Self-imposed Slavery

Usually when smokers try to stop the main reasons are health, money, and social stigma. Part of the brainwashing of this awful drug is the sheer slavery.
Man fought hard in the last century to abolish slavery, and yet the smoker spends his life suffering self-imposed slavery. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that, when he is allowed to smoke, he wishes that he were a non-smoker. With most of the cigarettes we smoke in our lives, not only do we not enjoy them but we aren't even aware that we are smoking them. It is only after a period of abstinence that we actually suffer the delusion of enjoying a cigarette {e.g. the first in the morning, the one after a meal, etc.).
The only time that the cigarette becomes precious is when, we are trying to cut down or abstain, or when society tries to force us to (e.g. when attending churches, hospitals, supermarkets, theatres and so on).
The confirmed smoker should bear in mind that this trend will get worse and worse. Today it is Tube trains. Tomorrow it will be all public places.
Gone are the days when the smoker could enter a friend's or stranger's house and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dogends in it. If there is no ashtray, he will generally try to last out, and if he cannot, he will ask for permission to smoke and is likely to be told: 'Smoke if you have to,' or 'Well, we would rather you didn't. The smell seems to linger on.'
The poor smoker, who was already feeling wretched, wants the ground to open up and swallow him.
I remember during my smoking days, every time I went to church, it was an ordeal. Even during my own daughter's wedding, when I should have been standing there a proud father, what was I doing? I was thinking, 'Let's get on with it, so that we can get outside and have a drag.'
It will help you to observe smokers on these occasions. They huddle together. There is never just one packet. There are twenty packets being thrust about, and the conversation is always the same.
'Do you smoke?'
'Yes, but have one of mine.'
'I will have one of yours later.'
They light up and take a deep drag, thinking, 'Aren't we lucky? We have got our little reward. The poor non-smoker hasn't got a reward.'
The 'poor' non-smoker doesn't need a reward. We were not designed to go through life systematically poisoning our own bodies. The pathetic thing is that even when smoking a cigarette, the smoker doesn't achieve the feeling of peace, confidence and tranquility that the non-smoker has experienced for the whole of his non-smoking life. The non-smoker isn't sitting in the church feeling agitated and wishing his life away. He can enjoy the whole of his life.
I can also remember playing indoor bowls in the winter and pretending to have a weak bladder in order to nip off for a puff. No, this wasn't a fourteen-year-old schoolboy but a forty-year-old chartered accountant. How pathetic. And even when I was back playing the game 1 wasn't enjoying it. I was looking forward to the finish so that I could smoke again, yet this was supposed to be my way of relaxing and enjoying my favorite hobby.
To me one of the tremendous joys of being a non-smoker is to be freed from that slavery, to be able to enjoy the whole of my life and not spend half of it craving for a cigarette and then, when I light up, wishing I didn't have to do it.
Smokers should bear in mind that when they are in the houses of non-smokers or even in the company of non-smokers, it is not the self-righteous non-smoker who is depriving them but the 'little monster'.