I’ve been told by a reputable source that movie star Keanu Reeves’s closests call his cigarette smoking “The Dark Yoga.” Although I laughed out loud the first time I heard this, I’ve come to realize how close it is to the truth—or, at least, to my own long-burn experience with the drug.
Although we’re taught that smoking is an absolute no-no—and hey, there are good reasons for that!—there are also ways to look at the practice in a broader context. The Surgeon General of the US, Dr Vivek Murthy, has written widely about the loneliness crisis. Loneliness and isolation have the negative effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I'd bet that at least some of the people who are truly isolated or lonely also smoke cigarettes on top of this.
I’ve been an on and off smoker for much of my adult life. I might go years without smoking, and then get back on in moments of stress or elation. It’s also supposed to be pretty good for depression since it triggers dopamine release, which is useful in my low moments.
But the idea of “The Dark Yoga” reminds me of why I started smoking in the first place: as a form of my connection with myself. During college, when I would pull three to four all nighters a week, taking an hourly smoking break in the wee hours was my form of rest and focus. Essentially, it substituted for meditation, which I hadn’t yet picked up again. This was well before cell phones had been invented, and these hours were too late for others to still be up. And so smoking was a quiet way to spend time with myself, even with my breath. To this day, when I do smoke alone a.k.a. practice the dark yoga, I try my best to monotask: to only smoke and leave everything else—telephone, computer, other distractions—aside for a couple of minutes.
On the other hand, smoking has always been a powerful modality for me to connect with others. It’s social. In college and in particular when I moved to Germany for a sophomore semester abroad, smoking was my way to overcome my awkwardness and feel less alone. Giving someone a cigarette, bumming a cigarette, giving or receiving a light: all form a chain of casual generosity that the smoking community thrives on. Nowadays, whenever someone bums a cigarette from me—and, as a matter of principle, I almost always offer one, two, even three cigarettes to those who ask—I try to go one step further in connection: I share my name and ask theirs. It helps me to know a little about where they’re coming from. All through the gift of a little cancer stick.
Smoking might even constitute a form of connection with spirit. I’m going a bit out of my wheelhouse here, but a new friend whose father works with First Nations communities in Canada explained to me how an offering of tobacco is customary when you visit someone. Here, tobacco connects you with forces greater than yourself. Other colleagues who are herbalists and plant friends have assured me that smoking some kinds of tobacco—unprocessed, without addictive chemicals, grown in ways that don’t exploit the plants—can connect me with the more-than-human world in ways I’m still learning about.
So, although I might get in trouble with a lot of my family and friends and absolute strangers, I’m starting to imagine a world in which the doctor’s orders include smoking three (natural) cigarettes a day: one to connect with yourself, one to connect with others, the third to connect with spirit. Perhaps then Woody Allen’s Miles Monroe—the befuddled character who learns in the comedic sci-fi Sleeper that smoking has been deemed healthy in the future—will seem a little prescient. A dude might be wrong about a lot of things, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet.
—P.K.