HONEST QUESTIONS DESERVE HONEST ANSWERS

QUESTION:

“Igor, Why are you smoking and drinking your self to death?
Smoking, if you don’t inhale cigars, can still give you bladder cancer. Tell tale signs are blood in your urine, often after about forty years of smoking.”

Writes Michael Brett 

michael, thanks for expressing your concern and I will answer your question as thoroughly and honestly as I can.

Well, for one thing, I don’t have blood in my urine.  Every body is different and reacts differently to different things.  For example, my body does not respond well to cannabis although people are constantly praising its health virtues and persuading me to replace it for my consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

Maybe it works for them but not for me.  I used to smoke cannabis, a lot of it. But if I smoke even a hit now, I lose focus for days. I become lethargic. I feel demotivated and lack self certainty.

I smoke strong chemical free cigarettes and high end Cuban cigars for. one main reason: The nicotine increases my focus. It also relieves the stress of coping with the seemingly endless stream of idiocies and obstacles that people and their bureaucracies hurl at me.  If human beings weren’t so maliciously stupid, needlessly cruel, deliberately ignorant and undermining, I probably wouldn’t smoke at all!

Likewise alcohol, I now drink nearly every day, but only after I’ve finished working, so around 5 or 6 pm.  I start work at 5-6 am each and every morning. 7 days a week. God took Sunday off which explains why the world is broken. Repairing the world is a 7/7 day a week vocation.

I drink only the best wine, tequila I can afford and only when I’m in Britain or Germany do I drink beer.  British real ale and German Pilsners are living nutrients; unpasteurized and nourishing to the body as much as the soul.

I drink exceedingly but seldom get drunk and even more rarely suffer hangovers.  The latter is down to the premium quality of the alcohol I consume.  All natural, no additives.  And yes, more expensive.

I drink for two equally valid reasons:

1.  I’m in pretty constant pain in my extremities, mainly my legs and mainly my right leg.  I was diagnosed with lymphedema last October. The American medical system has failed miserably in getting me even a lymphedema specialist. It also hasn’t provided a proper treatment for my condition. Nor even effective pain relief.

American medicine is only about money and the doctors, nurses and health practitioners care about little else than you insurance coverage.  It is a disgusting, mercenary, greed-fueled system that should be scorch-earth, burnt to the ground and built from scratch based on a nationalized health model.

But money breeds greed which necessarily breeds incompetence.  Beware getting ill or needing any kind of mental or physical health help in America.

You won’t get it unless you’re rich and even then, there’s no guarantees when it comes to American health care,  None at all!

So I drink as much as I do as a means of self medication.  When I find decent medical treatment for my condition in Europe, I will probably reduce, but not eliminate my alcohol intake.

In spite of my excessive drinking and smoking, my last physical in November, 2024 was according to my nurse practitioner, a  4 star ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️  result!

Blood, urine, stool test all came up trumps (and I don’t  mean Dumb-Hitler).  Blood pressure a little elevated but within normal parameters, cholesterol down, liver super fit, lung capacity excellent, could lose about 15 pounds of excess wait but I apparently have the body of a 35 year old.

That’s what having the right genes from a mixed racial parentage and  background gets you!

2.  The second equally valid reason I have for drinking in excess is that I’m lonely.  My last girlfriend, a Mexican beauty and mother of 2 from Jalisco dumped me because I wasn’t rich and had no intention of getting rich. We were still trying to be friends but I think she more recently decided that the time she spent with me was time she was losing finding a millionaire. She’s not greedy as she’s looking for a millionaire not a billionaire. But as with everything in America, money lies coiled at the roots of all value, even Love.

I am desperate for feminine companionship.  Not overtly, but inwardly desperate. I prefer the company of women to men.  I think that women in general, are better human beings than men are. I was raised by a strong, intelligent and independent mother and I am passionately attracted to the same type.  

I loved my baby sister, Natasha, now deceased, am on warm speaking terms with my ex wife and love my 25 year old daughter Olivia, more than my own life.

I treat women with respect, with consideration, with affection and when they are open to it, passion.

However, this has proved  no formula for success.

This is partly due to culture and geography.  Being trapped in Southern California for the past 8 years has been an emotional and sexual nightmare.

California women are by nature, defensive, suspicious to the point of paranoia (much of which is justified, considering mentality of Californian men!), spiteful, callous, cruel and rarely know what they want romantically, socially and most certainly sexually.

It is akin to a pandemic level neurosis.  I’m sure it is caused by the dominance of excessive consumption capitalism.  America is a Nation run amok with Hungry Ghosts wandering aimlessly in constant hunger for commodities that never satisfy. So that the sad ghosts are compelled to consume more and more and more.  As well as waste resources, energy and everything around them; including other people and even themselves.

I detect this neurosis most in women, because I am not physically attracted to men and therefore expose my self to more slings and arrows of overpriced fortune from women. Beautiful women; inwardly and outwardly. I say this because what underlines all the female Hungry Ghosts is money.  An insatiable desire for money and the companionship of men who can provide it.

My experience and impression is that without money, the Californian branch of the human tree would wither and die from lack of procreation.

I’m not calling Californian women prostitutes.  No, they’re far worse than that: they only give of themselves, their love, their affection, their emotional investment to the IMPRESSION of wealth and money.

Actual prostitutes are more transactional.  California women are constantly playing games, with themselves as much as others.  They live in a cacophony of mixed messages, confusion, self-loathing and  passive aggressive spite.  

Many appear to both fear and despise men at the same time. But rather than just leave us alone, they like to play cat and mouse games of allure and refusal as a means of compensating for a sublimated sense of power.

I am not the only man who thinks and feels this; btw, before you start hurling more misogyny cards in my hat.  Men, especially foreign born men, confess the exact same conclusions about Californian women when there aren’t any women around to overhear.

Even feminist women, who I admire and prefer, have great difficulties expressing what they want and Don’t want from a man.  There’s deep insecurity at the heart of the west coast female that more often than not, manifests as passive aggression and occasional overt aggression.

For evidence of this just read the comments from women that will inevitably follow in reaction to this post.

I will find a lover eventually, if not a partner, somewhere in Europe or possibly north Africa, soon enough.  Of that I have no lack of self certainty!  I was happily married to an English woman for some 18 years.  

I have a great deal to offer the “right” woman: intellect, humor, tenderness, insight and genuine affection. I have never been told that I am other than a passionate and satisfying love who gives more than he takes. Whose greatest pleasure is to give pleasure to the point of repeated climax. I am a gourmet chef for whom the greatest act of love (apart from the very act of love) is to cook a favourite meal for a friend for my family, for my lover.

I am very industrious, ambitious and am well on my way to making my career as that of a best selling author and successful poet.

But most of all I am kind.

I do not suffer fools gladly and I state the truth no matter how critical the truth is or how easily offended the recipient.

I feed and house the homeless when I can. I enjoy talking to young people both young men and young women who I speak the truth to regardless of what their elders or authorities think.

I am a critical thinker in the tradition and spirit of Socrates.

I question authority.

ALL authority.

I try my best to alleviate the suffering of others.

I regularly meditate.

I adore the arts and all forms of music (apart from breakfast cereal jingles).

I am the best Poet I have ever been in my life and my life is far from over!

I have very close ‘girlfriends’ and “admirers” in Holland, the UK, France and Algeria.  Some are with partners and therefore our relations are Platonic for the time being.  Others have issues of faith that prevent them from acting on their attractions and some. I just haven’t met…yet.

But I am actively looking, just not in California or the US, ever again.  So for both health and romantic reasons, to quote Robert Hunter “I’m going where the weather suits my clothes”!

Thank you and goodnight!