The Devil On Your Shoulder

Simple pleasures: this is what life is really about for us.

There is a need to grab a pure sense of pleasure from all of those uncomplicated moments of your life.

That little hit.

That personal drug that we all need to feed on.

Open your senses to the world around you and filter in the good things: the smell of fresh bread, the sensation of slipping into a hot bath, the taste of good chocolate on your tongue.

All these things are drugs.

All these things release chemicals in the brain equal to any bought off a street corner drug pusher.

Take your hits when you can.

Make time for them, savour them.

After a misspent youth, our drugs changed as we got older.

We started to love the smell of Earl Grey tea bags, the taste of melted cheese and the pull on a well-timed fag.

For our American cousins I should point out that a fag is British slang for a cigarette.

Cigarettes for us are absolute heaven.

Although it is true they have proven to be highly addictive; we have seen the adverts and know the dangers.

We get it; they kill you.

Cigarettes are easily our worst pleasure, far outstripping the caffeine of the tea and the cholesterol of the cheese.

You see all of our guilty little pleasures have something wrong with them. All of our bliss and contentment sits precariously on a double edged sword.

Don’t be paranoid enough to believe all the guilt slung at you from all directions.

Take the advice, register it, and then just get on with living.

All our little pleasures, we indulge with very good reasons.

Smoking is cool; it has to be, and the scientists have proved it.

The reason why the things are so addictive is because they deliver smoke to the lungs immediately and produce a rapid psychoactive effect. Now how cool is that? Even the effect sounds wicked. Like all our pleasures, of course, there are downsides. But all that psychoactive effect, whatever it means, just feels so good.

So subtle, so velveteen and so vital.

The real downside is that the more you smoke, the more all that psychoactivity starts to slowly dull. For us, we did not have to learn how to stop smoking, we had to learn how to smoke smarter. We had to put the punch back into all that psychoactivity. For us, the genius of smoking was to take our daily amount from forty down to ten.

Look at it another way: If your favourite hit is jelly donuts, where is that beautiful sugar rush when you’ve eaten twenty of them in a row?

It dulls to a throb and is masked by all that overindulgence soaked in guilt.

Now. take them twenty donuts and eat them over a week.

All of them sugar rushes combined will give you a punch that makes the initial gorging pale in comparison.

Whatever your indulgence, whether it be a cup of joe, popcorn at the movies or a slug of malt whiskey, just remember to measure your amounts.

Moderation. There is a need to control our greedy nature. When our pleasures take control, they are no longer pleasures. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. When you can’t control the drug, you need to stop. For some things we can never return to them; we have to loosen their control, cut it out like the cancer it is. For other things though, we can manage it.

For those that can control it, never quit.

Never deprive yourself completely of life’s simple pleasures. The only danger in your drug is overdosing. Never allow yourself to tire of these comforts by allowing them to monopolise your waking day. Always remember a bit of what is bad for you, does you good. Take your guilty pleasures and set aside the time to enjoy them. Never rush the experience. Make them treats again.

Smoking improves so many facets of our life. We love to celebrate walking to the top of a big hill and taking in the beautiful scenery that has not been blighted by some ugly monstrosity someone else has built.

We love the atmosphere, the sense of achievement and the feel of the weather, rain or sunshine on our face. In the midst of all of this, what we really love is to sit down and to take our time as all of this experience soaks into us. While we are doing this there is no better reward than the lit cigarette we are holding in our hand.

Smoking also improves our sex life.

Sex is supposed to be fantastic. There is nothing worse than going through the motions and awkwardness of sex with someone that just does not get you. Fantastic sex should leave you both broken. Your sides should be aching, your chest breathless and your head should be swimming with a number of fantastic chemicals. While you lie side by side in a mixture of sweat, an awesome silence descends where nothing has to be said. Within this quiet, a mutual tenderness develops.

That is when a cigarette is extremely potent.

Your body is wrecked and in this stillness it screams out to recover.

This cigarette fills your body with an intoxicating absorption. A calm, mirroring the silence, starts to pull through you as you inhale that tobacco. These treats start to form a large part of our life’s coping mechanism.

We comfort eat, when depressed.

We drink to forget.

We shop to beat sadness.

Every time we do this we get slammed by society’s life gurus.

We have to ride a guilt rollercoaster with the trip kindly paid for by friends. Why? Life is shit. It is a never ending cycle of disappointment and failure for most of us. So why, when we are down on our luck and feel the need to introduce a simple pleasure to our life, do we listen to these parasites.

If we are sad, we will smoke. If we are angry and need to chill, we will smoke. If for whatever reason we need to balance out the crapness of our day by spoiling our self, we will.

How hideous is our society that everything we do for pleasure is frowned upon?

Think about it; think about something somebody does for pleasure— anything.

Instantly, you can picture the faces of their detractors tainting the experience and squeezing out all the pleasure. Nerd, Geek, Pig, Fatty, Pisshead, Drunk, Zealot, Loser, Slut, Tramp, Extremist, Radical, Rebel, Bore.

Humanity is constructed by bullies. The people around you in your everyday life are judging you by constantly putting you down and holding you up to an impossible ideal so they can ignore all of their own weaknesses.

Our morals in life and codes of ethics have all been implemented by self-serving bullies.

So why do we listen to them?

Why do we allow people who are immoral, to affect the way we think, live and believe?

If it feels good, and honestly, in the grand scheme of things does us no real harm, why should we allow our pleasure to be affected?

If it feels good; do it!

Listen and start respecting your internal voice.

We guarantee there is something around the corner that is going to very quickly take away all your fun.

JUST DO IT…

I am an addict

None whispers sweeter in your ear than your own addiction.

No one lies to an addict better than themselves.

I have been doing this for the longest time.

Your voice does not help, it only crushes.

I need to tune out what sounds sweetest and what sounds most convincing. I need to find the 'I and me' inside my head.

Find your singular voice and know it just takes that first step.

The most deceptive voice we hear is our own.

And then that next step.

Trust in your real voice.