Over the last few weeks I've smoked a cigar or two almost every night. Before that it was more like one a month or even every two months. I attribute my recent 30-fold increase in tobacco consumption to reading about different cigars here and elsewhere, and going to my local B&M and enjoying the wide variety of tastes, shapes & styles as I fine tune my personal preferences as to what I really like.
I imagine I will more or less go back to my past frequency in the not too distant future. For one, it's expensive! But on another level, I don't want to lower the experience of enjoying cigars to that of the cigarette smoker.
I've always regarded cigarette smoking as a cheap addiction, merely a way to get nicotine into the body. Cigarette tobacco is mass produced and sprayed with sweeteners and such to give it flavor, and its users suck up the smoke about every half hour to get a fix. How uncivilized! (I will not even discuss the other, positively barbaric and uncivilized method of using tobacco to deliver nicotine into the bloodstream which does not involve the use of fire. Even the Neanderthals discovered how to make and use fire.)
A cigar, on the other hand, is to be enjoyed primarily for its taste, and for the ambiance and multifaceted experience of the smoking event itself. It is not to be inhaled; the fact that the premium cigar leaf still contains some nicotine after the extensive fermentation and aging processes is inconsequential. One does not merely "smoke" a cigar; rather, one engages a cigar. There is as though a conversation between the many facets of the cigar and the senses.
In addition, I want to make sure I don't become a mere nicotine fiend, suddenly finding myself NEEDING to smoke every day in order to satisfy some base desire for a mere chemical.
Nor do I want to overdo a good thing and possibly render it mundane. In a way, enjoying a cigar might be compared to sex--both are good things, but if done on a daily basis, especially multiple times per day, before long the sweet edge of excitement, anticipation, and romance of the experience can be replaced with the dull sense of routine.
So I'm wondering, what's the "ideal" frequency of cigar engagements? For me, maybe once or twice a week, with maybe a month or two of dry spell in between, and with periodic punctuations over the year of several days of every day engagement.
What say you, fellow BOTL's?
I imagine I will more or less go back to my past frequency in the not too distant future. For one, it's expensive! But on another level, I don't want to lower the experience of enjoying cigars to that of the cigarette smoker.
I've always regarded cigarette smoking as a cheap addiction, merely a way to get nicotine into the body. Cigarette tobacco is mass produced and sprayed with sweeteners and such to give it flavor, and its users suck up the smoke about every half hour to get a fix. How uncivilized! (I will not even discuss the other, positively barbaric and uncivilized method of using tobacco to deliver nicotine into the bloodstream which does not involve the use of fire. Even the Neanderthals discovered how to make and use fire.)
A cigar, on the other hand, is to be enjoyed primarily for its taste, and for the ambiance and multifaceted experience of the smoking event itself. It is not to be inhaled; the fact that the premium cigar leaf still contains some nicotine after the extensive fermentation and aging processes is inconsequential. One does not merely "smoke" a cigar; rather, one engages a cigar. There is as though a conversation between the many facets of the cigar and the senses.
In addition, I want to make sure I don't become a mere nicotine fiend, suddenly finding myself NEEDING to smoke every day in order to satisfy some base desire for a mere chemical.
Nor do I want to overdo a good thing and possibly render it mundane. In a way, enjoying a cigar might be compared to sex--both are good things, but if done on a daily basis, especially multiple times per day, before long the sweet edge of excitement, anticipation, and romance of the experience can be replaced with the dull sense of routine.
So I'm wondering, what's the "ideal" frequency of cigar engagements? For me, maybe once or twice a week, with maybe a month or two of dry spell in between, and with periodic punctuations over the year of several days of every day engagement.
What say you, fellow BOTL's?
