Cigarettes

[phildow]

Chain smoked so many cigarettes Saturday night and Sunday morning that I haven't taken a single drag for 36 hours. For the most part, I haven't wanted to, and when I have, the desire has been slight enough to avoid the Tabak. I may have ended up quitting, although I imagine I'll continue to smoke every once in a while. Completely unintended

Comments

[yammerskooner]

Sounds like you're hooked.
Time to read Heidegger on the concept of addiction?

[phildow]

Nah, more like I was hooked. I haven't smoked for two days, and I doubt I'll smoke today either. I smoked myself clean instead of quitting.

Heidegger's got something on addiction? Now I wonder how the hell he relates that to Being?

[yammerskooner]

Addiction as an existential modality of Dasein, silly. More of the more clear examples of how the subject's being is outside itself.

[phildow]

So did Heidegger do any drugs? I heard Sartre tried Mescalin. I mean, if Heidegger is investigating how the subject is already beside or with or next to (insert better preposition here) objects, already outside itself, wrapped up with a world, then he ought to be interested in certain drug experiences.

Do you know if anyone's attempted a phenomenology of various highs and ended up producing a lucid, insightful work that isn't all cracked out?

[yammerskooner]

Can't imagine Heidegger doing to any drugs.
Despite his written philosophy, I see him as too invested in the stature of his own ego to do anything which might compromise it. I picture him smoking a pipe and that's about it.
Very hard to find good writings on drug experiences. I don't do drugs and it's not a topic of particular interest for me, but I nevertheless have kept an eye open for conceptual reasons.

You might begin by looking at the writing of Michael Taussig, who is a great writer, a great guy, and open about his drug experiences with South American shamans. Anything but an expository writer, but as Foucault said, any true history of madness would have to be written by a madman.