I’ll confess to having an addictive personality only because I’m now free of all my addictions, even the secret ones. (Though I have yet to consider my obsessive daily postings to this website an addiction).
Cigarettes were my biggest addiction. I say “biggest” because it is the most taboo addiction in the eyes of American society, and it held me in a choking grip for too many years. My first cigarette was around the age of 12. My older brother had recently taken up the habit and I stole some half-smoked cigarettes from the ashtray in his bedroom. I smoked them while staring in the mirror, impressed with how sophisticated I looked with a half-squashed Marlboro hanging out of my mouth. You can tsk and blame Hollywood, but it was writers like Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnegut who made smoking glamorous to me.
Smoking didn’t became a habit until around 16, when I got my drivers license and hence the freedom to go and buy cigarettes, and smoke them anywhere and everywhere. Smokes were a $1 a pack and carding minors was rare (the mid-90s were so, so long ago!) I loved smoking. I loved the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the stroke of the smoke down my throat as I tugged it into my lungs, the rush of nicotine pleasure to my brain. I loved chain-smoking with my friends, while driving, while reading books. I couldn’t imagine life without cigarettes.
I was a happy smoker through my college years and into my 20s. But soon the allure of smoking waned. Anti-smoking campaigns pecked at my conscious. People glared at me through my second-hand smoke. It became a noisome chore. The final absurdity hit me 2 winters ago during a trip to Maine: There I was, pulling on my coat, hat, scarf, boots, and gloves to head out in sub-zero temperatures to smoke a cigarette! I decided to quit cold turkey.
Quitting smoking is reputedly the hardest task known to humankind, but I don’t think that’s true because it was much easier than learning French. If a person is really ready to quit, they only have to endure about 5 days of physical and emotional turmoil during which they want to do nothing but lay in bed, twitching and sobbing. My secret weapons: Nicotine gum and hard candy. I must have eaten 2 pounds of Werther’s caramels during the first 3 days alone.
One good thing to be said about smoking: Quitting is a real character-building experience. I know for sure that I’m capable of great self-control and discipline, which is good, because the odd cigarette craving does strike. Even now, right now, all this talk about smoking is exciting my dopamine neurons. As George Carlin once said, just because you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean that the circus has left town.
