Sorcery wrote:Smoking tobacco or marijuana and alcohol put my mind into 3 different areas compared with sobriety. That gives 4 different viewpoints and the reason to return to it. Smoking tobacco probably stimulates thinking.
As a student n the sixties/early seventies, I partook of all three. The cannabis we could get then was so weak that anybody under forty would laugh at it these days - sometimes you wouldn't get any hit at all for the first two or three times. The only real proviso was that you really shouldn't drive because it could properly mess up your perception of distance. (Although it did do wonderful things to classical music. You could hear the third violinist from the left scratching his ear.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
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Alcohol was the opposite for this impecunious student. Even Watneys Red Barrel (ABV 3.9%) could make the world go fuzzy after three pints or so - which was a pity because it was just about all there was to buy after the big fizzy keg breweries had swallowed up all the traditional brewers. The main reason I didn't drink all that much was that I also rode a motorbike, and the two activities really didn't mix.
But tobacco? Oh gawd, I only smoked for five years (from age 21), and I got heavily hooked and I had a hell of a time giving up. Took me three attempts, during which I tried cigars (which I stupidly inhaled!) Somehow my brain managed to ignore the huge government advertising hoardings that showed how much tar had been in a dead smoker's lungs, and I didn't stop until cost forced me. (Twenty Benson & Hedges went up to 37p, which was outrageous enough to shock me into submission.)
It was no use wishing I hadn't ever started. In student Berlin, being a non-smoker had been a guarantee that you wouldn't have friends or a sex life, so needs must.
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You might say it was age, marriage and (also impecunious) home ownership that eventually cured me of the monstrous lungweed in the end. And thank god for that.
BJ