Four Milligrams of Phenomenology
55
apparently irrational activity of smoke inhalation is explained as a form of drug
dependence that can only be rendered understandable by reference to the drug-induced
pleasure and subsequent addiction and, therefore, the pain and danger that the activity
will inevitably bring later. The government health warning on my package of Peter
Stuyvesant Lights, for example, says: ’Smoking is addictive. Nicotine, a drug in tobacco,
makes smokers feel they need to smoke. The more you smoke, the more your body will
depend on getting nicotine and you may find yourself hooked. It may be difficult to give
up smoking once you are hooked on nicotine. Government Health Authority Warning.’
The Quitline counselors have informed me that the reason I enjoy smoking so much and
why I am finding it difficult to quit has to do with the ways in which my body has come
to depend on the effects of nicotine, and the drug-induced pleasure it might give me. Any
other pleasure I may get from smoking is reducible to my dependence on nicotine. One
telephone counselor at the Quitline said: ‘It’s the nicotine that is so addictive. That’s
really the reason why people smoke, because they get a hit of it, and they have to get
more of it, because their body really starts to need it. Then, their body requires more and
more of it, and you then have someone who is hooked on smoking. Our main task, really,
is getting people to stop that cycle of nicotine addiction.’ (Personal Field notes vol. 1
February 2004 p. 60.) Quitline counselors occasionally gave another explanation for
smoking pleasure, that smoking was pleasurable because it made people feel relaxed.
This explanation too was explained by reference to the physical effects of cigarettes on
the body; in this case, carbon monoxi FRv2&W7