A viewer asks: “Is there a karmic reason I cannot quit marijuana and cigarette smoking?”

Both of these habits are, indeed, underpinned and enhanced significantly by karmic events in other lifetimes. Substance abuse has been commonplace throughout the ages, and many people have the experience in other lifetimes of becoming a smoker and greatly enjoying the neurological benefits making it so very pleasurable. Although marijuana use is more specific to certain times and places, it, too, is tapping into the potential for any substance bringing immediate pleasure through the central nervous system to become habit-forming, or frankly addicting, and this, too, has been common through many different avenues, often when other conditions ended lives early and the consequences of being inebriated or high on drugs of some kind was not experienced as a huge liability but more a positive benefit overall in coping with a difficult and stressful life. This creates an inner liability where the deep subconscious sees only positives and is not prepared to accept negative pronouncements of outsiders when it can see its own experiencing in other lifetimes as largely positive and the current life experience only reinforcing that. So it is the intellectual overlay of the conscious self which is more thoughtful, more planful, and wiser in possessing a greater intellect. So it is the best resource to weigh the pros and cons than the deep subconscious which is more like your inner child, being impulsive, highly emotional, and biased in some respects by the sheer volume of information it surveys. But the downside is that it is not well-equipped to weigh the benefits and liabilities with respect to all that the conscious mind is privy to and has the greater discernment and ability to evaluate consequences more accurately.