[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by Matt
on May 4, 2008, 8:55 am, in reply to "Re: Identity"
"I do not find use of other drugs appealing, either in myself or other. Do other users of this board feel the same ? If so are there any theories to explain it ? After all it would appear smoking tobacco shares many of the characteristics of other drug use. Perhaps it is an aesthetic issue?"
For what it's worth, I'm behind you 100% on that one, although I have no idea if it's for the same reasons.
As drugs go, tobacco is very finely balanced. On the one hand, you have things like sugar, caffeine, and theobromine (chocolate), which for the majority of the population have no appreciable effect whatsoever on the other aspects of their lives, no matter how addicted they might be. On the other hand, there are alcohol and a long list of legally prohibited substances, which carry profound and immediate consequences for the users, causing immense and irrevocable changes to the day to day life of anyone who becomes a regular user -- and in some cases, even to casual users who just get unlucky.
Then there's smoking...sitting right in the sweet spot in the middle. Different enough from "normal" behavior to provide the user with substantial expressive and declarative value, yet close enough that the user need not cut themselves off from mainstream society at any but the most serious levels of dependency. Dangerous enough to kill millions, yet safe enough that users don't feel undeniable, life-changing side effects until many years after they start -- indeed for a MAJORITY of smokers the side effects never become truly incapacitating, as those of many prohibited drugs typically do.
Smoking is relateable -- even to non-smokers -- in a way use of other drugs just isn't, unless one is already inside the circle of addicts.
It's also an audience-participation sort of expressiveness. Users of ANY OTHER DRUG, legal or otherwise, who involved nonconsenting third parties as intimately in their drug-taking activities (and/or the immediate consequences thereof) as smokers invariably do would be immediately arrested for it. When one smokes, the residue of that cigarette is left behind in the hair, skin, clothes, and belongings of bystanders. The equivalent result for an alcoholic would require _public urination_...and for a cocaine or heroin user...well, best not thought about. This makes smoking a medium of absolutely unique declarative power.
And the implications within that declaration are, for many of us, absolutely central to the appeal of smoking.
(Others may, of course, differ as to the appeal of other drugs. Even those who agree with me that smoking's it, may in many cases think I'm completely full of shit about why. But that's my take, and I know I'm not totally alone in it either. Hope that helps.)
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