by Jacob Clark
Never mind that they’re a huge country. The fact is, much of their land is unsuitable for growing crops. Much of it is permafrost. Frozen pretty much all the time. Much of it is mountain ranges. And much of it is flat and warm, but the soil is too poor or rocky to grow anything of value.
So the Chinese had to resort to other methods to solve their population-versus-food problem.
They were widely criticized in the 1980s for their one-child per household mandate. Leaders around the world called it a human rights violation. They said it was cruel to make every child in China an only child.
They said that siblings were kind of important, and not just to wear your clothes before they were handed down for you to wear.
They said that siblings help each other learn, and grow and mature. And they provide needed love and support that single children lack and will affect them later on.
Of course, all the grown-up single children around the world said that was all hogwash. That they turned out just fine.
But that didn’t sway them.
Some countries (and world leaders) just aren’t happy unless they’re sticking their noses in somebody else’s business.
Oh. You knew that. Well, okay, then.
Perhaps not coincidentally, around the same time China implemented their one-child-per-family rule, they also implemented extremely liberal abortion policies. Basically any woman who wanted to get an abortion could get one, paid for by the Chinese government, merely by asking for it.
The same woman could get another abortion six months later, and another six months after that. She could get one every six months until she reached the end of her child-bearing years if she wanted to.
The Chinese government gladly saw to her needs, and presumably said, “Thanks for coming in and doing your part to control our population. See you again in six months.”
Yet the oddest thing happened.
Or rather didn’t happen.
The world stayed more or less silent about the abortion policy, and continued to rail about China’s one-child policy.
Oh, the Chinese did other things to help reign in its runaway growth.
They offered free sterilization surgery for those who were interested.
And they passed out condoms like they were candy. There’s a now-famous photograph of two young Chinese boys blowing up condoms like balloons on a street corner. It seems they were that prevalent. One merely had to go into a market and grab a handful from a basket.
Anyway, the point of all this is that the Chinese were undergoing a huge and unwanted boom in its population, at the very same time the Chinese government was studying smoking and the effects smoking might have on erectile dysfunction (known more commonly back then as impotence).
What they found was that smoking did indeed keep a man from “getting it up.”
And here’s the funny thing… well, it’s only funny if you’re not a Chinese man… the reason the Chinese government was studying the relation of the two (smoking and impotence) to begin with was so that they could warn people to stop smoking.
But as soon as they found out for sure there was a correlation, they dropped the study like a proverbial hot potato.
It seemed they decided they no longer cared how many Chinese men would later die from lung cancer or smoke-related heart disease.
As long as the cigarettes kept the men from getting erections, they helped China’s population control policy. And therefore it was okay with the Chinese government for their citizens to keep smoking away.
Nice. Real nice.
From Jacob:
I smoked my first cigarette at the tender age of seven, behind my family’s back yard shed in Springfield, Missouri. My cousin Mike took two cigarettes from a pack of Camels his dad had left on the back of the toilet.
Young boys are curious by nature, and especially so when something seems dangerous or is forbidden by their parents.
Smoking was both, so we sat behind that shed one summer day and used wooden kitchen matches to light those first two smokes.
I remember several things about that experience. First, I remember coughing when the first draw of smoke seared my lungs.
Then I remember laughing it off, saying I must be coming down with something, and trying my best to look cool. I even let the thing hang from my lips, like James Dean, until it fell into my lap and burned my leg (that was back in the days when I wore shorts, before I decided my legs looked funny).
I remember my cousin Mike didn’t cough as much as I did. But he turned an awful shade of green.
I didn’t like it much. For one thing, because it was unfiltered and I got a mouthful of loose tobacco. I was still spitting the stuff out the next day.
Lastly, I remember wondering what in the world was the appeal? Why did adults waste their time doing something that made them cough, burned their lungs and gave them no pleasure?
I next picked up a cigarette when I was in high school, long after we’d burned the shed to the ground. (No, we weren’t smoking. We were burning ants to a crisp with a magnifying glass and accidentally set the grass on fire)
In high school, skipping class and smoking weed behind the school was for stoners and losers. But smoking cigarettes in the boys’ room was the ultimate in cool.
The teachers seldom went in there. We always thought they were afraid to, because some of the boys were pretty tough. We called them hoods back then. I don’t know what they’re called now. Gangstas, maybe.
Anyway, the second time I picked up cigarettes I picked them up to be cool. And by the time I realized I didn’t need them to be cool (I was already way cool without them) I was hooked.
Over the years I tried many times to quit, for many different reasons.
In college, when I was working two jobs and eating ramen noodles and canned soup to survive, I tried to quit because I just couldn’t afford them.
Actually, my plan wasn’t to give them up so much as it was to quit buying them myself and to mooch cigarettes from my friends. After awhile they figured out what I was doing and quit sharing them.
During my college days I was able to slow down, but never stopped smoking completely. I even remember a couple of times skipping meals because I couldn’t afford soup as well as cigarettes.
There were several times when I tried to stop to pacify the women in my life. It never took. Either the women eventually went away and I was heartbroken and went back to the cigarettes to make me feel better.
Or I decided I liked the cigarettes better than the women and sent them away, keeping the cigarettes instead.
When I met Michelle she let it be known she didn’t much like me smoking, but said I was a grown man and had a right to smoke if I wanted to. At the same time, though, she told me when and if I ever wanted to quit, she’d help me as much as she could.
Over the years I tried a lot of the traditional methods to stop smoking but was not successful. Usually I could stop for a time, but went back to using them as a crutch whenever things were particularly stressful.
When I was diagnosed with erectile dysfunction, my doctor Paul said that giving up smoking was one of the best things I could do to help.
He explained his logic this way: Nobody knows why smoking affects a man’s ability to get and obtain an erection. It just does. Very profound of him.
But, he says, there are also a slew of other reasons to give up smoking. Primarily, you live longer. So presumably, he says, by giving it up, you have the opportunity to live more years AND to have more sex to make those years more enjoyable.
Besides, he said, if you give up smoking and it doesn’t help your ED, you’ve still benefitted. You still reap the other medical benefits of stopping.
I once smoked a carton of cigarettes a week and spent an average of fifty dollars a week on them. Actually, the truth was I didn’t smoke all of them. But I lit that many. I had a tendency to light one, take two or three drags from it, then leave it in an ashtray to burn itself out while I went back to work
or ran off to do something else.
I’d known for many years that I needed to give up the habit. As I said, I tried and failed many times before. Looking back now, though, I don’t think I ever really put that much effort into quitting. Because to quit, you have to really really want it. And until you get to that point, you’re playing a loser’s game.
Around the same time we started studying smoking as it related to ED, I also started reading up on the dangers of second hand smoke.
Dad died when he was sixty of lung cancer. That surprised no one, because he was a long-term smoker as well. Did you know the United States Army used to actually give free cigarettes to its soldiers during World War II? Many smokers who lived in that era traced their addictions to that.
Mom died when she was 64 of emphysema and heart disease, even though she never smoked a day in her life.
If the ED connection isn’t enough to sway you to quit, consider the effects of second hand smoke on your loved ones too.
When I finally told Paul I wanted to quit once and for all and needed help to do it, he referred me to another friend who specialized in addictions.
I remember walking into his office and feeling like a heroin fiend. I envisioned having to sit in a big circle of people in a large room and having to stand up and say “My name is Jacob and I’m addicted to cigarettes.”
But it was nothing like that. Dave put me on a patch and sent me to a vape shop to buy a vaping rig. He also recommended I try what he called “intense dirty shoe therapy.” That sounded bizarre and was not an official medical term. It’s his own term, but he gave me permission to use it.
He explained that you can buy little inserts that go into the end of your cigarettes that make them taste bad. I didn’t even know they existed, but he gave me a website and told me to order them.
Michelle put herself in charge of that aspect of my treatment. She ordered the inserts, which look like little slivers of wood and are about half an inch long.
Bless her little heart, she then spent hours, opening up my carton of cigarettes and then opening each pack, one by one. She shoved one of the inserts into each of the cigarettes until it disappeared, so I wouldn’t be tempted to pull them back out.
And they worked like a charm. I could still light the cigarettes and take a big drag off of them, but they tasted pretty bad. Dave described the taste as smoking an old shoe. I don’t know if I’d describe it the same way, but it definitely wasn’t pleasant.
Michelle went with me to the vape shop and patiently waited while I tried several of the dozens of flavors they offered.
Vaping, I must say, was much more pleasant than inhaling the dirty shoe. I admit I felt kind of ridiculous puffing away on a contraption I thought made me look like a geek or a college student or both.
But there’s something odd about vaping. When you start to vape you think you’re the only one in the world who does it. Because you don’t look for it. But once you’re a vaper (as opposed to a vapor or a viper, two totally different things) you tend to notice other people doing it. You’ll see them in a crowd when you never would have noticed them before. Or you’ll catch a scent in the air and know that somebody is vaping the same banana nut bread flavored vape that you yourself enjoy.
Also, vaping gives you admittance into a sort of brotherhood that only vapers are welcome in.
If you’re walking down the street with a vape pipe in your hand and pass another vaper, you’ll nod to each other. You are brothers, of sorts. You’re on the same team. He or she might even stop and ask you what you’re vaping.
Michelle says if vaping continues to catch on, it’ll be like the singles bars of the 1980s and 1990s. There will be vaping bars all over the country where vapers will go to find their perfect match.
I don’t know about that. I think she was kidding, but with my nutty wife you never can tell.
I do know one thing, though. Vaping wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. And it’s not addictive, as I thought it might be. I was worried that I might trade one addiction for another, but that wasn’t the case. As I sit here and type these words I can see my vape pipe across the room, lying on a table all lonely and miserable and no doubt missing my sweet lips. It’s been there, untouched, for about four days now.
Those are the three things that helped me quit.
The patch (which has to be prescribed), the stinky shoe inserts, and the vape.
Actually, I need to add a couple more: the choice between dying sooner or getting a boner and having sex more often. A no-brainer, really.
And the support and help of a great woman.
Michelle is standing behind me, hands on her hips, demanding, “And just who the hell is this great woman you’re talking about?”
It is, of course, my incredibly lovely wife Michelle. She’s my one and only and always will be.
This was by far the most difficult thing I’ve done in years, either before or after we started our “Ed Project.” I cheated many times, sneaking a cigarette when I thought I could get away with it.
Finally, I realized I was only cheating myself. Of a longer life, a fuller sex life.
If you’re a smoker and you decide to quit, either to help your ED or for any other reason, don’t give up. It’s an addiction not much different from cocaine or heroin. It has withdrawal symptoms just like the harshest drug, and you’ll find yourself actually hungering for cigarettes. Especially in times of stress.
One thing I’d like to leave you with: if you break down and smoke a cigarette occasionally, don’t beat yourself up. And even more importantly, don’t use that as an excuse to give up. Many people do, figuring, “Well, I’ve failed. Might as well start smoking again.”
No. Don’t. Just recognize that you’ve taken a single step back on a long journey, and then move forward again. You can do this. I know you can.
From Michelle:
When Jacob told me he was going to quit smoking to aid us in what we’d begun calling “Project Ed” I was ecstatic.
Then it occurred to me that I’d heard it all before.
I’ve never smoked. Not even once. I’m not saying that to sound smug or to brag. I just never had the desire to try.
My best girlfriend in high school once offered me one and I asked her, “Why? What’s the point?” She thought for a moment, couldn’t find an answer to my question, and snuffed out her cigarette. I wish I could tell you she stopped then and there, but she didn’t. She was already hooked.
She died four years ago of heart disease. She was only fifty four years of age.
Jacob knew early on I didn’t approve of his smoking. I told him on our first or second date that kissing him was like emptying an ash tray full of cigarette ashes into my mouth and chewing on them.
One of the tenets our relationship is built on is to respect one another and their choices, and to not try to change the other. He knew I didn’t approve, but I never pushed it. So he continued to do it.
He smoked his last cigarette about four months ago. He recently made a comment I found interesting. He was sitting in the incredibly ugly recliner he’s had for years and said, “Honey, we need to get rid of this chair.”
I asked why and he said, “Because it smells like an ashtray. It’s sickening.”
I told him, “Honey, that’s how the whole house used to smell” (still does, but it’s fading).
I said, “You just never noticed it before. But the smell of burned cigarettes used to permeate everything. Your clothes, our walls, even me. You never noticed it before because it permeated you.”
We’ll never know to what degree his not smoking anymore has helped with his ED. That’s the most maddening thing about this whole process. When you try a combination of things to fix a problem, you don’t necessarily know which one or ones fixed the problem and which ones fell flat. That’s why we’re giving you so many options in your “tool box.” And why we encourage you to try them all, and to find your own tools, and to keep trying until you find the right co
mbination that works for you.
I will say this though… he needed to stop for a variety of reasons.
And I’m glad he did. Every time he slips his hard penis inside me I’m even more glad.
Oh, and he tastes much better when he kisses me now. I’ll admit I’d forgotten what joy it was to kiss a man who didn’t smoke. I’m sure glad I got that (and other things) back into my life.
Erectile Dysfunction Tool Box Thus Far: 17 Items
1. Frequent penis stimulation
2. Pin stimulation to penis head
3. Eat well. Diet is everything
4. Enlist your doctor’s help
5. A good selection of written erotica
6. Play. Experiment. Find new things to love
7. Water is our friend. Drink lots of it.
8. Limit caffeine
9. Ice can be nice
10. Try warming oils as a stimulant
11. Porn as a visual mood setter
12. ED Medications as a backup, not as a go-to
13. Learn to save some for a rainy day
14. Change the mechanics of how you make love
15. Whack your wiener for her. She’ll enjoy it
and it’ll help with the ED
16. Lose those extra pounds. It’ll help too
17. If you smoke, stop no matter how hard it is
Chapter 16: Get your prostate checked
It’s something you need to keep your eye on anyway.
Okay, let’s face it… getting older really sucks.
It’s hard enough as we pass fifty and near our “golden years,” as we discover the golden years aren’t so golden after all.
We develop pain in joints we weren’t smart enough to take care of when we were younger, and in muscles we didn’t even know existed.
Our eyesight and hearing start to wane and we have to start wearing reading glasses just to read the daily paper.