The appreciation for tobacco smoke goes back thousands of years, and it hasn’t always been associated with an early death.
As human beings, we have become accustomed to being exposed to a certain amount of unfiltered smoke in a variety of situations in everyday life. Fire and burning plants basically made human life possible.
Traditional tobacco has been used by American Indian nations for centuries as a medicine with cultural and spiritual benefits. It is used to promote physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being. In many teachings, the smoke from burned tobacco has a purpose of carrying thoughts and prayers to the spirit world or to the Creator.
Tobacco was historically consumed and enjoyed out of a pipe. Cigars have also been around for centuries, and the smoke is not to be inhaled, but tasted, and chemical-laden paper is not consumed with the tobacco.
We smoked for a long time a few cigars whose incomparable flavor and fragrance gave the soul nostalgia for unknown countries and joys.
-Baudelaire
Inhaling pipe or cigar smoke is not pleasurable. It hurts your lungs and makes you want to throw up.
Moderate use of natural tobacco consumed via pipes or cigars does not destroy one’s health, and is not addictive. It has been historically perceived by saner cultures in saner time periods as something that reinvigorates the spirit, balances the nervous system and improves psychological health.
Bertrand Russell, a life-long pipe smoker, died at the age of 97.
Then around the middle of the 20th century, people began inhaling filtered, chemically altered tobacco smoke deep into their lungs several times per day.
The filter and chemicals in an industrial-grade cigarette make inhaling smoke deeper into the lungs and holding it there for longer possible. You barely even feel the smoke.
On top of that, like many pleasurable things in modern society, industrial cigarettes are typically abused because they’ve been deliberately altered to be more addictive.
Too much of any one thing will inevitably cause harm.
- If you drink 10-30 coffees within 24 hours, you’ll probably have a heart attack. 1-2 coffees per day can improve health.
- If you eat 10-30 cookies per day, you’ll probably succumb to diabetes and a variety of other debilitating health issues.
- 1-2 alcoholic beverages per day statistically lengthens lifespan. More than that and you drastically lower your lifespan.
The poison lies in the type and quantity. The only thing that’s black or white are the colors.
I’ll even speculate that non-filtered cigarettes are less harmful than your modern filtered cigarette. Since the smoke is unfiltered, you don’t inhale as deeply, don’t hold it in as long, and don’t smoke as many.
I live in France, a country of heavy smokers. The majority of heavy cigarette smokers over the age of 60 who I know personally have had stents or have had heart attacks or strokes at some point. Some of my friend’s parents have died as a result of excess cigarette smoking.
Serge Gainsbourg died of a heart attack at the age of 62. 5-pack-a-day smoker.
My father-in-law, who was a 2-pack-a-day smoker, nearly died of a massive heart attack three years ago and survived thanks to a triple bypass heart surgery.
Tobacco certainly can kill you. There’s no such thing as safe tobacco. Even abusing pipes and cigars can put you at risk for mouth, throat, and tongue cancers.
Moderation is the key. The middle path is the way. Try not to inhale.
There is a book written by French doctors called L’Art de Fumer Sans en Mourir, which translates to, “The Art of Smoking Without Dying”.
I read it. In a nutshell, they recommend following the bullet points listed below.
- Don’t smoke more than twice per day
- Don’t inhale
- Don’t smoke until the very end of the cigarette, pipe or cigar, as the smoke is stronger and more potent.
- Have an otherwise healthy lifestyle
- Don’t exercise heavily before or after smoking
Why am I writing about this?
As a student in Europe, I became accustomed to cigarettes and joints comprised of hash and unfiltered tobacco. At one point, I was smoking four unfiltered hash/tobacco joints per day until I realized that I wasn’t interested in the effect of the hash, but the tobacco itself, so I went back to smoking cigarettes.
However, when I began improving my health, I came to terms with the fact that smoking cigarettes is not conducive to physiological health, but I didn’t want to eliminate tobacco from my life entirely, so I explored the world of pipes and cigars.
During this research, I discovered that once tobacco’s image in modern society was destroyed as a result of cigarette use, pipe and cigar smoking was largely thrown into that same category.
I don’t believe that such criticism of pipe and cigars is entirely deserved. If used correctly, tobacco is a plant with a vast array of beneficial qualities, and I respect and enjoy it immensely.
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker
by J.S. Bach
Whene’er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.
Like me this pipe, so fragrant burning,
Is made of naught but earthen clay;
To earth I too shall be returning,
And cannot halt my slow decay.
My well used pipe, now cracked and broken,
Of mortal life is but a token.
No stain, the pipe’s hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death’s call I must harken
My body, too, all pale will grow.
To black beneath the sod ’twill turn,
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.
Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
‘Til naught but ash is left to see.
Man’s fame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.
How oft it happens when one’s smoking,
The tamper’s missing from it’s shelf,
And one goes with one’s finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell
How hot must be the pains of Hell!
Thus o’er my pipe in contemplation
Of such things – I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, at sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.
