Quitting | The Point Magazine

“Though the pleasure they provide is physical, the physical properties of a cigarette are relatively unimportant. The taste, smell and texture don’t really matter, the way the taste, smell and texture of food really do. The need manifests as an ambient, all-over pang, as if every cell in your body were looking desperately for a phone charger. Schopenhauer says that money is prized above other goods because rather than satisfying a concrete need it represents in abstract the satisfaction of all human needs. Cigarettes were an almost inverse case, providing concrete satisfaction to an abstract need. They felt like they were satisfaction, satisfaction incarnate.”