Tales of Nicotine

From Asheville to Adrano . . .

Part One

Apologia to all of our stoic subscribers and patient patrons, little has been sent your way of late. I have set an end date to wrap up Hermes Runs the Game by the end of the month, and it feels doable. One of the major reasons it has taken 3 1/2 years to finish the book, has to do with lingering health droopiness due to being shed upon early in the covid game. Nothing compared to the millions of dead and suffering debilitating side effects, and like everyone, we lost and are losing friends to the mRNA device. There is no question of etiology any more. It is unspeakably sad, and maddening for the lack of comeuppance. For me it manifested as a persistent vertigo and sparse energy which of course makes focused writing difficult.

Just sayin’, after trying everything, we listened to an interview with Dr. Bryan Ardis, and something clicked. I generally shy away from medical advice unless asked, so I will simply relate my experience that less than a week after putting nicotine patches on my arm (2 at first, then 3.5 milligrams after a week), I realized I felt normal for the first time in years. You can look it up, there are plenty of good medical substackers.

No wonder the plant family of ‘deadly’ nightshades has been persistently denigrated by ‘health’ organizations all our lives: they are the highest in nicotine. Gee, yet another inversion of reality. Our garden, under the influence of electroculture towers and implements, has grown the most beautiful peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and okra this summer, as if happy to be recognized as health food. A datura plant even gave us a trumpet.

Here is a shot Krys took:

Part Two

Some you know that Krys and I have a YouTube channel, Good Craic, where we have some wonderful conversations. It is a modest channel, perhaps you would like to subscribe. We also put these videos up on Archaix TV. We recently have been reading about and listening to podcasts about Britain’s hidden history. Far older, more interesting, and farther out there than we imagined. We recently put up our conversation with researcher and author Marchell Abrahams:

Part Three

Here is my tale of quitting smoking from 1983.

Smoked from age 17-25. Even while running track in HS, though of course did not inhale. The only job I could get of college with my English degree had me working in a transmission shop six days a week. Hated almost every minute of it, but saved enough money for a six month trip through Europe and Turkey. Even then, smoking was expensive for a budget traveller, so I bought a cheap plastic lighter, and gave myself smoking until it ran out of fuel. Plus, one morning I woke up with the same hack as my father, who smoked filterless until the chemicals the tobacco companies inserted killed him.

The boyz at the tranny shop (yes, we called it that then) were very helpful by offering me cigarettes and blowing smoke my way, but all went relatively smoothly, and soon I was on my way sans cigs, euro train pass in hand, hopping through the youth hostels, which were safe, inexpensive, and great places to meet people when wandering solo. Back then the big issue had everyone boycotting the Nestles chocolate at the hostel breakfasts because of the damage their powdered baby milk was doing in various African countries. Ahh, for those halcyon days . . .

Then it was time to visit my family in Sicily.

Both grandparents on my father’s side came from Adrano, a Feliniesque town on the base of Mount Etna. Adranus was the pre-Greek smithy god, before Hephaestus and Vulcan migrated and edged him out, and had a temple there of volcanic rock, where 1000 sacred dogs were kept. Later we became big fans of Greek philosopher and magician Empedocles, who proved his divinity by jumping into Etna, leaving a golden sandal behind.

Pre GPS I managed to find my way to my cousin’s door, and it turned into a weird sitcom since they spoke zero English, and what Italian words I knew had already been sent askew in NYC in two generations.

It was August, well over 100 degrees mid day, when there would be a massive family-size bowl of pasta set before me piled with eggplant dripping in olive oil. You could only pass out from it. I was dragged from one relative I could not figure out to another; every woman over sixty wore perpetual black as a widow; I think my grandmother had three sisters, none of whom seemed to be talking to each other; the ancient streets were as wide as a Fiat, and everyone just beeped when they got to corner of a building without checking traffic, of which there was little; everyone had a little garden at the edge of town with amazing volcanic soil; everyone made their own wine, which was a source of pride and needed copious testing; no one worked, but everyone’s home was made completely of marble; every night the whole city would go to the central park for something like ‘passagerio’, walking hand in hand—the young men did also—ragazza and ragazzi checking each other out. Listening to Verdi on cassette on the roof of my cousin’s home at midnight was the only time in my life opera made complete sense.

There were a group of young men whose job was to entertain me. It was customary, since everyone smoked, to offer anyone gathered a cigarette before lighting one’s own. Soon I was jonesing, and took one, then started up fully again. It was a bit nerve-wracking for me since I was painfully shy back then to begin with, and the language barrier made it worse. Then I wanted to leave and tour Sicily, but there was always, “so and so is coming back from Germany tomorrow, you have to see him”, on and on until my time ran out, as I needed to meet friends in Copenhagen.

So I finally extracted myself and got on a train to Florence, a very slow train. The cars were all full, and I could only find a spot resting on my backpack on the floor next to the WC, water dripping out the door. Finally, somewhere around Naples people left, and I ended up in a car with a nice family who shared food. I smoked my final cigarette, was exhausted, and the train stopped for what seemed an inordinate time. “Well, just one more pack,” and I jumped out to grab smokes at the little kiosk. The woman running the kiosk and a man were have an outrageous argument over how must oregano to put in sauce or something, and I started to feel a particular kind of dread that paralyzes your legs. The fight finally ended, I bought the cigarettes, and I ran out to see the train rolling off in the distance, dissolving in the heat, with my backpack, money, passport, clothes and camera.

Standing on the tracks, I took the pack of cigarettes, crushed them out of recognition, and threw them over my shoulder.

Never smoked again.

The epilogue involves further adventures, found my backpack eventually in the car at the Milan train station, they were honest theives, leaving my passport, but taking the camera, money and travelers cheques. Cigarette addiction cost me seeing The Uffizi.