Conditioning through addiction

A famous phrase immortalized since the film Casablanca is still in use to this day. As a matter of fact, that exact line became the title of a popular thriller in the mid-90s. The phrase is “Round up the usual suspects!” This is an interesting comment to make and one that I find fascinating in terms of psychology. It signifies the idea that people fall into categories, and although they do not become straight stereotypes, they do tend to fall really close to it.

An issue that touches this subject are the issue of smokers. Overlooking the obvious weakness and ease at falling into addiction patterns, one has to ask how a smoker does fall into those patterns. The answer is simple: Self-conditioning through physical addiction.

A stereotype, in this case, goes as follows:
Mark is a smoker. He also makes a habit of gambling and usually prefers to ‘ride the odds’ instead of making a logical deduction. He also works a dead end job and has put himself in debts. He hasn’t finished high school, and isn’t interested in the least bit in doing so.

How can one link cigarette smoking to most, if not all, of the problems mentioned above? Simple, the key is in the action of smoking itself.

Undertaking important tasks such as homework assignments, big projects and studying requires a few things. It requires that i) you dedicate time ii) you dedicate mental awareness to the task and iii) you organize yourself by keeping track of your work. An important word is awareness which will be defined in this short writing as “having knowledge; conscious, cognizant and being informed; alert; knowledgeable; sophisticated.”

Cigarette smoking is known to have physical and psychological effects on a person. Parts of these effects include a physical addiction that makes a smoker crave for a cigarette in a given amount of time. Such a physical addiction can make a person nervous and distracted when a craving hits in the middle of an important tasks which requires the smoker’s physical presence. The addiction, unfulfilled, can make the smoker aggressive and neurotic and unable to complete a task. Over a period of time, a smoker realizes undertaking long and difficult tasks will sooner or later be cut by a craving, so the idea of a cigarette and certainly the idea of not satisfying that crave can become a mental blockage.

This begins to slowly condition someone into forming a schedule around their craving. Undertaking enormous tasks that require i) time and ii) mental awareness becomes very limited. Slowly, an addict becomes less and less interested in making the effort, certainly when cigarettes end up taking priority over many of every day tasks. So why bother making logical deductions that could take minutes, if not close to hours to make? Why bother sitting down and completing a major assignment if before one starts, it’ll have to finish for a cigarette? And most importantly, why bother keeping track of anything that will need to be cut because of a much desired and needed break? Why not go for the fast and easy way of making money instead of the tedious and long process?

Obviously, it becomes difficult and not first nature to give mental awareness a try. It doesn’t become first nature to believe in a school system that makes one sit down and concentrate for hours on one specific subject. And it most definitely doesn’t become important to calculate long divisions. “When am I ever going to use that?”