THE MAD RUSSIAN
Yefim Shubentsov has had an office at
1680A Beacon Street in Brookline,
Massachusetts for 23 years. He has
two secretaries, one young and one old, both
Russian. Mr. Shubentsov claims to have been
a member of the Russian Navy, a paratroop-
er, a teacher, a healer, an artist and an advisor
to medical schools and hospitals both abroad
and across the Charles at Harvard. He is not
a doctor. He is not a hypnotist. He claims no
direct link with God.
“No connections,” he says, pointing to the
ceiling.
He takes pride in his physical appear-
ance. He wears a black turtleneck, slacks
and a sportcoat. He is balding neatly. He
proves that he is “only muscle and bone” by
instructing a female client to knock on his
abdomen for the others to see. He does not
eat between meals, nor does he advocate that
his patients do: “Not even a carrot, because
one, and you are big fat elephant.”
He’s been featured on 20/20, on Unsolved
Mysteries and in USA Today. Amy Tan, Billy
Joel, Courtney Cox, David Arquette and
Drew Barrymore swear by him, or at least
the magazines say they do. The inclusion of
celebrities’ names in his publicity materials
combats the idea that he’s a sham, a hoax, a
quack. His name is hard to pronounce, so in
the culture of quests for effortless self-help,
he’s known as the Mad Russian. His book,
Cure Your Inner Craving, is a bestseller, and
he is fully booked two months in advance.
I knew the date of my appointment for
a while, which allowed me to smoke guilt
free. “I’ll take the buy-one-pack-get-one-free
deal. I’m quitting cigarettes in thirteen days.”
I smoked my last one overlooking the skat-
ing rink at the Boston Commons on a cold
Saturday morning.
All smoke-free on the Eastern
Front
His waiting room occupied what had once
been the sitting room of a Gilded Era fam-
ily home. A dry fish tank filled with sand,
plastic plants and toy dinosaurs separated
two seating areas. Oriental rugs and plush
velvet sofas bordered the room. Ornate gold
framed oil paintings, each dated and signed
“Yefim Shubentsov,” lined the wooden walls,
depicting stormy seas and hillsides attacked
by fantastically tacky neon sunsets.
A collection of guilty people, gaunt and
grey and smelling of smoke, sat around us,
turning off cell phones. We were as silent as
cats at the vet.
The older secretary gave me a form and
read the different categories of things that
could be cured. She spoke as one would
speak to children or morons, probably ac-
customed to people asking her to repeat
things. “You have here, cigarette. Here,
drugs. Maybe co-ca-ine, mar-i-juana, pain-
killer, alc-ohol. Phobia, like airplane phobia,
snake phobia. Other habits. This like bite
nails. Weight loss.” She pointed at the words
“weight loss.”
“Weight loss not today. Different session.
You can cure as many problem as you want.
Same price. Okay $65.” I handed her three
twenties and a five and told myself it was
money well spent. If it did work, it was a
pretty good deal (Americans spend billions
on cigarettes, not to mention quit-smok-
ing gum, patches, seminars, homeopathies,
books, tapes, therapists). If it didn’t work, I
could probably make my money back with
the reward Unsolved Mysteries would pay me
Thursday, February 14, 2008
IN PURSUIT OF A QUICK CIGARETTE FIX
BY SANDRA ALLEN
ILLUSTRATION BY SUSANNA VAGT
for solving this one.
The session began with a ceremonial drop-
ping of smokes and lighters into a brass rub-
bish bin. I didn’t have any with me to throw
away and felt that I should have brought
some. For a moment, I fantasized about
some psychotic un-cured smoker grabbing
the whole trashcan and running out of the
place, saving himself a lot of money.
The Mad Russian spoke English so quickly
and poorly that he was basically incompre-
hensible. As he began, the group of smok-
ers seated around his office leaned forward,
realizing that they were going to need to
work very hard to get their money’s worth.
Surprisingly, his discussion rarely focused on
cigarettes specifically. He touched the subject
only once, saying: “I don’t need to tell you
smoking is bad. You know this already, this
why you come here. Cigarettes not part of
your life anymore.”
He believes that in order to cure addic-
tion, one shouldn’t replace the addiction
with another thing. “Not even carrots,” he
affirmed again. He also voiced many opin-
ions that seemed entirely irrelevant, like that
he is against giving children prescriptions for
ADD. He told a story about parachuting.
He strongly recommended that we all move
to Arizona, California or New Mexico to im-
prove our circulation.
I smoke, therefore I suck
I admittedly hadn’t come into this with a
good attitude. Not necessarily pessimistic,
but not at all resolved that I actually wanted
to quit, I had barely admitted that I had a
problem serious enough to call for ‘quitting.’
What had driven me to the office of the Mad
Russian was guilt. Smokers get no love from
society. Save for a few tobacco conglomerates
with lobbyists and pro-smoking nut-jobs
with websites, it seems every race, creed, re-
ligion and party unite in anti-tobacco fervor
in this country. But anti-tobacco really means
anti-smoker. This free-flowing shame causes
most smokers to hide the habit, become de-
fensive or seek the exclusive companionship
of other smokers.
At this rate it seems like smoker’s guilt will
kill me before heart disease, emphysema,
bronchitis, or cancer even have a chance.
Smoking in the last half-century has be-
come one of the only things that it’s PC to
hate people for. It’s not culturally acceptable
to walk up to a fat person and tell them to
stop eating so much. Even alcoholism is
treated with delicacy. Ask any smoker how
many times they’ve had perfect strangers
lecture them about how they should lead
their lives. Ask them whether or not they’ve
pointed out to that stranger that they should
change things about their life as well, like not
yelling at strangers.
A friend of mine, who never smoked, in-
terned for Truth, the anti-tobacco lobby, one
summer. After several months of sitting in
a cubicle from nine to five, thinking only
about smoking, he began taking cigarette
breaks. It seems ironic that people who are
well-educated and intelligent take up smok-
ing anyway. Another friend, who took up
smoking in the months following his father’s
sudden death, remarked upon this phenom-
enon. He said he thinks most people like us
smoke because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: I
have a sucky life, so I smoke; I smoke, there-
fore my life sucks.
The People v. Parliament Lights (a trial con-
ducted in my mind, in its fifth year).
For the plaintiff: the Surgeon General,
general social compliance, self-hatred, my
friends who don’t smoke. For the defense:
my friends who smoke, Joni Mitchell, Betty
Draper, Gatsby, Franny and Zooey, youth,
the fact that I don’t do lots of other bad
things that plenty of people do, fatalism.
Quit smoking and you could still get hit by
a bus. Smoke, because you might still live to
90.
Of course, all this debate could simply be
my addicted mind throwing sand in my own
eyes. Addicts are terribly good at arguing.
Alone with the Mad Russian
It was a two-hour act he had performed
thousands of times before. As the Mad Rus-
sian spoke, his hands rhythmically moved
through the air. He claims to have the power
to manipulate the life-energies that surround
us, a power that not even science can explain.
Apparently he tricks these energies into for-
getting that they ever wanted cigarettes—a
pre-smoking rebirth. With the incompre-
hensible monotony of his voice and the wav-
ing hands, I suspected he was trying to hyp-
notize his crowd.
Suddenly he raised his voice and pointed
at a woman in the room, startling her. “Do
you have pain?” he asked. He had to repeat
himself several times as she tried to untangle
what he had asked her. When he repeated
himself, he did so as though her inability to
understand him was something she needed
to get over. “Yes, I have pain,” she eventu-
ally replied. He asked where, and she said
her joints. He waved his hands and asked if
the pain had decreased, stayed the same or
vanished entirely. She said it was better. I
wondered whether anyone ever said it had
gotten worse. He asked each of us these same
questions, sometimes flipping his wrists or
painting circles in the air with his thumbs,
different motions for different pains. I said
my back hurts sometimes and he asked me if
my pain had decreased. I said yes, because I
figured it would be awkward to say no.
The 20 of us had sat through two hours
when he told us all to leave the room and
then re-enter, one at a time. Suddenly we
sprang back to reality, half-sedated, shuf-
fling past one another, unsure whether we
were yet cured. When I re-entered the room
alone, I was a little afraid. He was smaller up
close and told me to close my eyes. He told
me to think in my head I am smoking, I am
smoking, I am smoking. I heard the wisp of
his breath; he said I could open my eyes and
told me to leave. I thanked him.
The Mad Russian claims that his technique
is effective for 98 percent of his clientele. He
furthermore guarantees that if anyone wants
to return to his office for subsequent sessions,
they may for life, free of charge. He said that
less than one percent of people return seek-
ing free sessions; any more and his business
would go under. Of course, this could be
because all the people he hasn’t cured know
he isn’t going to cure them the second time,
either.
Conspiracy theories are exciting. Though
I would have been astonished if the Mad
Russian’s unexplainable powers had magi-
cally cured me, I was not shocked that they
didn’t. Perhaps I’m too cynical, perhaps I’m
not ready to quit. Most philosophy relating
to addiction agrees: quitting can only begin
when addicts themselves are ready to change.
I cannot declare definitively whether this
man from Moscow has some scientifically
unexplainable power. It seems reasonable,
though, that belief in his powers, in com-
bination with a great desire to quit, could
explain his apparently high success rate.
Thus, the more people who don’t disprove
the methods of the Mad Russian, the greater
possibility he may save some people’s lives.
In the meantime, I’m holding out for the in-
vention of a cancerless cigarette.
__________________________________
SANDRA ALLEN B’09 is an ember aloft.
