THE THREE STAGES OF CIGARET-SMOKING.
CIGARET-SMOKING can be divided into three stages through which every smoker passes, be he rich or poor, a dweller in the Orient or the Occident, a club-man or a cowboy on the plains; the pleasure stage, the habit acquired and the feverish months which close the untimely end. The first stage comes, unfortunately, at a tender age with the appearance of the down which develops into a beard later on. Attracted by the gaudy females with impossible figures hanging in the windows of the inviting cigar stores, or the lithographs of dark-eyed senoritas who hold between their bejeweled fingers a dainty gilt-tipped roll, the youth, with that natural longing to be a man, and, imagining the avenue to this end lies through a cigar-store door, enters the realm of Dame Nicotine, and for a few cents soon possesses the covered box of cigarets, and with manly strides hurries away to the most convenient barn or other safe retreat to try the pleasures announced by the tempting lithographs. The first stage leads rapidly to the second, where the innocent little paper rolls have become the master, and with no gentle hand apply the whip, driving the now unwilling smoker more often each week to the cigar store. Fearing the consequences and feeling an unusual state of health, the victim decides to smoke cigars, and thus wean himself from his passion. A pipe is also tried; but to his alarm the discovery is made that these so-called less harmful forms of using tobacco fail to satisfy unless the smoke from the pipe or cigar is inhaled. In his sweet delusions, and hoping to shake himself loose from the toils of the now dread cigaret, the smoker continues to misuse these articles, and finally discovers their use is worse than that from which he would escape. With, by this time, much-impaired health, the last hope is tried of rolling a cigaret from so-called pure tobacco, imagining again, unknowingly, that this is the route to former health, but with the inhalation of this perhaps purer tobacco, the same old injection of poison is continued, and the consumer, as could rightly be imagined, daily grows less of a man and more of a wreck. The third and last stage is by this time reached, where the smoker is saturated with the poison he has injected into his system through the inhalation process, which carries the smoke into the bronchial tubes where the blood is purified by air contact, and which takes up immediately the poison deposit made by the smoke upon the thin membrane, and scatters it through every portion of the body in a few minutes. At this time, I say, “smokers’ faintness,” caused by improper heart action, causes to be felt the feeling of the necessity of some stimulant to be taken, and that other vice which goes hand in hand with cigaret-smoking—whisky-drinking—is commenced. They are near relatives, these two, and like to work together. The tobacco habit leads often directly to the habit of liquor drinking. Tobacco lessens the heart’s action, and alcohol increases it. So under the influence of tobacco the blood is not pumped fast enough, and the system feels the want of something to stimulate the heart’s action and increase the circulation. Alcohol does this, and the tobacco-user, when he uses liquor, breaks over all bounds until the balance is restored by the increased blood supply. The tobacco exhaustion needs the whisky exhilaration, and the cigaret victim keeps on alternating between the depression of tobacco and the stimulation of alcohol which he seems to require. Both are ruinous to body and mind. Without fear of contradiction I make the statement boldly that it is no more possible for an inveterate, poison-soaked cigaret fiend who has arrived at the third stage to continue his life and smoking without the aid of whisky than it would be without the aid of the tobacco itself. With greatly impaired health, each organ suffering from the poison circulating through it, this second poison is added, and the result of this double dose to the wrecked system can easily be imagined. Then comes the breaking down which makes the usual employment impossible, and with stomach, heart, lungs, and nerves a total wreck, the person is an easy victim to any of the long list of ills the human flesh is heir to, and the doctor returns a report of pneumonia, appendicitis, heart-failure or the like, when really the cause of demise is the result of cigarets first and the combined poison of nicotine and alcohol at the end. There is only one way to stop the use of tobacco, and that is to quit at once, not tapering off, but a complete shut-down entirely. Do not attempt to avoid public places, society, or other excitements which have a tendency to drive you to cigarets, but meet your old life squarely face to face, and live it just as you did—minus the cigarets. Many of the pleasures which seemed proper through a wreath of smoke will soon disgust you, and one by one these old habits will become abhorrent and will be dropped. The little motions and gestures which are a part of smoking, especially if you are a roller of cigarets, will be sadly missed and will perhaps be as hard to outgrow as the craving for an inhalation; but by degrees these habits, like the old pleasures, will be forgotten, each day seeing one or more become unused, until finally all the old uses of the hands connected with smoking will have been unconsciously forgotten. As the brain has a different spot for the control of each part of the body, so it seems somewhere in the interior of a human being there is an undiscovered organ which regulates the habits, as the unlocated gnawing, almost painful, for a cigaret away down in the intestinal or stomach cavities seems almost as real as the pangs of hunger for a meal when that necessity is not indulged in. It is this inner gnawing which will demand the attention of the person who would give up the use of tobacco and its intimate associate, alcohol. Each day, however, sees the edge dulled on the smoker’s “yearning,” until, if he is brave, the craving suddenly mysteriously leaves. The habits in the meantime have disappeared, and before it is hardly appreciated, the erstwhile fiend is again himself; and remarkable as it may seem, soon goes whole weeks without even a thought of a cigaret, altho he may see them smoked all about him. This is a fact, not a fancy, and can be duplicated by any one who has the nerve to look the smoking problem squarely in the face, and say, “Your rule is over; hereafter I will be master of my own desires.” Stop forever, but only fight each hour’s battles as they come, and as surely as it is impossible for a cigaret to force itself between your lips, just so sure is it that before three months have rolled around, the backbone of the old monster will be broken. Such, in brief, is the story of fifteen years of personal observation of cigaret-smokers in the highest walks of life to whom naturally the country looks for its advancement in the arts, betterment in social conditions, and improvements in all ways. Who will survive as the fittest to take the place of those to whom this duty by right of necessity has fallen, but who are utterly unfit to undertake this herculean task?—The Boy.