tobacco

In some ways the hardest, but in many, the easiest to defeat

Tobacco is the beginning and the end of addiction for many. Most of us started in our early years, for who knows why. Was it an act of rebellion? Be cool? Trying to fit in? Maybe someone we looked up to was a smoker.

For me it may of been a combination of those. However, honestly, I also simply liked the idea of blowing smoke out of my mouth. Can’t really figure out why. I hated smoking in the wind, and loved smoking in cold weather, when we were like dragons breathing long deep smoke puffs into the air.

Maybe I just wanted to be a dragon

It probably was emotionally reassuring, the psychological comfort of ‘feeling relaxed’, despite the completely opposite effect occuring within my body.

I smoked at parties. I smoked with friends, while we drank. At cafes, with coffee, at a bus stop while we waited. At the park when we jigged school. It was something to do. Like, I wasn’t doing nothing while I was standing around, I was smoking. I wasn’t bored on my break at work, I was smoking.

An adult, making adult choices. It helped me pretend that I was brave and strong.

And unafraid. You’re not afraid of anything if you’re a smoker. You’re dangerous. You’re defying what every body says, that it’ll kill you. You’re untouchable.

Many years of smoking, I enjoyed it most thoroughly when I was drunk or enjoying some other substance, because I could smoke deeply and constantly, I used to love the Peter Jackson ad ‘a thinking man smokes’ .. missing the actual concept of this ad, I just liked to consider myself as a thinking man.

If I was a thinking man, why was I smoking?

Some time in my mid twenties, I began to feel shit when I smoked. I couldn’t breathe properly, the entire act of smoking was becoming unpleasant. At odds with my own existence, I knew I needed to give this shit the flick. But I failed to follow that observation with any kind of action, and I continued to smoke. I’ll change to rollies. They’re healthier, the tobacco is more natural, they taste better. It must be better for you. [it has been confirmed that roll-your-own tobacco is cured approximately twice as much and with many more chemicals than most tailor-made cigarettes in an effort to keep it from drying out].

I’ll smoke less. But I didn’t. I’m not entirely sure when I first quit, but for some two weeks, I didn’t smoke anything, constantly wanting one whenever I saw somebody smoking in a movie or an ad, or on the street. The thought of smoking was hard to avoid, and it wouldn’t be long before I gave into the craving. But, I didn’t really want to quit – I just kind’ve thought I should – this is the crux of why addiction to smoking is a difficult one to beat. Most don’t really want to. I would prove, the better part of a decade later, that when I did want to, it was one of the simplest things I ever did.

My health I would think. My lungs… my breathing… But man smoking a cigarette was go good with that morning coffee. As it was effecting my breathing and the act of smoking was uncomfortable, and the taste… these things were alleviated with a beverage of some kind. Particularly coffee. Or coca-cola. Or something stronger. Even a piece of chewing gum if necessary, anything to get that horrible taste out of my mouth, to help me “enjoy” my smoke.

It must be said that smoking tobacco intertwined with my gambling addiction. Because at some stage in Sydney many venues no longer offered smoking indoors unless you were in the pokies room.

NSW, doing it for the every day person.

Over the years it dawned on me more and more, that this was something I needed to stop. And I began to come around to the idea of actually wanting to. I began to hate whenever I smoked, I began to reduce when I did so, maybe just with the morning coffee or with the afternoon beer. Maybe at night when I got home after work, with a nightcap beverage.

I quit smoking a handful of times. At longest for 9 months*. A couple of times for a couple of months each. But usually at some stage, I would have a smoke while out with people, maybe go on a binge-drinking night or some kind of bender, decide to smoke, buy some, be left with some, begin slowly over the following week again, just because they were around.

It was throughout this period that my revelations began.

Everybody asks how I was trying to quit. What was I using. Patches? The gum? Some kind of anti-smoking drug which affected the nicotine receptors in my brain. It slowly dawned on me, that if nicotine-based ‘quitting’ tools are owned by powerful companies, didn’t it make sense that all the talk about smoking was that it’s hard, it’s ok if you can’t. These things will help. Sombody, was profiteering off the idea that it is hard. The language needed to change. Why wasn’t the language, you can. It’s not ok if you can’t, it’s just a simple action.

If you follow a decision with the correct action, you’re going to succeed. Why would I continue to feed my brain a drug that I was trying to avoid, simply because it was being delivered in another method? Just don’t smoke, if you don’t want to.

I couldn’t really understand the idea that I was somehow compelled to do something that I didn’t want to do. After all, wasn’t I making a choice to do this? There was no uncontrollable force powering me on. There were no robotics, no out of body remote control. I just chose to. What was addiction? What is this thing they’re calling addiction? I had to admit, that there was no compulsive act which was somehow, at odds to my actual thought patterns. I wanted to smoke. Even when I hated it, I made the conscious decision to give in when I did.

I guess some of the weight behind these statements was lost, since I did go back to smoking many times. In the last 4 years, I’ve smoked for approximately 18 months, quitting for some 4 month period 3 years ago, and finally, lastly, quitting for good just over 2 years ago (*now longest duration of non-smoking since I began some 17 years earlier). I’ll never go back to smoking, the taste repulses me.

My own mentality finally cemented the things I’ve said time and time again, that if you don’t want to smoke, just don’t, until it no longer becomes a habit.

Tying back into what I learnt about decisions, there is only now. The past is gone and it bares nothing down on you right now. The future is not yet written. You write it now with the choice you make.

Do you want to be a smoker? Choose now. And revel in the power to be in control of your life, whatever you do choose.