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Yes, heroin, cocaine and alcohol addictions can become messy and violent. These types of addictions usually lead the addict to immediate catastrophes - legal, social and health catastrophes.
But cigarette smoking is by far a worse habit in terms of disease and death tolls.
There's no question about it:
Smoking is the number-one mass murderer on the planet. It kills more people than any plague, more than AIDS, famine and all the natural calamities, more than car accidents, more than wars.
Of course we know very well that smoking is really bad. But as smokers we live in denial. While acknowledging the danger of contracting a fatal disease, the deteriorating quality and longevity of life, and causing harm to the people we love or other people that happen to be around us, as smokers we develop rationalizations that allow us to continue to smoke. Or we religiously stick to denial.
It's quite amazing but true - it is our own mind that builds rationalizations, strategies and/or excuses for maintaining our smoking habit.
Consider, however, that the mind that creates all these strategies to keep us shackled to our smoking habit, no matter what, is a mind possessed by nicotine addiction.
Should we allow a mind that is altered by the influence of a powerful psychoactive drug to make crucial decisions about our health, wellbeing and life?
This all happens inside our mind, and we have to be careful about what we bring into it.
The mind doesn't allow many substances to penetrate. There's a wall surrounding our brain, made up of several layers of membranes and called the Brain Blood Barrier, or otherwise 'BBB'.
This protective BBB wall allows only certain substances to enter the brain. The wall is not supposed to allow a poison like nicotine in, but nicotine manages to sneak through in 'disguise'. Once it enters the brain, nicotine creates a mess. The only problem with this mess is that it is enjoyable and even beneficial in many ways. | |
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