Tobacco is a plant that has been needlessly demonized for decades.
Wheat can be grown with pesticides and used to make Lucky Charms, or it can be naturally grown and used to make sourdough bread. Two different outcomes, same plant. One is detrimental to health, one is good for health.
Just like wheat can be transformed into healthy or unhealthy products, tobacco can be grown under different conditions and used for different purposes. It can be mixed with other additives and paper to create cigarettes. Or, it can be naturally grown and sold in its unadulterated form as cigars.
Yes, smoking too many cigarettes will probably lead to an early death. When you smoke cigarettes, you are also inhaling additives and paper, not pure tobacco. The intense nicotine hit that a cigarette provides makes cigarettes highly addictive and difficult to smoke in moderation. There in lies the problem.
I like cookies, but if I had 20-40, or even 60 cookies per day, the diabetes would probably kill me just as fast as that many cigarettes would. Whether or not anything is a poison or a remedy is determined by the quantity.
A cookie or two per day is probably fine with an otherwise healthy lifestyle, but we are creatures of habit, and once we get accustomed to a certain level of something in everyday life that makes us feel good, it’s hard to let it go.
Cigars, on the other hand, are a different story. They have been proven to be beneficial for physical and mental health in moderation and are not physically addictive. You’re not going to go to a restaurant with friends and think, “oh shit, I forgot my cigar!”
Once you get used to high-quality, aromatic cigars, cigarettes will taste like the synthetic poison that they are. On top of that, you inhale cigarette smoke into your lungs. Cigar smoke is not to be inhaled.
Until recent times, tobacco was often smoked occasionally and generally for ritual, healing and sacred purposes.
Outside of its “discovery” in the New Worlds and its eventual commodification as a vice, tobacco has long been a sacred plant to many Indigenous groups that recognized its potent effect and its ability to bring clarity, stimulation, spiritual connection and for purification. When I worked with indigenous Quichua in Ecuador, the ayahuascero healers commonly used tobacco smoke to cleanse and purify those who were taking part in ritual. Tobacco in that culture and many others is considered a great Teacher, a master plant deserving great respect.
Dr. William Campbell Douglass wrote a whole book on the health benefits of cigar smoking, called The Health Benefits of Tobacco, which I highly recommend.
Benefits of Pure Tobacco When Smoked
-Increases red blood cell count and hemoglobin levels
-Raises immunity
-Increases neurotransmitter levels
-Enhances psychic abilities
-Elevates mood
-Increases metabolism.
In other words, it helps people think more clearly, quickly and with less susceptibility to the establishment’s control mechanisms, hence, its suppression by the establishment. (source) It is also makes you less susceptible to Alzheimer’s and Dementia. (source) The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce recommended tobacco in moderation for the health of the nervous system.
Won’t it shorten my life?
The inexorable fact is that the human body inevitably ages, deteriorates and finally seizes up and dies. Therefore, we may as well enjoy life with its pleasures while we can, without worrying too much about statistical “risks” that are too often non demonstrable. The elimination of those “risks”, at best, gives us some extra months in exchange for apprehension, suppression of liberties, and prohibition of our vices of choice, taxation, fear and depression.
We also have to accept that we inevitably die of something. Everybody agrees with that reality – but not emotionally, thanks in large measure to the idiotic propaganda pushed by the health “authorities” People are subliminally led to believe that if they behave the way they are told, they don’t have to worry about death. But, dying has never been so much feared in cultures as it is today.
-Dr. William Campbell Douglass
When it comes to these vices associated with the “great men of history,” cigars don’t appear to have negatively affected their work, or even their lifespans. Hell, their cigar habit may have even lengthened their life indirectly by improving their mental health and outlook on life.
I see cigars as a mental tool that fuel creativity and drive.
Michael Jordan smokes up to six cigars per day and would have a cigar before every home game throughout his basketball career.
“It became such a relaxing thing to do. Not many people know about it. When they read this, they’ll know that each and every day for a home game, I smoked a cigar. I wanted that feeling of success, and relaxation. It’s the most relaxing thing.”
-Michael Jordan
Churchill was a heavy cigar smoker (smoked as many as 10 per day), and was elected “the greatest Briton in history.” He died at the age of 91.
The legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein was a “bon vivant” who loved cigars and died at the age of 95.
Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein smoked pure tobacco.
Twain went on to write essays specifically on cigars and how they can transform any ordinary man into a badass and any great man into a legend.
Alfred Hitchcock smoked cigars.
Thomas Edison was a cigar aficionado.
Cigars greatly enhance the efficacy of mental processes and create a think outside the box, stay the course and succeed mentality among whomever smokes them.
I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes. Too many, in fact. That’s one of the reasons I took up cigar smoking seriously. I figured the only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit.
-Jack Nicholson
Richard Overton, the United States’ oldest WWII veteran, died at the age of 112 and enjoyed cigars for 9 decades, smoking up to 12 every day.
Some research-backed benefits of nicotine:
- Increases Wakefulness, Motivation, Alertness, and Creativity
- Improves Attention, Memory, and Fine Motor Skills
- Can Help with ADHD
- Neuroprotective
- Preventative and a Treatment for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
- Anti-inflammatory
- Helps in Weight and Insulin Control
- Helps Repair Tissue
- Improves cognitive related symptoms in those suffering from schizophrenia
- Nicotine mimics the effects of acetylcholine in the brain. Acetylcholine is an excitatory neurotransmitter capable of carrying out electrical impulses, making it possible for nerves to communicate
- It is through these receptors that nicotine is able to act upon the brain and parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest part)
- Through the alpha-7 receptor specifically, nicotine is able to influence 55 genes.
- Nicotine also indirectly increases dopamine in the brain.
- Nicotine increases blood flow in the thalamus, occipital cortex, and cerebellum.
This doesn’t mean you should go invest in an E-cigarette.
Latest research has shown that e-cigarettes are even worse than cigarettes for your health.
Nicotine patches and gum also don’t have the energetics or great taste of pure tobacco.
Nothing beats a pure Nicaraguan cigar, I actually prefer them to Cubans. They tend to be more aromatic and come with a better price tag.
To Wrap Up
Smoke high quality, hand-rolled cigars. Ditch the cigarettes and live the good life.
