings us to another level of masochism…

A pack of cigs costs, let’s say 7 EUR (retail price). It’s nothing. I know, right. Most people can earn this kind of money in an hour or two at their job. And some probably much, much faster… ok, but… let’s say this month has 31 days and you consume one pack a day… that makes 217 EUR. Ok, I know, I know… you’re not throwing the money out of the window. You’re actually getting someting in return, like (percieved) pleasure, (percieved) inner peace, (percieved) calm, something to hold on to, a ritual… (I’m not going into “you’re also potentially getting COPD, lung cancer, etc.” because that’s not the point right now). So, you’re getting something in exchange. Mostly ‘smoke’ but… that’s ok. And a bonus: stinky cigarette buds. But, that’s beside the point here. How many months are there in a year? 12, right. So… 12x 210 EUR (I reduced the consumption and monthly expenses a bit… ya know, fair is fair) = 2.520 EUR per year. Now, I can’t help but hear Borat reacting: “Woo wee woo wa!” Because… in two years time you donated more than 5.000 EUR to the tobacco industry and the state (through taxes). And I’m almost sure that part of these funds are being spent by the government for noble causes, such as COPD medical care or lung cancer treatment. So, it’s a honorable thing to do… transaction costs might be somehat high, but hey, who’s counting…

Yeah, I know, I know…. above calculation doesn’t even include alcohol and coffee consumption. Cool. Ok, let’s make it double, so it’s 10.000 EUR in two years…

But hey, if you suddenly stopped drinking and smoking, where would you get all the fun from? All the life’s joy? All the little pleasures? All the liberté, tojours? You’d never again go to where the flavor is…

That’s a tough call, I know. Aaaaaand… additional “benefit” of non-consumption: ca. 23% of the population starts looking at you as some kind of a nutcase for even bringing this up… and the other 77% don’t understand what you’re all about because they’re not even part of the substance consumption game. Statistically, ca. 23% of EU population have been smoking in 2020 (peep Statista reports). And… many of these 23% of fellow humans would for sure try their best to put you back on the right track again, if you ever try to leave the club… because… what are you? Better than us? Something else? Or did you simply lose the sense of pleasure? Friends will be friends… 🎶