In my first school, I studied a few things. I was in community college for a total of over three years and studying about four majors before I transferred to Film School. It was easy to think of all the things I wanted to do. The problem was thinking of what I didn't want to do. Because choosing ONE major meant, to me, saying "I don't want to do all these other things that interest me." I've always had a hard time drawing limits around my ability and interests, you see. Today that manifests still in my refusal to accept labels most people just sigh and say "okay, I'm that."

One of the things I wanted to do was help people. (Oh, don't get all weepy on me. One of the things I also often want to do is hurt people, so there.) And for a while I really wanted to help young people, kids. And people with drug problems. This is where I got my Psychology jones in. Substance Abuse Counseling is a nifty area because you study psychology, history, and science. Drugs, alcohol, how they came to be used widely, and the properties, and how they affect people. And how our government has interacted with them over the years. There is some really fascinating history in there, from the very first days of those who "settled" this "country." (And many people don't know how large a part Alcohol has played in our 'Murkan history. But that's another post.)

Cigarettes are a unique nemesis of mine. And here's why: they are pure poison death machines and the makers know it. And they make them that way. And lie about it. Hell, you know how idealistic I am. It's not a put-on. That's how my mind and heart work. The Jade won't stay stuck. I learn of humans who purposely hurt and kill other humans for their own gain and I want to strangle them with my own hands. That's how much they offend my humanity. I want them gone. I see them as evil, and a cancer on this planet. Luckily, I don't act on this. But this revulsion of people somehow lacking...well, we call it many things. A soul, a conscience, humanity....remains.

Because this greed and this murder they do on our population with their addiction and death production—there's no need for it. They could just roll up tobacco, for one thing. Just as merchants could be happy simply making a good product and selling it. But no, that's never quite good enough, is it? The money is never enough, and the sales are never enough, and they don't trust themselves to make a good product and leave it up to us to choose. They need to pervert our minds and lie to us to siphon our monies and fuel and time. They are sick, sick, sick putos. And they need to make us sick, too. They want to hook you on pure poison wite-hot evil magik. Or else you could walk away. No, in the Marlboro caves, in the R.J. Reynold's spellrooms, they flood those leaves with a deadly mix of over 4,000 toxic chemicals, including Benzene, Formaldehyde, Hydrogen Cyanide, Ammonia, Arsenic, Benzopyrene, Butane, Cadmium, Lead, Propylene Glycol, and Turpentine.

Acetone - A flammable, colorless liquid used as a solvent. It's one of the active ingredients in nail polish remover. [...]

Ammonia - A colorless, pungent gas. The tobacco industry says that it adds flavor, but scientists have discovered that ammonia helps you absorb more nicotine - keeping you hooked on smoking.

Arsenic - A silvery-white very poisonous chemical element. This deadly poison is used to make insecticides, and it is also used to kill gophers and rats.

Benzene - A flammable liquid obtained from coal tar and used as a solvent. This cancer-causing chemical is used to make everything from pesticides to detergent to
gasoline.

Benzoapyrene - A yellow crystalline carcinogenic hydrocarbon found in coal tar and cigarette smoke. It's one of the most potent cancer-causing chemicals in the
world.

Butane - A hydrocarbon used as a fuel. Highly flammable butane is one of the key ingredients in gasoline.

Cadmium - A metallic chemical element used in alloys. This toxic metal causes damage to the liver, kidneys, and the brain; and stays in your body for years.

Formaldehyde - A colorless pungent gas used in solution as a disinfectant and preservative. It causes cancer; damages your lungs, skin and digestive system.
Embalmers use it to preserve dead bodies.

Lead - A heavy bluish-gray metallic chemical element. This toxic heavy metal causes lead poisoning, which stunts your growth, and damages your brain. It can easily kill you.

Propylene Glycol - A sweet hygroscopic viscous liquid used as antifreeze and as a solvent in brake fluid. The tobacco industry claims they add it to keep cheap "reconstituted tobacco" from drying out, but scientists say it aids in the delivery of nicotine (tobaccos active drug) to the brain.

Turpentine - A colorless volatile oil. Turpentine is very toxic and is commonly used as a paint thinner.

—THE TOXINS IN CIGARETTES, curezone.com

I've watched more than one person become riddled with death behind these things, and go into the hospital more than once. And now, old and failing, they are still trading off between an oxygen tank and a cigarette. I've watched many people in my life, seen their faces close up over the years. I've watched the face begin to die while they are still alive; little stained furrows and loosening lines and sags and yellow-ey bags on people much too young to be showing such things.

I know how hard this potion hooks you. I was first hooked on a non-nicotine drug at 17, I had no idea that I was hooked, either. I didn't know what "physical addiction" was until it wrapped a tentacle around me that year. One day I ran out of what I was doing and that is when I learned that drugs can addict you. I don't do that junk anymore. Nor the other things I later found could addict me. But cigarettes would not leave me alone. They were SO hard to give up. And I tried. Many times. My cynical phrase at just 16 years old was "once a smoker, always a smoker." And I still feel the exception to that is rare, although we exist.

But I don't smoke cigarettes now. And I guess I haven't for over five years, this time. But I am not so cocky as I once was...I fear them like I fear an Evil Magician, and I do not consider myself up to the challenge of fighting them one on one. They are stronger than me, and in the back of my mind I keep a very healthy awe and fear of them alive. So I stay away. And I will continue to talk about how poisonous and deadly they are. This is more acceptable now, this talking I do. By now, much of USA culture and society has caught up. Mind you, I am not trying to say I knew some great truth before anyone else. Many people knew all this, and many did before I did. I am saying that one person who doesn't listen to the hype but to their own experience and belly and heart will always be ahead of the hivemind.

When I was in my community college in 1988, there were still ashtrays in the classrooms! You could smoke in the halls. Imagine that. Now, much of what I am writing here is well-known, and understood, and a phenomenon of seeing cigarette addicts leaning against the walls outside of offices and homes is common. This wasn't the case when I began smoking cigarettes. But I'm very, very, very happy to see us getting wiser.

This is one of the many reasons I curl my lip at the collective consciousness of our snailpace society. The hypocrisy offered to us in the form of law is astounding and crazymaking. The government even subsidizes the tobacco industry, and I've known that for years. And you know my persistently naive mind: I was enraged when I realized that my own government ("For the people?") was helping murder its own people. Now I'm older, and know that this is ho-hum understood. Do I become jaded, too? No, I just become contemptuous. Of the bullshit. Of the neverending lies and doubletalk and justification. Of the control, unwarranted control, misused and abused control, of the practice of selling us death and calling it freedom (in many forms). Of the nonsensical and harmful drive to criminalize, for example, the use of Marijuana (with all its benefits) while selling alcohol galore and cigarettes to all and any. Fuck off with the stigma and fake morality.

As I always say, to adopt the logic that this society uses to move forward sideways upon it's sticky, fungal, septic tracks is to go mad. (I don't mean the purported or eventual logic, the ideal and slowly, piecemeal-ly realized; I mean the Realtime Advertised Actual, the noisebox of the Machine.) I won't do it. I won't put my faith there. I won't put my belief there. And HEY, I don't want your legal poison, and I don't want your bloated, tumorous, societal and spiritual cancers. I still trust my own intuition ten times more than any piece of propaganda my government tries to insinuate into my mind. You won't blind me to the path forward. Not with all the haze and smoke in the world.