Smoking Addiction

a personal narrative, the story of my addiction to cigarettes and the analogy the smoker serves as a microcosm to the pollutive world at large.

This is the trailer to a film that I never ended up making. maybe in the future...

estimated completion, sometime 2009

see more from PLOMO MEDIA: http://www.plomomedia.com

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• smoking
• cigarettes
• global
• warming
• carbon
• emissions
• pollution
• cancer
• human
• species
• adaptation
• evolution
• spiritual
• growth
• addiction
• killing
• yourself
• kill
• world
• death
• life
• spirituality
• gaia
• short film
• needs investment
• looking for sponsor
• seeking representation
• complex issue
• psychology
• society

[roseapple73]

Smell is amazing and important. I have never been a smoker of tobacco, and never will be one. Glad you have given up.

[Plomomedia]

@roseapple73 there's an account i heard on NPR of a woman who lost her smell and then got it back. it seems to have been a very traumatic experience. Mine was never completely lost but definitely hindered (and probably somewhat still damaged). I'm grateful to have retrieved as much as I have so far, and with an appreciation i didnt have before. Towards the end of my smoking days, when much time would go by between cigarettes, they started to taste simply like suffocation.

[homeoftheherder]

smoking numbs me to the world. to the pain, but also to the pleasure. Nietsche (sic) claims that pain is a prerequisite to pleasure.

I went stone sober a few years ago for three weeks. no weed, coffee, alcohol, or cigarrettes, just physical work and walking around the leafy, forgotten corners of the country town in which i lived.

I could feel poetry moving around me.

[Plomomedia]

sounds wonderful, why did you give that up?

certainly it is true that smoking numbs you. I all but lost my sense of smell and other viscera when i smoked. one of the greatest things about quitting was getting my smell back.

[Plomomedia]

the one thing i miss about cigarettes is the ability to get high quickly, legally, and whenever you want. It's been more than 100 days since i had my last cigarette, and I run about 6 miles a day. Still, i sometimes find myself in a moment of "i could smoke a cigarette right now"

--- unfortunatey, that means I still have some of the neurological connections strengthened by years of smoking.

[homeoftheherder]

I smoke for three reasons:

1. changes to my biochemistry made by smoking and subsequent physical addiction.

2. small pleasure gained from thinking about a cigarrette...the actual smoke itself is always a disappointment

3. the control over choosing whether or not to smoke is one of the few freedoms we have in a capitalist society. It is identity gained through consumption. similarly with drinking...

[Plomomedia]

sorry it's taken me so long to respond:

1. understood

2. agreed

3. i think this may be an irony. indeed, it does feel like a freedom at first, but when you realize you're addicted, you feel exactly the opposite of what you described. capitalist society owns you, chooses your identity for you, and frankly doesnt give a shit about whether you live or die.

[cat3162]

Congrats to those who have quit! Anyone still on the fence, my suggestion: do it! You'll be so glad you did. Approaching 3 years off a heavy 34 year addiction, I feel better now at age 53 than my whole adult life.

[homeoftheherder]

and one more thing that is completely off topic:

If you get a chance, read (if you haven't already)

Gilles, D (1986) 'maceration and purification'

Douglas, M (1966) Purity and Danger, Ch.2

Shoenwald, R 'Training Urban Man: a hypothesis about the sanitary movement'.

These are three fragments to help in understanding notions of impurity, 'anality' and how we need to get our shit back.

good stuff man, keep it up.

[homeoftheherder]

Well it's interesting to look at the reasons why smoking is now seen as socially undesirable and why we are bombarded with health warnings.

Obviously (my) government wants to cut down on state funded healthcare costs caused by the effects of smoking.

But if you also look at it from a macro perspective, capitalism DOES want you to live and be a healthy, productive worker. The longer you're alive the more time you put into the factory / office / treadmill.

[homeoftheherder]

i wish the compression of time and space offered by globalisation could allow us all to take magic mushrooms together and talk about this stuff, then we'd get to the bottom of this malaise!

:)