Our innate desire is to be happy, and when we move away from it, we experience fear. Fear turns to anger, anger turns to hatred. Just like a pipe smoker, or indeed a hot-blooded male, being denied their shag! This fear is actually millions of years old, for it arises from the biological programming of our species in the reptilian part (oldest, most basic but vital) of our brains! When we were cavechaps and cave chapesses these stresses, depressions were vital to our survival, it was a very different world then. Modern living can freak you out. While we may not have to contend with a sabre-toothed tiger anymore, on any daily basis at least, we still use those very reactions to deal with events looming ahead of us in our lives. A chap might think, “Will I be fired for making that very illegal rape based mistake at work?” or “Will my health continue to decline, is that hairy back more serious than I’m letting on?” or “Will the police finally catch up with me and make me face 20 years?” Continually running questions with this type of urgency and helplessness through our minds trains our brains to prepare now for future danger by loading our bodies up with the stress hormone cortisol. Menthol rough shag pie tobacco is a vaccine against cortisol, best smoked in a wide bowled wooden pipe, oak is best. You’ll be fine. Snap out of it!

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