3 years later and I still miss smoking every single day.
I miss the comforting little boundary of me-space that a cloud of smoke creates. Every now and then, I am asked why I stopped, why I did not stop earlier, or why I ever smoked in the first place. Fair enough.
Here is why, and why you also have to stop. Life is like that.
Every morning I wake up thinking about having a smoke. That moment you breathe out the first cloud of smoke in the morning on your balcony, or in the smoking area after a 12 hours flight. It just tastes like life cannot get any better. You savor a mental taste – not a reality.
Smoking is a complex, dirty, pitiful, fun, soothing and loyal addiction. As toxic and as loyal as family can be. Or a friendship. That is why smoking matches so well soldiers. Loyal and lethal. Sneaky and resolute.
That perverse attachment is why I smoked for so long. Until enough was enough.
How did I ghost an old friend?
After all, why not share what non-smokers cannot tell you.
You can’t scare people to stop smoking
It is on cigarettes packs. You see it online, on TV, in photos. The Dr Mabuse’s are never short of horror stories. Repeat after me: SMOKING KILLS.
Yes it does. And yet..
How did humanity survive if everyone was smoking in the 40s? How did the USA, home of the Marlboro advertisement, become the uncontested world power 50 years, two generations later? A minor logical flaw.
Smoking Kills. Great slogan! Clean, simple, easy to roll out.
Smoking is not the leading cause of mortality. Not globally, not in the wealthiest, nor in the poorest countries. The one you are looking for is heart diseases, atherosclerosis to be precise, and smoking is one of many causes, along overweight, blood pressure, stress, cholesterol, … and as smoking related deaths go down, guess what goes up?
Can you imagine a marketing campaign, dripping TV documentaries and hand-on-heart interviews on that? The day I decided to … to what exactly? I am using less salt with my meat? Stop eating sugar? Just not a great slogan, really. Too complex, too murky, too vague. Bad for visuals.
Always felt that playing to the gallery. Smoking is Bad for the world. Smoking Kills. Boo-hiss.
The health cost-benefits outcome is hardly convincing
Smoking is a physical addiction, but not the one you will see in movies. There is no twitching, no foaming at the mouth or banging on padded walls. You want your cigarette after a long flight, and will resent unnecessary delays going out of the airport. Not more than if you are not smoking. Testing “the addiction theory” at Nice airport in a smoking and non-smoking scenario, my conclusion is this: my visible agitation post-flight is due to the irritating inefficiency of the whole airport experience, not withdrawal symptoms.
I do not breathe better after stopping smoking.
Neither do I feel better.
I do not have greater mind clarity either – or not noticeably enough to write it down.
You just down the very low percentage chance of dying from melting lungs, faces, throats or tongue. And so, you basically exchange to die in a hospital bed versus at home. A plus, but not a magical one. Like when I caught a lung disease 3 months after stopping smoking. NTM to be precise. Surprisingly nothing to do with smoking 50 Camels a day. NTM bacteria lives in steamy tropical environments. Sauna, steam rooms, … 1 year of heavy treatments and all clear today. Luck it seems.
Stopping smoking just adjusts your own death statistics. Not a good slogan either. And not sufficient in itself to continue the agony of stopping.
You will not save money by stopping smoking
Smoking is bad financially, for you, for your country, for the World.
Cigarettes were 1 euro when I started smoking, they are above 10 now. Smoking costs you more each year thanks to the WHO. It is a lot of money you spend smoking.
So when you do eventually stop smoking, you stop spending the money. Right? Wrong. You will spend your money on any other occupation. Some better, some as bad, some worse. Like salt apparently. But no, your bank account will not swell.
It could, but it won’t.
Smoking is nett revenue for the state
Smoking does bring in a lot of taxes, again with the blessing and encouragement of the WHO. Increasing taxes used to be their go-to proposition to decrease numbers of smokers. You can even bring some sophistication to the argument by adding that smoking costs the state much more than it actually brings in, but that argument has been buried a long time back. Basically, if the smokers die earlier, as claimed, then their pensions don’t have to be paid. Oooeps. And you can add VAT collected from smoking, etc…
So, smoking is just nett revenue for the state then.
And, between the circumvoluted policies of “plain packaging”, graphic pictures, all assorted WHO recommendations, Stop Smoking campaigns do create a political feelgood background noise, possibilities for the end of these pesky public mandates.
None of that theatre would have convinced me to leave behind my trusted me-time.
You will lose your go-to for personal time
Smoking actually physically, psychologically, socially creates a sense of individual freedom. Individual freedom is what smoking brings to the table, more than taste, social affectation or health dangers.
When you stop smoking, the first thing you win is the time spent thinking about your next smoke, finding the next smoking zone, and the smoking itself. But that literally means that you will have to fill these missing periods, whereas you were a high-functioning smoker. But that was not really personal time, that was just time spent with your undemanding friend, tobacco.
Once you have the time, smoking will literally create around you an intangible wall. Try a smoking room in any airport in the world. No-one talks to no-one. A moment of self-absorption.
Smoking fills your day, it fills your mind. Smoking creates a wall around you, every time. It is always there for you, delivering the exact same experience. Always. Without fail. That constant is the most appealing to me.
A habit more than what you think of as an addiction.
Ultimately, I confronted burning Time away
After 3 years of non-smoking, I don’t feel I am much better off, neither physically, mentally, nor financially. Actually, when I was smoking I could run my thoughts faster.
So why did I stop?
Or more precisely, why do I not start smoking again?
Definitely for none of the reasons above as shared.
I did not start smoking again for one statistics only: as of the 3 January 2024, I did NOT smoke 57,145 cigarettes. I did not light up 57,145 time +/-, I did not tap the ash 228,580 times in an ashtray. Because doing that much effort for so little reasons makes no sense.
I left behind my own little smoke cloud and there is simply nothing like it.
And I sometimes crave this high-functioning oblivion. Wherever, whenever, smoking does create your very own time-space sphere. It just does not have the machine elves in there. Or less chatty ones.
But it is essentially just burning Time away.
I still have to rediscover my very own personal thought-sphere, without the intellectual crutch of a false sense of hourly need. I work on my physical, social, intellectual, mental bubble. And I do work on recreating my own individual rational, all of which was made unnecessary by the drive and fun of smoking.
Better statistical odds
I stopped smoking to run better statistical odds, and hope not to have to pick up again the need for an artificial little cloud of reality.
And to succeed, I need to ghost my toxic friend, however much it helped.
Stop smoking to live longer? Maybe.
Stop smoking to be richer? Probably not.
Stop smoking to live better? That is the
story I choose to bet on.
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