Smoke. Smoking. Smoked. How to give it up with joy and embrace a life of passion and meaning

By Kin Zang

Smoking is such an easy thing to do. It does not require any particular skill or effort. If it were not easy, there would not be a billion smokers around. Before you reach the end of this book, a question you should have in your mind is do you want to keep yourself at the level of smoking because it is easy or take on more challenges befitting the gifts you are endowed with as a human being.

 

This book is divided into two parts to drive home this point: There is far too much in cigarette than tobacco and in smoking than just a habit. Both the cigarette and the habit of smoking are like icebergs. They hide far more than they reveal to our senses.

 

The first part is about the visible and invisible composition of cigarettes. Even though cigarettes do not appear to be much, it is one of the most finely crafted consumer products ever designed to make you keep coming to it over and over again. There is a long history to it. Scientists, philosophers, lawyers and marketers of the first order poured their lives into keeping smokers chained to cigarettes.

 

The second part is about you and I – the smokers. Smoking is a behavior that is visible on the outside. But behaviors can be understood only by uncovering the underlying emotional and psychological roots. Similarly, behaviors can be changed only after the underlying causes have been changed. If you want to go from being a smoker to a non-smoker, the best way is to address the causes first.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kin Zang
• Release date: Jun 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393986713

Book preview

SMOKE.

SMOKING..

SMOKED!

How to give it up with joy and embrace a life of passion and meaning

KIN ZANG

www.mindsetantidote.com

To the memory

of all the cigarettes

you have smoked

CONTENTS

The Most Important Invention of the Human Mind

PART I – The Cigarette

Chapter 1 – The Ingredients of Ecstasy

Chapter 2 – Cigarette 101

Chapter 3 – Tobacco Filler: The Magic Plant

Chapter 4 – Cigarettes in Number

Chapter 5 – Smoking and Health

Chapter 6 – Smoking and the Economics

PART II – YOU

Chapter 7 – A Loyal Companion in the Battlefield of Life?

Chapter 8 – Or Is It the Clutches of the Devil

Chapter 9 – Peer Deeper – You are Worth More than Cigarettes

Chapter 10 – Moving from Dependence to Independence

Chapter 11 – Give Everything Except Excuses

Chapter 12 – Looking Through the Fog for Life’s Purpose

Chapter 13 – 101 Random Substitutes to Smoking

Chapter 14 - Books to Show You The Path

Chapter 15 – A New Journey

The Most Important Invention of the Human Mind

To a smoker, the cigarette is the most important invention in the world perhaps followed in a distant second by toothbrush. Toothbrush only because it helps clean up some of the tar from cigarettes coating your enamel.

Unfortunately, however, most smokers do not realize, let alone appreciate, this fact. These suckers simply light up the cigarettes – sometimes at the wrong end – suck up the goodness and flick the butts mindlessly. They could smoke a mile of cigarettes and take a million puffs without appreciating the importance of this figment of human imagination.

The closest it comes to a realization is when the supply of cigarettes stops. Through the mental, emotional and philological fog of early withdrawal effects, a faint idea of the importance of this invention may arise followed by a sense of guilt, which is well earned and well deserved, for taking the humble cigarette for granted all along.

There is an art to smoking mindfully. If you don’t want to book yourself a place in that special rung of hell reserved for mindless smokers, you need to learn the art of smoking mindfully. And this is one of objectives of this book: to train you to be a mindful smoker so that you can begin imagining a life without smoking.

The first lesson for you is this: There is far too much in cigarette than tobacco and in smoking than just a habit. Both the cigarette and the habit of smoking are like icebergs. They hide far more than they reveal to our senses. Being mindful is to go beyond the perceptual.

This book is divided into two parts. The first part is about the visible and invisible composition of cigarettes. Even though cigarettes do not appear to be much, it is one of the most finely crafted consumer products ever designed to make you keep coming to it over and over again. There is a long history to it. Scientists, philosophers, lawyers and marketers of the first order poured their lives into keeping smokers chained to cigarettes.

The second part is about you and I – the smokers. Smoking is a behavior that is visible on the outside. But behaviors can be understood only by uncovering the underlying emotional and psychological roots. Similarly, behaviors can be changed only after the underlying causes have been changed. If you want to go from being a smoker to a non-smoker, the best way is to address the causes first.

Smoking is such an easy thing to do. It does not require any particular skill or habit. If it were not easy, there would not be a billion smokers around. Before you reach the end of this book, a question you should have in your mind is do you want to keep yourself at the level of smoking because it is easy or take on more challenges befitting the gifts you are endowed with as a human being.

PART I – The Cigarette

Chapter 1 – The Ingredients of Ecstasy

ECSTASY HAS ONLY TWO ingredients: a lighter and a cigarette. Together.

To smoke, it only really takes a cigarette and a source of heat capable of generating 500 degree Celsius or more to light your cigarette. That heat can come from your Zippo lighter engraved with someone’s name, your kitchen stove, the old fashioned matchbox, a burning twig if you want to stay true to your roots, or any other innumerable instruments of heat and flame.

Here, the size matters. If you put the cigarette between your lips and try to light it from a raging bonfire or from the rear end of a jet engine, you will be wasting a perfectly good cigarette.

The key point to remember here is that without a cigarette and a reliable lighter, there really is no way to smoke a cigarette.  Swallowing a cigarette whole is ineffective and it won’t be called smoking.

But the next time you decide to have a cigarette, don’t just light it up. Take some time to look at the cigarette. Observe its shape, the color of the paper, the neat cut on the granulated tobacco, the fancy emblems and golden lines near the filter because in a few moments you will send them all up in smokes.

Sniff at the cigarette roll. If you can’t smell anything, perhaps your sense of smell has gone down in proportion to the time your nostrils have been chimneys.

If you have a habit of wetting your lips before tucking the cigarette between your lips,