Saturday, May 30, 2010
Smoking One-self into the Grave
"Smoking yourself into the Grave" is the sentence which welcomed me in a swanky private hospital of Delhi yesterday. That turned out to be the hospital's way of deathly reminder to me, of fragility of my own life, the one which has the penchant of digging its own grave. It made me pause. Wrong. It sent shivers deep down to my marrows. And the seminal question came to mind- When will I leave smoking?-. On way to grave or when I rested in grave.
The cardinal question remains unanswered. In few hours from now, the World observes Anti-Tobacco Day. Wrong. It has already started observing at least at the eastern end of the globe and the reminders of ill-effect of substance will reverberate for next forty eight hours in western hemisphere.
I can spend days lecture on harmful effects of smoking use of other forms of tobacco and substance abuse. Like every one else, I know Smoking Kills. And I also know that consumption of tobacco in its totality kills one person @every eight second. My interest in the damage that smoking and tobacco consumption does, is more than routine. It is an existential dilemma for me and a question of life and death.
Cigarette has been my strange bed-fellow for last three decades. A constant companion taking my life away every nano-second with every puff. I also am a pollutor personified- for every three hundred cigrettes smoked by me, I destroy one tree. Quite a sullied record for a person who champions the cause of public transport for environment friendly sustainable urban mobility. I call it dichotomy of my life. My car seats have holes created by burning splinters and in past my bedsheets have caught fire more than once. The fact that I got saved every time, is n guarantee I will be lucky one more time..
My daily quota of consumption of cancer sticks is twenty Wills Filter Navy Cut. When my love affair with smoking began in 1981, it was the era of "Made for Each Other" the romanticised marketing of the deadly cancer stick by the Great Indian Tobacco Company (ITC). Today, nothing has changed ,except the writing on the pack-t just says plain Naked Naked Truth"Smoking Kills". It does not trouble me. Vague pictorial warning on the pack of my cigarettes shows how powerful is the tobacco lobby. I just fails to scare me and that is the intent of death merchants. The deadly pictorial warnings in Europe and Singapore, scared me to death and often used to force me to tear off that portion of the cover, but they too never deterred me from being the walking steam engine, such an addicted smoker I am. I have been a valiiant carrier of my own death bomb for decades. Smoking Kills. I smoke. It does not hurt me.
I have been a loyal brand ambassdor for ITC. It has been three decades of Wills Filter Navy Cut. And I will do any thing for the love of it. I will lie at home about the number of cigarettes smoked during the day. I would pickpocket money from my wife's purse or children's wallets which they could decipher instantly. There was an occassion when my desperation made me snatch rupees five, from my previous day offering to God. My quota of Wills has made me break custom laws of the nations I have visited frequently and I have audacity to call my self an Ethics Counselor in Professional Life. When ever I travelled abroad I would always carry sufficient numbers of packets in my foreign jaunts, which were many and the benevolent customs officials would always heed to my pleadings. Wills filter was central to my survival. Wrong, it was central to acceleration of my death sentence. Even Supreme Court's verdict to Gallows, has a mercy appeal to President of India. There is no such appeal for smokers. They go to grave, directly-Appeal summarily rejected by God. Caregivers suffer, Cancer-stick wins. It is an unequal war.
Only time, I changed my brand loyalty to Navy Cut, was in favour Charms, the filter version of Charminar, in an era when I found ten rupees for a Wills pack unaffordable. For a year in Manila, Phillipines I was a Marlboro Man. In one year, I consumed the quantum of cigarretes which I would have consumed in ten years.. Marlboro man might have died of cancer, but Marlboro pack of 20, came dirt cheap in Manila in 1999, one rupee for every cancer stick for taking away few seconds of my life, bit by bit. It was a story of blown to bits, blown to smoke.
I have defied the law of gravity so far- I am alive and kicking. The question remains-for how long?. My smoking has ensured my admittance to the emergency ward of Escorts Heart Hospital . Lucky again. Let off with a stern warning. I do await a heart attack. My cholestrol level is still manageable and I have Lal Pathological Laboratory's results of yesterday to back it up.. Multiple linear ulcers in my esophagus nearly took my life they were direct result of my being chimney. But at the time of last endoscopy two years back, they had not yet turned malignant. Who knows about tomorrow. Smoking kills. I smoke.
Smoking Kills and before that it makes life hell. Still I smoke and if I donot take a vow for life it will drive me from cell to grave. I did not start smoking because of its romanticised charm nor did I start thinking it would add to my smartness. I casually tasted it in the State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad in 1981 and before I knew, I had turned an obscessive-compulsive smoker. My journey to grave continues at accelerated pace. On a normal day, I light twenty cancer sticks. I live in a false world of self fulfilling profecy and audacity of hope with a mistaken belief that I take only few puffs per cigarette and that per cancer-stick I consume much lesser nicotine or tar than my soulmates.
My younger son was with me in the hospital yesterday, when the message "Smoking Yourself into the Grave" was doing the break-dance of death, the tandav nritya, before my naked eyes. His concerned question was- "Dad what Next"?. My usual aunconvicing nswer was "Betu I would think". I am thinking still. Though today I lighting half the number of cigarettes than yesterday-the number is down to 10 from 20. But for how long. I promised my wife and kids a week back-This Anti-Tobacco Day i wouldcall quits to my lady love-the ubiquitous Wills Filter-made for each other. Will tomorrow ever come. Will it come in this life, or after my passage to grave. The question remains... and I am momentrarily petrified down to my bone-marrows.
Why do I smoke? It is a million dollar question and I keep asking repeatedly. I donot enjoy smoking. Still I long for a cigarrete at pre-determined intervals. I smoke in temples. I have smoked near funeral pyres. Smoking my self into the grave has been a merathon hurdle. My home is declared smoke free and so is my office. I have to come out of home and stand on thethe road to smoke combining the nicotine, tar and mixing it with Delhi's automobile pollution before inhaling it. I do so in the wilderness of night, in the chilly windy winter, on a hot sun filled day or a day when it incessantly rains. I will get drenched in my car but my car windows shutter down for a puff of cigarrete. So much for my love of smoking. If every husband has the same love for his life, divorce rate in India will dwindle to zero. My marriage survives, I smoke. Smoking Kills, and I smoke. I tell to myself I will not smoke, but I smoke.
I live my roller coaster life dangerously at the edge. I dangle closely to death. I know smoking kills. I still smoke and beauty of my love affair with smoking is I donot want to die. I have unfinished dreams in life-for self, family and society. I am a pathological dreamer and obsessive compulsive smoker. I promise to quit and donot deliver on promise. My first line treatment of bipolar disorder controls me from above, it drives closer to depression and substantially reduces my intellectual prowess. I can not leave psychotropic medication as non-conformity to medication will drive me to madness, a life back to unbridled insanity. My smoking enervates me physically and works as a slow poison. The combination of two is deadly-one eats my mind like a termite. Another kills my body by the second. When will I stop smoking. Smoking Kills.
I have tried to stop smoking several times. I am a strong willed person. I had promised my father in law before marriage, I would come to mandap as a non-smoker. I have given and broken the promises, thousand times to my wife in last twenty three years. I have tried nicotine patch and chewing-gums which only doubled my smoking.. I have taken professional help. I have gone to faquirs and tantrik s, temples and dargahs of sufi sants, to pyschiatrists and clinical psychologists. Smoking kills, but I smoke. I know its pitfalls-digging my own grave.
Is there some explanation of my inability to stop my fast-farward march to grave. Probably yes. probably no. In United States of America 45 percent of cigarretes are consumed by those who are mentally ill. In India there is no such statistics avaliable. But co-morbidity of obsessive-compulsive smoking with mental illness is as established a scientific fact as the realization that smkoing kills. The latter is believed. The inability to quit smoking is deemed as character flaw, lack of will, a criminal conspiracy against life. The country works for the benefit of tobacco companies, it has no program of increasing exponentially the outlay for mental health program-and public health programs. Root cause analysis is needed and the causes have to nibbed in the bud.
I long to live. Still I love to kill myself bit by bit. All the scientific evidences point to my early departure to grave. There is a finer point we all miss in India. Smoking in case of most people is a fad, a fashion or a deadly addiction. Obsessive compulsive smoking in case of most suffering from depression bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or some other serious mental disorders is a facts of life and death- thy name is co-morbidity of Substance Abuse. There are studies galore- be it Lancet and Nature the most respected medical journals or studies from the anals of feted Harvard Medical School and others. A case in point, is, the sad part of bipolar disorder - comorbidity with substance abuse is very high-smoking, drug abusing and alcoholisms can be as 60% in manic depressives Smoking kills but I smoke. To me, my more recent explanation is it is co-morbidity.
Honourble, Chief Justice of India, are you listening my Lord. I long to live, still I kill my self daily. Your judical pronouncement of banning smoking in in public place is laudable. But where I go.. Your judgements have made my life more miserable but it has not made me quit smokingmakes my life more miserable. It does not help me. It has made my work life a living hell. Do I have a right to live Sir freely. Your prouncements are noble, but they infringe on my fundamental rights under Article 21 and Artile 22 of constitution. And as a responsible citizen I try to follow your judgement to the core when others flaunt it by day. Your honour, I am yet to find a definition of public place.
I suffer from debilitating manic depressive insanity. My smoking gets classified as obsessive ompulsve comorbidity. Your laws give me the status of a non-person with no-rights. That has made me be Pappu by choice. As aresponsible citizen who suffers the double whammy of rightlessness and non-person status, I still travel down fifteen floors of my swanky office to smoke one cigarrete. Your judicial pronouncements are profound your Honour, except that they are killing the messenger not the culpprit-the government which plays in the hands of smoking lobby on one side and does not change the paradigm of managing mental illness. The omillion of such smokers in India who smoke due to their comorbidity of mental mental illness are not on radar- they reresent a non-subject to Indian pysche, to policy makers and other stakeholders
But here is my resolve. And public made on this Anti-tobacco day. I will quit smoking . I will do it for the love of my wife and sons who have been pivots of sanity in my insane life. I will quit because I want to fight to finish- for making difference to life and time of mentally ill, with the vehicle of Whole Mind India Foundation (WMIF) still a baby in the incubator. My vow is, I will not smoke myself into grave.
I will stop my silent march to grave before it becomes a violent departure to pit. I believe can. I give life to me. I will quit smoking. Smoking kills. I still smoke. The silver-lining is- I have driven my debilitating Bipolar Disorder to slumber called remission. That was more difficult thing to do. I will quit smoking, sooner rather than later. I want to embrace life. Want to say yes to Life and no to Grave. God help me if u are there, and I know u are there. My rainbow coalition is intact. Hope I will soon get the steely resolve. Else, it will be too late in the day.
My fellow smokers call it quits. Do it now. Tomorrow never comes
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Smoking One-self into the Grave
"Smoking yourself into the Grave" is the sentence which welcomed me in a swanky private hospital of Delhi today. That turned out to be the hospital's way of deathly reminder to me, of fragility of my own life, the one which has the penchant of digging its own grave. It made me pause. Wrong. It sent shivers deep down to my marrows. And the seminal question which came to mind- When will I leave smoking?-. On way to grave or when I rest in grave.
The cardinal question remains unanswered. In few hours from now, the World observes Anti-Tobacco Day. I can give a day lecture on harmful effects of smoking. Like every one else, I know Smoking Kills. And I also know that it kills @ one person every eight second. My interest in the damage that smoking does, is more than perfunctionarly. It has been my strange bed-fellow for last three decades. A constant companion taking my life away every nano-second with every puff. I also am a pollutor personified- for every three hundred cigrettes smoked by me, I destroy one tree. Quite a sullied record for a person who champions the cause of public transport for environment friendly sustainable urban mobility. I call it dichotomy of my life.
My daily quota of consumption of cancer sticks is 20 Wills Filter Navy Cut. When my love affair with smoking began in 1981, it was the era of "Made for Each Other" the romanticised marketing of the deadly cancer stick. Today nothing has changed ,except the writing on the pack. It just says "Smoking Kills". Its vague pictorial warning does not scare me. The deadly picotrial warnings in Europe and Singapore, used to force me to tear off that portion of the cover but they never deterred me from being the walking steam engine. I have been a valiiant carrier of my own death bomb.
I have been a loyal brand ambassdor for ITC. It has been three decades of Wills Filter Navy Cut. And I will do any thing for the love of it.. I will lie at home. Pickpocket money from my wife's purse or children's wallets
which they could decipher instantly. My quota of Wills has made me break custom laws of the nations I have visited-I call my self as Ethics Counselor in Professional Life. I would always carry sufficient numbers of packets in my foreign jaunts, which were many. Only time, I changed the brand loyalty was in favour Charms, the filter version of Charminar, in an era when I found ten rupees for a Wills pack costly. For a year in Manila I was a Marlboro Man. In one year, I consumed what I would have consumed in ten years.. Marlboro man might have died of cancer, but Marlboro pack of 20, came dirt cheap in Manila in 1999, one rupee for every cancer stick for taking few seconds of my life. It was a story of blown to bits, blown to smoke.
I have defied the law of gravity so far.. my smoking has ensured that I am admitted in the Escorts Heart Hospital in the emergency. I do await a heart attack. My cholestrol level is still manageable. Multiple linear ulcers in my esophagus nearly took my life. But at the time of last endoscopy two years back, they had not yet turned malignant. Who knows about tomorrow. Smoking kills. I smoke.
Smoking Kills and before that it makes life hell. Still i smoke. I did not start smoking because of its romanticised charm nor did I start thinking it would add to my smartness. I casually tasted it in State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad in 1981 and before I knew I became an obscessive-compulsive smoker. My journey to grave continues at accelerated pace. On a normal day, I light twenty cancer sticks. I live in a false world- my mistaken belief that I take only few puffs and that per cancer-stick I consume much lesser nicotine or tar than my soulmates.
My younger son was with me in the hospital today, when the message "Smoking Yourself into the Grave" was doing the break-dance of death before my eyes. His concerned question was- Dad what Next?. My usual answer was "Betu I would think". I promised my wife and kids a week back. This Anti-Tobacco Day i will call quits to my lady love-the ubiquitous Wills Filter-made for each other. Will tomorrow ever come. Will it come in this life, or after my accelerated passage to grave. The question remains... and I am momentrarily petrified.
Why do I smoke? It is a million dollar question. Smoking my self into the grave has been a merathon hurdle. My home is smoke free. I have to visit the road to smoke- in the wilderness of night, in the chilly winder, on a hot sun filled day or a day when incessantly rains. I will get drenched in my car but my winter shutter will be down for a puff of cigarrete.
I live life dangerously. I dangle closely to death. I know smoking kills. I still smoke. I donot want to die. I have unfinished dreams in life-for self, family and society. I am a pathological dreamer and obsessive compulsive smoker. I promise to quit and donot deliver on promise. My first line treatment of bipolar disorder controls me from above, it drives closer to depression and substantially reduces my intellectual prowess. I can not leave medication as non-conformity to medication will drive me to madness. My smoking enervates me physically. The combination of two is deadly-one eats my mind like a termite. Another kills my body by the second. When will I stop smoking. Smoking Kills.
I have tried to stop smoking several times. I am a strong willed person. I had promised my father in law before marriage, I would come to mandap as a non-smoker. I have given and broken the promises thousand times to my wife in last twenty three years. Have tried nicotine patch and chewing-gums which only doubled my smoking.. Have taken professional help. Has gone to faquir and tantrik and doctors. Smoking kills but I smoke. I know its pitfalls-digging my own grave.
Is there some explanation of my inability to stop my fast-farward march to grave. Probably yes. probably no. In United States of America 45 percent of cigarretes are consumed by those who are mentally ill. In India there is no such statistics avaliable. But co-morbidity of obsessive-compulsive smoking with mental illness is as established a scientific fact as the realization that smkoing kills. The latter is believed. The inability to quit smoking is deemed as character flaw, lack of will, a criminal conspiracy against life.
I want to live. Still I kill myself bit by bit. All the scientific evidences point to my early departure to grave. There is a finer point we all miss in India. Smoking in case of most people is a fad, a fashion or a deadly addition. Obsessive compulsive smoking for a bipolar or some other suffering from serious mental disorders is a facts of life and eath. There are studies galore- be it Lancet and Nature the most respected medical journals or studies for Harvard Medical School or others. The sad part of bipolar disorder is that comorbidity with substance abuse is very high-smoking, drug abusing and alcoholisms. It can be as high as 60%. Smoking kills but i smoke. To me it is co-morbidity. Honourble, Chief Justice of India, Are you listening my Lord. i want to live, still I kill. Your statute of ban in public place makes my life more miserable. It does not help me. It has made my work life a living hell. I am not allowed to smoke even in the compund. Do I have a right to live sir. Your statute gets disobeyed. I am mentally ill, comorbidity is my obsessive ompulsve smoking. As aresponsible citizen who suffers the double whammy of rightlessness and non-person status, I still travel down fifteen floors to take one cigarrete. Your judicial pronouncements are profound your Honour, except that it is killing the messenger. Not the culprit-in case of million smokers in India their mental illness-a non-subject to Indian pysche, to policy makers and other stakeholders
But here is my resolve. A public one. I will not smoke myself into grave. I will stop my silent march to grave before it becomes a violent departure to pit. I believe can. I give life to me. I will quit smoking. Smoking kills. I still smoke. The silver-lining is- I have driven my debilitating Bipolar Disorder to slumber called remission that was more difficult thing to do. I will quit smoking, sooner rather than later. I want to embrace life. Want to say yes to Life and No to Grave. God help me if u are there, and I know u are there. My rainbow coalition is intact. Hope I will soon get steely resolve. Else, it will be too late in the day
I
The cardinal question remains unanswered. In few hours from now, the World observes Anti-Tobacco Day. I can give a day lecture on harmful effects of smoking. Like every one else, I know Smoking Kills. And I also know that it kills @ one person every eight second. My interest in the damage that smoking does, is more than perfunctionarly. It has been my strange bed-fellow for last three decades. A constant companion taking my life away every nano-second with every puff. I also am a pollutor personified- for every three hundred cigrettes smoked by me, I destroy one tree. Quite a sullied record for a person who champions the cause of public transport for environment friendly sustainable urban mobility. I call it dichotomy of my life.
My daily quota of consumption of cancer sticks is 20 Wills Filter Navy Cut. When my love affair with smoking began in 1981, it was the era of "Made for Each Other" the romanticised marketing of the deadly cancer stick. Today nothing has changed ,except the writing on the pack. It just says "Smoking Kills". Its vague pictorial warning does not scare me. The deadly picotrial warnings in Europe and Singapore, used to force me to tear off that portion of the cover but they never deterred me from being the walking steam engine. I have been a valiiant carrier of my own death bomb.
I have been a loyal brand ambassdor for ITC. It has been three decades of Wills Filter Navy Cut. And I will do any thing for the love of it.. I will lie at home. Pickpocket money from my wife's purse or children's wallets
which they could decipher instantly. My quota of Wills has made me break custom laws of the nations I have visited-I call my self as Ethics Counselor in Professional Life. I would always carry sufficient numbers of packets in my foreign jaunts, which were many. Only time, I changed the brand loyalty was in favour Charms, the filter version of Charminar, in an era when I found ten rupees for a Wills pack costly. For a year in Manila I was a Marlboro Man. In one year, I consumed what I would have consumed in ten years.. Marlboro man might have died of cancer, but Marlboro pack of 20, came dirt cheap in Manila in 1999, one rupee for every cancer stick for taking few seconds of my life. It was a story of blown to bits, blown to smoke.
I have defied the law of gravity so far.. my smoking has ensured that I am admitted in the Escorts Heart Hospital in the emergency. I do await a heart attack. My cholestrol level is still manageable. Multiple linear ulcers in my esophagus nearly took my life. But at the time of last endoscopy two years back, they had not yet turned malignant. Who knows about tomorrow. Smoking kills. I smoke.
Smoking Kills and before that it makes life hell. Still i smoke. I did not start smoking because of its romanticised charm nor did I start thinking it would add to my smartness. I casually tasted it in State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad in 1981 and before I knew I became an obscessive-compulsive smoker. My journey to grave continues at accelerated pace. On a normal day, I light twenty cancer sticks. I live in a false world- my mistaken belief that I take only few puffs and that per cancer-stick I consume much lesser nicotine or tar than my soulmates.
My younger son was with me in the hospital today, when the message "Smoking Yourself into the Grave" was doing the break-dance of death before my eyes. His concerned question was- Dad what Next?. My usual answer was "Betu I would think". I promised my wife and kids a week back. This Anti-Tobacco Day i will call quits to my lady love-the ubiquitous Wills Filter-made for each other. Will tomorrow ever come. Will it come in this life, or after my accelerated passage to grave. The question remains... and I am momentrarily petrified.
Why do I smoke? It is a million dollar question. Smoking my self into the grave has been a merathon hurdle. My home is smoke free. I have to visit the road to smoke- in the wilderness of night, in the chilly winder, on a hot sun filled day or a day when incessantly rains. I will get drenched in my car but my winter shutter will be down for a puff of cigarrete.
I live life dangerously. I dangle closely to death. I know smoking kills. I still smoke. I donot want to die. I have unfinished dreams in life-for self, family and society. I am a pathological dreamer and obsessive compulsive smoker. I promise to quit and donot deliver on promise. My first line treatment of bipolar disorder controls me from above, it drives closer to depression and substantially reduces my intellectual prowess. I can not leave medication as non-conformity to medication will drive me to madness. My smoking enervates me physically. The combination of two is deadly-one eats my mind like a termite. Another kills my body by the second. When will I stop smoking. Smoking Kills.
I have tried to stop smoking several times. I am a strong willed person. I had promised my father in law before marriage, I would come to mandap as a non-smoker. I have given and broken the promises thousand times to my wife in last twenty three years. Have tried nicotine patch and chewing-gums which only doubled my smoking.. Have taken professional help. Has gone to faquir and tantrik and doctors. Smoking kills but I smoke. I know its pitfalls-digging my own grave.
Is there some explanation of my inability to stop my fast-farward march to grave. Probably yes. probably no. In United States of America 45 percent of cigarretes are consumed by those who are mentally ill. In India there is no such statistics avaliable. But co-morbidity of obsessive-compulsive smoking with mental illness is as established a scientific fact as the realization that smkoing kills. The latter is believed. The inability to quit smoking is deemed as character flaw, lack of will, a criminal conspiracy against life.
I want to live. Still I kill myself bit by bit. All the scientific evidences point to my early departure to grave. There is a finer point we all miss in India. Smoking in case of most people is a fad, a fashion or a deadly addition. Obsessive compulsive smoking for a bipolar or some other suffering from serious mental disorders is a facts of life and eath. There are studies galore- be it Lancet and Nature the most respected medical journals or studies for Harvard Medical School or others. The sad part of bipolar disorder is that comorbidity with substance abuse is very high-smoking, drug abusing and alcoholisms. It can be as high as 60%. Smoking kills but i smoke. To me it is co-morbidity. Honourble, Chief Justice of India, Are you listening my Lord. i want to live, still I kill. Your statute of ban in public place makes my life more miserable. It does not help me. It has made my work life a living hell. I am not allowed to smoke even in the compund. Do I have a right to live sir. Your statute gets disobeyed. I am mentally ill, comorbidity is my obsessive ompulsve smoking. As aresponsible citizen who suffers the double whammy of rightlessness and non-person status, I still travel down fifteen floors to take one cigarrete. Your judicial pronouncements are profound your Honour, except that it is killing the messenger. Not the culprit-in case of million smokers in India their mental illness-a non-subject to Indian pysche, to policy makers and other stakeholders
But here is my resolve. A public one. I will not smoke myself into grave. I will stop my silent march to grave before it becomes a violent departure to pit. I believe can. I give life to me. I will quit smoking. Smoking kills. I still smoke. The silver-lining is- I have driven my debilitating Bipolar Disorder to slumber called remission that was more difficult thing to do. I will quit smoking, sooner rather than later. I want to embrace life. Want to say yes to Life and No to Grave. God help me if u are there, and I know u are there. My rainbow coalition is intact. Hope I will soon get steely resolve. Else, it will be too late in the day
I
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
