Man, this is a hardcore drug. This nicotine thing...
Started aged 11, used to clean floors before school at my local supermarket, guys there were all smokers, parents, uncles, auntys, seemingly everyone. I'm 42 years old now, life is better for a kid these days with regards to information, but like any other child prodigy (or idiot... ) the cigarette was my thing.
My first one... A Silk Cut, from a pack of ten, these were "OK" to smoke, that's the kind of thing you'd hear - "OK" - why? Because they weren't as strong as say, a Marlboro red, or a hand rolled. Needless to say then, but within the year I was on Marlboro reds, I have just spent the last 26 years smoking hand rolled liquorice wrapped drum blue tobacco.
My teeth are barely hanging in at places, it seems a miracle of invention. My hygenist told me I had periodontitis, this actually scared me when she told me this really means that my jawbone is corroding. I thought I had receeding gums... These days I let the beard grow out, on the occasion I do clean shave, I have noticed a slight decrease in overall jaw mass. I kind of like having teeth.
I cannot sleep comfortably on my right hand side, it is something to do with bloodflow, after lying for 10 minutes or so I have to change sides. It's kind of hip area and downward for a foot or so. In the event I wake on that side I am guaranteed at least an hour of numbness in the whole region, sometimes at night it feels like a million minnows of the blood swimming up and down my veins.
I feel like I have a clue as to what emphysema may feel like, it's that sudden realisation (and panic) that you can no longer breath a full, satisfying breath, last year on holiday in Egypt I got caught in a bit of choppy water scuba diving, started panicking, and actually felt very vulnerable, for the first time in my life I am not strong enough to swim my way out of a mildly rough set of waves.
This year I dabbled with the E-Lite cigarette, I was awoken by my addiction at around 4.51 am in a blind panic.
I'm on day two of my 6th quit. I should be used to this, but you are never quite ready to face anything quite this mind altering a substance to overcome. My day feels very long, dull. Totally unfullfilling. Totally unsatisfying. I am the proverbial child who has had it's dummy removed. I kind of hate... everything.
But this time I know this. This time I should be more ready.
THAT.
Is how devilishly hard nicotine is to get off.
As I have aged, and (hopefully) grown up a little, there are one or two things that jar with me, on a mental level, as I guess they would any other healthy being, subjected to his own body getting 'big' on him with problems all directly culminated from cigarette smoking. (Yeah... Not so cool now are we Mr. Marlboro Man?)
These are:
1. These things shouldn't be manufactured. Make them illegal, cigarettes can then become a slower and safer heroin. Put a brown paper bag over the packaging, stick as many warnings you like. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the ad with the guy who has the swollen neck and red neck moustache - I still sit there and take my drug, like millions of others, we shudder, we say "Oooh... That's nasty" BUT WE'RE STILL SMOKING.
2. Finally (!) - It is occuring to me that I am starting to feel a little stupid about my slavery. Dumb, almost. Like the very thing I did to rebel, to go against, was the very thing that advertising companies wanted me to do. I am now trying to pacify my self loathing with the notion that misinformation does not equate with stupidity, trying a post idiot reschooling of myself. To be fair to my young self, it is an unfair fight - one, insecure human not yet old enough to know what an immune system is, against a billion dollar corporation placing adverts of cool looking people, all sunsets, cool water on brown toned skin, sexed up, racing cars, speedboats, golden yellow tobacco leaves nested in green surrounds, all there, eye level, these b*****ds are the same ones who shunt you as they walk by you in a restaurant. They laugh at you.
This makes me feel uneasy.
There are people, quite literally, whose job it is to find you out, pinpoint you, and then, technically, to end your life extremely slowly. They get you to commit suicide at one mile per hour and pay for the luxury as well.
Jeez...
To think that my Mother's generation were actually told by doctors that smoking is good for you...
Poor buggers.
My Grandfather died of emphysema, my Mother has all sorts of health issues, her friends sit with oxygen tanks attached to them, they may still smoke. I have at least two friends who have recently had strokes, a heart attack, you know... You live long enough? You'll see it. All those people, once happy, living lives, now buckling under the weight of shock.
I can't deal with the survivor guilt.
This particular dice feels loaded, if my body is anything to go by...
So... Rothmans, Camel, John Player Blue, Black, Red, Regal, Superking, Benson And Hedges, Silk Cut, Winston, Peter Stuyvesant, Drina, Drum, Golden Virginia, Old Holborn... And all you other beautiful lies - YOU win.
I can't play any more.
