Friday, February 13, 2004
"What do they put in them, crack?"
There were exactly two years between when I stopped sucking my thumb and when I had my first cigarette. I remember it perfectly, not so much because of the smoking but because of how it happened. My dog had had his first series of seizures and my friend offered me a cigarette to calm me down. Thus an addiction was born.
I didn't start smoking chronically till I was in college. Before then it was a cigarette at a party, or at a punk show or when I was with smokers. In college it got worse. Mostly because my college boyfriend was a smoker. He quit after our freshman year and stayed a non smoker. I would sneak cigarette's at parties or when I was out with the girls. When I would go to Middletown (NY, my home town) it was the worse. I could go through almost an entire pack of cigarette's in four hours if properly drunk. Things stayed like that through pretty much my senior year when within in a six week period, my grandmother died, a three year relationship was ended and my uncle feel into a coma. I was almost at a pack a day. Made all the more serious by the fact that I was on the pill and you should not smoke on the pill. Smoking that much makes me feel like shit, I am tired all the time and groggy and just yucky.
Somehow, towards May I got myself to quit, calm down whatever. I started dating non smokers which really really helped. I wasn't even sneaking cigarettes very often, I would have maybe one every two months. And here is how it happens.
I could be doing absolutely nothing, feeding fish, walking through a park and it'll hit me. The desire for the ritual. Pick up the pack, smack it into the palm of my hand a few times, remove a cigarette, place it on lips, strike a match (I really prefer matches) and inhale. Feel tingle spread through body. Sigh.
I like smoking when I am drinking wine, amaretto, or tequila. I like smoking when I am writing. Lately, I have been editing poems I wrote when I was a "serious smoker" and the desire to do it again hit me. I hadn't had a cigarette since the beginning of November. Last night I got to fulfill my desire. Out with some folk and I got to
stand in the circle of smokers and share just one with a new friend. So delicious, so wonderful, so nice that I only do it occasionally.
I will probably be an occasional smoker for the rest of my life. When the desire to smoke hits me I really try to repress it but eventually it gets to the point where I can think of nothing else. People have a ton of vices and if mine is one cigarette every few months, so be it.
There were exactly two years between when I stopped sucking my thumb and when I had my first cigarette. I remember it perfectly, not so much because of the smoking but because of how it happened. My dog had had his first series of seizures and my friend offered me a cigarette to calm me down. Thus an addiction was born.
I didn't start smoking chronically till I was in college. Before then it was a cigarette at a party, or at a punk show or when I was with smokers. In college it got worse. Mostly because my college boyfriend was a smoker. He quit after our freshman year and stayed a non smoker. I would sneak cigarette's at parties or when I was out with the girls. When I would go to Middletown (NY, my home town) it was the worse. I could go through almost an entire pack of cigarette's in four hours if properly drunk. Things stayed like that through pretty much my senior year when within in a six week period, my grandmother died, a three year relationship was ended and my uncle feel into a coma. I was almost at a pack a day. Made all the more serious by the fact that I was on the pill and you should not smoke on the pill. Smoking that much makes me feel like shit, I am tired all the time and groggy and just yucky.
Somehow, towards May I got myself to quit, calm down whatever. I started dating non smokers which really really helped. I wasn't even sneaking cigarettes very often, I would have maybe one every two months. And here is how it happens.
I could be doing absolutely nothing, feeding fish, walking through a park and it'll hit me. The desire for the ritual. Pick up the pack, smack it into the palm of my hand a few times, remove a cigarette, place it on lips, strike a match (I really prefer matches) and inhale. Feel tingle spread through body. Sigh.
I like smoking when I am drinking wine, amaretto, or tequila. I like smoking when I am writing. Lately, I have been editing poems I wrote when I was a "serious smoker" and the desire to do it again hit me. I hadn't had a cigarette since the beginning of November. Last night I got to fulfill my desire. Out with some folk and I got to
stand in the circle of smokers and share just one with a new friend. So delicious, so wonderful, so nice that I only do it occasionally.
I will probably be an occasional smoker for the rest of my life. When the desire to smoke hits me I really try to repress it but eventually it gets to the point where I can think of nothing else. People have a ton of vices and if mine is one cigarette every few months, so be it.
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