TIP: Click on subject to list as thread! ANSI
echo: 12_steps
to: ALL
from: ROBIN BROWN
date: 1996-11-19 10:53:00
subject: Stop smoking take up another habit?

Dear All,
I have smoked since I was 25. I am now 53 and still smoking. I have tried 
several times to get off the habit but each time have found myself going 
through a profound change in personality. I love eating and found this to
be an alternative. I got fat as a result. Smoking gives me confidence and
relieves the stress in my life. I know people who don't smoke but take 
drugs or alchohol. Living in a big city like London, England with all its 
pressures and stress and high-powered living has its drawbacks. The packet
says "SMOKING KILLS". So what! We only live once anyway! A short life and a 
happy one is infinitely better in my book than a long drawn out life with 
clean living and dull habits. I think some people need nicotine as others
need alchohol or another habit that relaxes them. The doctors are always 
coming up with another "DON'T". Funny thing is though that I know a lot 
of doctors and nurses who smoke on the quiet AND take drugs to relieve
their long hours and stress-related jobs. Chew gum. Drink water. Suck your
thumb. Hypnotise yourself into believing that smoking is wrong. Why? Why
make something you enjoy into an anti-social disease? If you smoke, live
with someone who also smokes. 
Each time I stopped smoking I though it would save me money. It didn't! Off
I went to the sweet-shop or the supermarket for cakes and biscuits. 
The only people who seem to be so anti-smoking are the so-called clean-living
healthy types. Hi-bran and wholefood. Vegetarian cooking. Alternative 
medicine.
But don't worry about the acid rain or the polluted atmosphere with all the
dangerous chemicals and radiation from nuclear tests that our bodies breathe
in each minute of the day or the artificial additives they spike our food 
with.
Drink tea not coffee. But tea has tannic acid and caffeine in it. Coffee only
caffeine. Don't eat meat. Eat only vegetables. Yes, and never leave the loo!
Why did our maker give us teeth which can tear and grind food if he didn't
want us to eat meat? What would our cave man have done with no vegetable
patch to cultivate? Starve?
We live in such an artificial society that has little reality to the natural
earth beneath our feet. Most of our drugs come from the earth or trees or
other natural growths. Tobacco is a plant. Vitamins are drugs too. Anything
that artificially stimulates our systems is a drug. Did you know that nutmeg
taken in quantity is an hallucogenic drug? Or that the strings off the inside
of a banana is a drug if dried and smoked? (Mellow Yellow as the song goes).
It's all a question of belief anyway. I know people who have never smoked but 
who die of cancer. I know others who have smoked all their lives and live in
good health to a great age and partake of alchohol too. 
I look forward to someone on this echo convincing me of my failings.
With Kind Regards
Robin
also available by e-mail: RBrowm3897@aol.com
... Blow your mind - smoke gunpowder
--- Remote Access v2.55
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