Treat yo'self with a little bit of self-harm today! For a blog named in part after my favourite way to consume a poison, there has been shockingly little talk of the inspiring object and its act here. For this reason, I figured it was time that I honour the pipa part of El Té Y La Pipa.
It was 8.17 on a Tuesday evening, and I was sitting in my chair with a glass of bourbon and a briar pipe full of black cavendish tobacco. I imagined the ethanol seeping into my blood and finding a home in my liver, and the nicotine being absorbed through the roof of my mouth and into my brain. Despite the mind-addling chemicals, I could still think clearly enough to reject the notion that I was self-medicating. We know all too well that lungs full of tar and drunken stomachs are ailments, not antidotes, yet most of us continue to poison ourselves every Friday - or, in my case, Tuesday - night. What makes this behaviour so intoxicatingly attractive (see what I did there) is not the attempt to remedy something about our lives - this lie of "self-medication". Rather, it is the enjoyment of indulging in the act of doing something so counter to our biological imperatives that makes intoxication appealing. There are few other species (see koalas and eucalyptus) that will consume toxic substances as readily and regularly as we will crack open a beer at the end of a long day. Furthermore, it is not only the long-term effects of toxins in these drugs that are harmful and possibly counter-intuitive when we assume that the basic imperative for humans is to survive long enough to rear children. The immediate effects, too, can have dangerous and lethal consequences, most obviously in cases of drunk driving. So what is it about the light-headed buzz I get from smoking tobacco, and easy laughter my friend Maddi experiences after a glass (or bottle) of her favourite Marlborough sauvignon blanc that raises its priority level above mere survival? Perhaps it is the fact that humans have now come to a place in our development in which we are conscious of death and its inevitability. Why spend your limited years trying to run from the inescapable when you could spend them just a wee bit tipsy? Or perhaps it is the idea of "mere" survival that does it. As terrified as we are of the unavoidable, a life of prolonging its arrival is just not enough for us. I remember very clearly one of my uncles ranting about how we could all live so much longer if only we would stop eating sugar and replace it with apricot kernels like the Hunza tribe. I must only have been about ten, but my immediate reaction was to wonder why I would want an extra decade if I wasn't allowed sweets in it. I'd like to think that my views have since matured a little - they are certainly less focussed on the importance of candy - but the theme is the same: a good life trumps a long one every time. Now, I don't claim to know what a good life comprises for all people, or even fully for myself, but I am reasonably certain that the occasional pipe smoke on a Tuesday evening and glass of red with a friend is part of it. There is a luxury in the act of poisoning oneself for pleasure that looks death in the eye and says "you'll have me either way, but you won't stop me from living while I can." Note: This is in no way an endorsement of self-harmful behaviour or a negation of the risks associated with smoking and drinking, especially within the context of addiction which is an entirely different beast. What it is, is an exploration into why we continue to engage with these behaviours.
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