My Battle With Tobacco

Researcher say nicotine is as addictive as cocaine. Perhaps, but then I only know the nicotine side of this. My story has many twists and turns which come to an ironic end. If you’re in a hurry for the Taoist aspect, skim some and skip to the ending, The Long Journey’s End.

I began smoking when I came down with strep throat while in the Air Force. The sergeant told me that smoking would help with the pain, and it did. That I took him up on the offer was ironic for I was seriously into yoga at the time: eating vegetarian, doing asanas, and what now seems to me like goofy cleansing practices, i.e., shatkarma ⁽¹⁾.

Fast forward a few years to wintertime in Perth, Australia, riding a motorcycle and smoking roll-my-owns. I’d ride to work in the morning and would have to wait until my fingers thawed enough to roll one. It was then I promised myself that I’d quit on my 21st birthday, and I did without batting an eye. My will power was at its zenith… Downhill was where my will power would head, only to reach rock bottom in the Sahara desert seven years later — but that’s another story.

My vow to quit worked perfectly that first time. I knew I would have my last cigarette when I reached twenty-one as I had promised myself. Even so, I took up smoking again about a year later while staying with hill tribe people in Thailand. They smoked their homegrown tobacco in cool, long stem pipes. How could I resist. I easily quit again… only to take up rolling-my-own again a few years later using a tasty local-grown Vietnamese tobacco. After returning to the more peaceful surroundings of Thailand and Malaya, I came across a pleasant and somewhat sweet cigarette rolled in banana leaves (I believe). They were so good that when I boarded a ship for Japan, I abruptly quit smoking again rather than switch to commercial tobacco. Somehow, quitting was still as easy as starting again.

I began smoking again in Sweden over a bottle of wine shared with a new Swedish girl friend who offered me a cigarette. Drinking and smoking go so well together… relapsing is easy! Yet, I doubt that I was truly hooked even then. Cigarettes were so expensive in Sweden that I didn’t really make it a habit there. Beside, we were saving our money to hitchhike south to West Africa come winter.

The next time I remember taking up smoking was some years later during a rough patch in my marriage with Ingela (the same Swedish girl). We patched things up, quit our jobs in Japan, and traveled West back toward Sweden. On the way, we stopped in India to study yoga at Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, still smoking I think.

When we reached Sweden, I decided to quit smoking yet again. This time turned out to be an ordeal! I finally decided to take myself to the point of revulsion and create an aversion. That had worked for whiskey. I drank so much the first time that just the odor would be enough to send shivers down my spine for decades. The day came and I smoked one cigarette after the other until I’d polished off a whole pack. I looked and felt like I was going to die for a while. Indeed, Ingela nearly called for an ambulance. Well, I recovered and it worked for about a week! I had finally become utterly addicted to tobacco. Interesting that it took so long to hook me fully, and from then on, I continued to struggle with it. For a while, I’d limit myself to only smoking butts which I found on the ground. Perhaps that was the last straw in our marriage. Ingela could take no more of my weird, eccentric, unconventional nature.

Traveling through South America with Leslie, my future and final wife, I limited myself to buying one cigarette at a time from local folks. We soon returned to USA to settle down, at which time I started a garden and began to grow my own tobacco. Smoking my own homegrown was the best. Yet, I really did want to quit. I tried various gimmicks, the aversion thing, throwing my pipe into the lake, making “contracts” with Leslie, i.e., she wanted to lose weight, I wanted to stop smoking.

The Long Journey’s End

Finally, I just came to the end of my rope. I accepted that I was destined to be a life long smoker. I gave up all notions of ever quitting. I’d even begun to give up the notion that I had any free will to choose (p.587) anything at all in life. I finally began to see that visceral needs and fears, and nothing more, always appeared to drive my actions. Doubting free choice certainly made utter acceptance of my smoker’s fate easy, if not seemingly inevitable.

Chapter 22 may best illustrate the oddest facet of this story — the Taoist element:

It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position
to contend with him. The way the ancients had it, ‘Bowed down then preserved’ is no empty saying. Truly it enables one to be preserved to the end.

Within a week of complete submission to my destiny as a smoker, I quit smoking. Of course, I’d quit smoking before, and in recent decades painfully so. This time quitting was completely and uniquely passive; my addiction just fell away from me like water off a duck’s back. I had finally taken the lower position; I’d stopped battling with myself over conflicting needs, i.e, I want to quit vs. I need to smoke. As chapter 61 says,

In the union of the world, The female always gets the better of the male by stillness. Being still, she takes the lower position. It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.

Using stillness, I had overcome the male. I had adopted the lower position and the battle ended. This signaled the end of my journey. My total submission allowed the dust of the battle between my needs and fears to settle. I could see what I truly wanted of life – not the battle, not the quitting per se, but rather peaceful self-honesty. If that meant smoking, so be it; it that meant not smoking, so be it.

Chapter 36 hints at the evolution of this,

If you would have a thing shrink, You must first stretch it;
If you would have a thing weakened, You must first strengthen it;
If you would have a thing laid aside, You must first set it up;
If you would take from a thing, You must first give to it.
This is called subtle discernment:
The submissive and weak will overcome the hard and strong.

Deep down more than anything, I didn’t want to be a slave to the addiction. His comment is here, echoing in my mind, a reminder of the harsh reality I faced.  The only way I could free myself was through total surrender to the addiction. The process of life can be most baffling which brings me back around to Chapter 1 and the question: “To be a slave or to be free?”

These two are the same, But diverge in name as they issue forth. Being the same they are called mysteries, Mystery upon mystery, The gateway of the manifold secrets.

⁽¹⁾ I can’t remember why I was drawn to or even knew about yoga. Yoga in those days was not common. I do remember picking up a yoga book in a Denver bookstore.