Sober on World No Tobacco Day

You say “Cheers!”, you say “Prost!”,
I say “No, thank you!”

What does life look like when you can no longer drink? What is it like to reach for water while others follow the call of their own individual poison? What does the night have left to offer you then? Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre writes about what remains when you can no longer join in. And what those who are still cheerfully at it look like. Rarely has anyone written in such a concentrated way about how different people are in their approach to the legal drug alcohol, and how it influences life.

And then Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre carries out the control experiment: On World No Tobacco Day, instead of quitting, he keeps a log of his day as a smoker, from the first cigarette at a coffee bar, various cigarettes at his desk and deep drags while out strolling, all the way to his last smoke of the day on the balcony late at night.