The Regrettable Pleasures Of Smoking.

I was able to reject that offer and still read,l:

There are many things in life which give us pleasure but which are not bad for us. These are “the good pleasures”. Equally, there's a lot of stuff which gives us pleasure but which is bad for us, whether physically, mentally or both. These are “the regrettable pleasures.”
Because most of us hate being demeaned or patronised in public we pretend that we pursue the good pleasures but not the bad. There are a few of us, though, who are naturally honest and can't help but reveal their predilection for the naughty, immoral, dangerous and unhealthy.
There are those who are insensitive to others' feelings and impugn their characters. At the same time these impugners feign that they are whiter than snow (and woe betide you if you state otherwise!) Meanwhile, they pursue vice in secrecy. These are the hypocrites and their number is large.
The forms of morality and the forms of hypocrisy change as society changes (“Tempora mutantur,” wrote Cicero about two thousand years ago, “nos et mutamur in illis” - “The times are changed and we also are changed with them”). Being artistic by inclination I am not really interested in society's changing fashions, but in that which is honest, that which is true, and gives insight into the human condition. Life can be very harsh in its treatment of us. We are prey to disease, terrible accidents, massive setbacks. The universe can appear malevolent, brutal, cold and enormously unkind. Existence would be extremely tough if it was in its unadorned state; but we add to it human greed and stupidity, and the coldness of a Capitalist system which thinks of us as economic units rather than souls.
Faced with the bleakness of our surroundings all of us, without fail, reach out for pleasure in some form. Sometimes our choice of pleasure is catastrophic, sometimes it's benign.
One of the dubious, potentially regrettable pleasures which I embraced (for twenty two years) was smoking. I tried all forms of tobacco bar chewing it. Scented snuff filled my nostrils with an aggreable aroma. The ritual of placing it on the back of the hand and ingesting it up the nose with a sharp intake of breath felt cultured and elegant. As I ingested I felt linked to a long line of elegantly dressed and civilised people. My mind's eye was filled with images of 18th Century aristocrats attired in their finery, and discussing the finer points of philosophy and theology.
I owned several pipes, one of them curved like Sherlock Holmes'. Puffing on a pipe has a musing quality. It was impossible not to think gentle, metaphysical and hopeful thoughts as one puffed.
I would read an article by an atheist who was firmly of the belief that there was no life after death, no Paradise of Being after this mortal existence. Then I would fill a bowl of my Holmes' pipe with scented tobacco and start puffing. Soon I would see the atheist's article as being what it truly was, id est, complete nonsense; heartless, cold effusions from someone cut off from the kindness and warmth of his soul.
Smoking for me was intertwined beautifully with the soul. Some evenings I would drink seven or eight pints of Guinness and smoke forty Benson and Hedges in the local. Afterwards, as I walked slowly home, my mind awash with intoxicants, I would pause from time to time and gaze appreciatively at the cloudless, starlit sky. The universe was no longer a cold, judgemental, unforgiving place. Instead it was like a warm blanket, a lover's embrace. My feelings were gratitude and a sense of expansiveness. Transported by the intoxicants of beer and tobacco I was now in a place which was the opposite of the logical, cynical mind. I was free from those things which imprison us in life. I was floating in love and contentment.
Anthony de Mello has a typically insightful thing to say about this relationship between regrettable pleasures and spirituality: “Be grateful for your sins. They are carriers of grace.”
In his article “Smoking as a path to devotion” the writer on Ignatian spirituality, Jim Manney, writes that, “Smoking became a path into devotion. It asked me, sometimes demanded me, to find a place apart, a few moments of solitude. It required me to breathe. It gave me a sense of self reflection. It required equal parts honesty and self-deception. A smoker (if he’s not totally delusional) confronts mortality. A smoker might begin to ponder their potentially self-destructive habit with greater transparency. They may know when or why they smoke – to light up admits the need, admits the trigger. There may be self-deception – I can stop any time. I’m freely choosing this. – but even here is an opportunity for honesty. We accept that we’re conflicted.”