Why Quitting Cigarettes is So Diifficult

Can I smoke a cigarette in here? Mm-hmm. The people that I'm quitting when the special come out, mom. Do you want a cigar? No, no, no. Last time I did that shit, it fucked me up. Cigars fucked you up? How so? It just made my shit all dry. I mean, this ain't healthy, but I'm an addict. It's definitely not healthy. I'm just making excuses. I'm an addict. How often do you smoke them? Cigarettes? Yeah. God damn. Well, probably... You know, it changes when I'm doing comedy. When I'm performing. You smoke more? Yeah. Interesting. I smoke more when I'm at the comedy store and shit. Because everybody else is doing it? It's social. No, no one else does it. No one? Very few. Kind of bullshit ass. Like, most people... Like, it's just the era of the healthy comic. Ah, those motherfuckers. Mm-hmm. They're judging you. Judgers. God damn judgy fucks. Ma, special comes out today. I'm done. That's it? You're done? I told her when it comes out, I'm done. And what are you gonna do to replace it? You're gonna do gum? You're gonna do the shit that you put in your mouth? Oh, shit. You know, those... I was hanging out with Shob at Schultz's wedding, and he takes those little dip pouches, shoves them in his mouth. Nah, fuck man. He grabbed three of those motherfuckers and stuck them inside his cheek like a squirrel. I did. And I go, what are you doing? He goes, I'm an addict. You guys, I'm a straight addict. I can't do it, man. Really? The dip shit. So one time when I was deployed, we had our little... This was my second appointment, so by this time we had more comforts and shit, and we had our little 12x6 can or whatever. But my can... So there's six Marines sleeping in one of these things. Fun. But my can had... We had negotiated with the locals, and we had a TV. Ooh. We had an Xbox, and we had a little makeshift couch that we had built and made comfortable. Everybody would come in our room and watch the Sopranos or play... Or come in our can and all that shit. And this one motherfucker... I can't remember his name. Anyway, this son of a bitch had this weird habit of leaving his dip bottles every fucking way, right? Oh, no. Yeah, and one day... And one day I'm sitting there, I'm drinking my shit, and I put it down by my feet, and I reach back down, and I grab it, not looking. Mouth full of dip spit. Yeah, it took three people to pull me off that motherfucker. It wasn't fair to be mad at him, for real, for my parents' attention. But I can... You know you have those events where you... Can't control yourself. You relive them. Like, every time I think about it, I can taste it. And I just... I could never dip. I could never dip. And I'm still mad about it. I've dipped. It definitely gives you a nice little head rush. But not as good as cigarettes. Cigarettes give you the best head rush. Yeah. It's like, whoa. I love a cigarette before I go on stage. I don't know how I'm gonna replace that. Like, right before... You gonna try to use a jewel or something like that? I don't know. That doesn't work good enough. No, I think you just have to stop. You just have to stop. I started... I had this book called The Easy Way to Stop Spoken. And everybody that I've got to read the book, they've stopped. But I've never finished it. What does it tell you to do? It's... So the premise of it is that basically, instead of telling you the reasons you shouldn't smoke, they attack the reasons why you say you smoke. Like, all the reasons people give, and they show you that they're just excuses, that you're just as much of an addict as a crackhead or... That doesn't help you. I think what helps people is things like Ibogaine. Ibogaine, mushroom trips, things like that. Oh, yeah. And I know a lot of people that... My buddy that... Actually, he just left. He moved down here, actually. Mitch... I can't remember Mitch's last name, goddamn it. Anyway, he quit after a mushroom trip. He was like... He did shrooms and was like, nah, I was just done. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you start thinking about what you could be doing to your body, what could be happening inside of your body. Yeah. So maybe I just need a picture of a tumor to just hang over my neck. Or a health scare. A little bit of a health scare. Well, I've had enough of those. That doesn't stop people, really. No? Cigarettes? It's people that's dying in the hospital now that's still sneaking out the smoke cigarettes. Yeah, but that's just because they know they're dying. I'd rather just take the cigarette now, other than die and not enjoy a cigarette, because you're already dying. So you send the type of health scare where they're like, look, if you stop now, you'll be okay. But if you don't stop now, maybe one of those. Something's got to show you your lungs, or you see the blackness, like the tar and all the fucking decay. Have you seen a smoker's lung when they pull it out, and they put it next to a healthy person's lung on an autopsy table? Yeah, and it looks... It's wild. Yeah. See if you can find a video, or a photo. They do autopsies of these people who die of lung cancer, and lifetime cigarette smokers, and their lungs, they look like they're just covered. Look at that. Look at that fucking lung. It's like lung jerky. Look at that one. The black lungs of a chain smoker, the one in the upper left. Click on that. Look at that. That is insane, man. That's so insane. That looks like someone... Oh my God. Look at that next to a regular lung. That is so wild. One lung is like orangey, reddish pink, and the other one is literally black and white. Like white tissue and black tissue. Fucking wild, man. That is wild. Terrible, as I smoked my... Look at that one up there. That one that's second down right below that. Look at that. Oh, Jesus Christ. Look at it. They're all shrivels. This is like showing me stool samples while I'm eating. Yeah, but that's... If I'm still hungry, I'll still eat. Really? You can just power through it? I was on Fear Factor. It's not real? This is a computer. Oh, it's computer generator. Oh, okay. That's still pretty accurate. Probably accurate. But the one next to it is real. That's real. What's wrong with that one down there, the one that looks like it has cheese on it? Which one's that? The one in the middle button? It's pus-y. What is that? Formanite pathology. Good God. It's fucked up because the thing that scares people the most is not being able to breathe. You know? That's what's interesting. It's like that feeling that you can't breathe is terrifying to people. That's why drowning is so terrifying to people. But they say that the last days of a person's life when they're dying of lung cancer is like drowning. It's like you can't breathe and you're gasping for air. And it's like your lungs are filling up with fluid and you can't get any oxygen in there. Oh, because all the sores are like popping. Yeah. Ugh. As you tap and take another hit. You went through that cigarette quick too. Ugh. How many did you smoke a day? It varies. But a pack at the most. A pack? Yeah. That's a lot. What is a pack? 16? How many is in there? 20. 20? It's actually perfectly formulated for you to smoke all day. Oh, so if you start early and keep going? It's like the rate that nicotine gets out of your system. Yeah. And it's supposed to be like every 40 minutes or something like that. And so you have just enough cigarettes to smoke all day long. You know what's interesting? Like nicotine is actually a medicine. Nicotine itself, I think it's got heart applications. See, like nicotine for heart. Nicotine and it's also... Like they use it to treat you? Nicotine by itself is not bad, which sounds so crazy. And it's also a nootropic, meaning like it stimulates cognitive function. Like nicotine does stimulate. It's one thing Stephen King said in his book on writing, is that quitting cigarettes was very hard for him because it's like his writing suffered a little bit. Wow. It's harder for him to write. Oh, dude. Because there's something about the cigarette that like it fires up the synapses, it fires up the brain, and then the writing would come smoother. Yeah, I don't know because I've smoked all the time I've been doing comedy and writing. So, man, that would be like torture. Like if the ideas came to me less... Yeah, I think that's what he was saying. But I think you could probably get around that with other stuff.