The Soup or The Smoke?

Allow me to offer an off-the-wall definition of pure sobriety: it is the full, unfiltered experiencing of the present moment with nothing to either enhance nor dull it down. By this definition, sobriety is not dichotomous, but rather exists on a spectrum. Far down on the not-so-sober end of the spectrum you have those who are totally absent through their use of alcohol, drugs, shopaholism, gambling, video games and the like. They are like ‘the dreamers’ from the movie Inception: physically alive, but dead in every other way.

At the other end of the sobriety spectrum you have absolutely no one, because a truly sober human being does not exist. We may see people move from lesser sobriety to greater sobriety, for example, the uncle who gives up drinking but becomes addicted to cable news, or the friend who substitutes chocolate pretzels for menthol cigarettes. They may inch a few notches to the left on my patented scale, but no one ever arrives at absolute zero.

The nearest I’ve seen was a man I knew back in the day. He was a vegan and extremely fit. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t even consume caffeine. He ate raw spinach out of large salad bowls and spent his free time on the rowing machine. I thought to myself, “Surely this is the soberest human being I have ever come into contact with.”

But I soon discovered even he was not totally sober. One night when he invited me over to hang out, I discovered his hidden addiction to Ben Affleck films. We sat and watched The Accountant, an absolutely god-awful film about an autistic account who is also a highly skilled and bloodthirsty assassin. The movie is a piece of trash unworthy of the 3-dollar bin by the checkout line at Walmart. But my friend seemed unfazed by the movie, his tolerance (in the narcotic sense of the word) built high after many years of harmful intake.

If sobriety were an either/or thing, it’d make it a lot easier for us to be judgmental of those further to the right on the scale. We could look down upon them and feel so self-satisfied. But the reality is we all are tempted by the allure of escapism, whether it be through crack cocaine or Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. It’s a choice we make on a daily basis, whether to accept the present moment as is or spruce it up a bit with outside assistance.

Photo by Bulut Tuncay from Pexels

My go-to for a long time was smoking hookah. Just the sight of the above photo or the sound of bubbling water brings back so many fond memories. Hookah tobacco comes in a rainbow of different flavors and colors. It’s smoother than a cigarette or cigar but also more potent. A good hookah is like inhaling a general sense of wellbeing. Paired with good friends to pass the pipe or a good book with whom to share the moment, it’s easy to see the appeal of this pastime.

As per the law of diminishing returns, the beginning of the journey is always the best. Your virginal brain pathways still unformed by the almighty nicotine. My first trips to the hookah shops and Shisha restaurants began in Shanghai, where a convergence of the middle eastern expat community and looser regulations (e.g. the hookah in USA by law contains half the amount of nicotine) created what was to me a smoker’s paradise.

Though some of you will say it never happened this way, it seems to me that EVERYONE was smoking hookah back in the day – church friends, comedy friends, drinking buddies, and work colleagues. I never once saw anyone turn that delicious pipe away or say they weren’t interested.

Perhaps, it was a product of our environment. China has a notoriously high number of cigarette smokers. People smoked anytime, anywhere, all the time. They smoked in restaurants and hotel lobbies, bars and stairwells, sidewalks and bus stops. There were no true non-smokers in China, for everyone was at the very least a second-hand smoker.

And it seemed like a quality hookah experience was just around the corner no matter where you were in Shanghai. It was like skunky Canadian beer in Michigan – ubiquitous.

Smoking hookah didn’t involve a long night out, it was a perfectly acceptable daytime activity. You could have lunch and a shisha, then be on your way with no horrific smoky smell upon you.

Hookah made you more productive and more creative. It’s a stimulant, nature’s greatest energy drink for your mind. When a load of boring paperwork or emails needed to be completed, you could find a quiet spot in the back of a restaurant or café, order yourself a Turkish coffee and double apple Shisha (the breakfast blend of hookahs) and away we go!

But of course, there was price tag attached to the habit, just as there is with all our methods of escapism. The most obvious is the impact smoking has on your health.

We also came to need shisha.

We couldn’t write well without it. Couldn’t feel like we were “really talking” until the coals were lit. We found many moments dull, boring, stressful or even painful and hookah was a good friend to pass the time with.

The longer the habit lasted, the experience was consistently not as good as those early days. For the law of diminishing returns had been at work for years and as time went by, the idea of hookah-ing was often more pleasing than the actual smoking. I was chasing that perfect buzz, but it turned out to be quite elusive.

Cost/Benefit analysis

The above chart is used in counseling to help people weigh the cost and benefits of changing a behavior. Experience says that most folks will be able to easily list the advantages of changing (Q1) and the disadvantages of not changing (Q4). It’s often clear what a habit is costing them, but psychologically it’s harder to admit what the habit provides to you.

And so if you want to move on, it’s important to not downplay how much you love hookah.

Knowing that it’s bad for your health, not to mention impractical given my circumstances, it’s still hard not think longingly about my darling shisha from time to time. The emotional ties remain, thinking of all the good times we had together, just hookah and me. Like that time I read the majority of War and Peace during daytime sessions at the Perry’s on Kaixuan Lu. Or writing my book inside the 1001 Nights Restaurant over the course of half a year with a grape shisha and cardamom flavored Turkish coffee by my side. You cannot truly get over your old flame, until you admit how much you really loved them.

It’s hard to be fully engaged in the present, especially when there are so many things out there to alter your mental state. Sobriety is on a spectrum and we daily face the choice to move further up or further down. Sometimes life is legitimately painful and moving towards a greater sobriety is both difficult and unwanted.

Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning writes about his experiences being a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He tells the story of each day the guards giving prisoners a choice between one bowl of a very thin soup or a single cigarette. Frankl, a psychotherapist before the war, says he could always tell which prisoners had lost the will to live because they chose smoking over the soup. Reading this story, I am honestly shocked and inspired by how many turned down the cigarette.

Our present reality can sometimes feel like that soup. It seems thin, watery and barely nutritious. It will only get you through today and nothing more. On the other hand, the “smoke” is delicious, intoxicating, a rainbow of flavors and manifestations. It will take you far, far away from here and be your ultimate downfall. The whole of our human existence summarized in a truly difficult choice.

So, which will you chose today, the soup or the smoke?