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The last two blogs were all about addiction, primarily alcohol addiction, but some mention was made of other substance abuse choices. I have little experience with other brain altering substance abuse choices, but I do have lots of experience with alcohol addiction, though only peripherally since I didn’t fall victim to its power. Over the past two weeks I realized that I do have experience with other addictions but they are not harmful to others when driving or operating heavy equipment. They are primarily harmful to the person addicted with some associated harm to those nearby in one instance. They are: coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes. The latter is a former addiction, but I still consider myself a smoker even though I haven’t had one in 34 years.
In an episode of Sherlock Holmes I watched not long ago, part of a wonderful series with the late Jeremy Brett portraying Holmes, a character offered Holmes a cigarette. Holmes stated it was one of his few vices and took the cigarette. The host explained that the cigarette was a special blend he ordered from a tobacconist and said, “I have them sent a thousand at a time and I grieve to say that I must arrange a shipment every fortnight.” That’s 14 days. The man smokes a thousand cigarettes in 14 days. There are 20 cigarettes in our modern cigarette packs. He smoked over three packs of cigarettes a day. Though Sherlock Holmes is fiction, the comment by the addicted character is all too real.
I have not smoked for 34 years, give or take. If I have even one, I’ll start again and I know it. The final year of my smoking passion was hit or miss but it stuck and I’m cigarette free now. I still miss it. There are many addictions. Some are horrendously harmful to the user and often harmful to those around the user (alcohol, pot, meth, cocaine, etc.). Some are harmful to society in a more insidious way (addiction to porn, addiction to sex, addiction to pedophilia, etc.). Other addictions are harmful to the waistline (addiction to fast food, high calorie foods, sweets, etc.) and other addictions are harmful to the development of the mind (addiction to video games, addiction to TV, addiction to cell phones, etc.)
I’ve had a few harmless addictions but addictions nonetheless. For a time when my kids were babies I became addicted to TV. It’s strikes me as very funny now because I rarely watch TV and can’t believe I became so besotted with it. I think when one is at home with babies and small children passive entertainment is about all we can muster. Once nap time came I was too tired to read, too tired to clean, too tired to do almost anything but flip from channel to channel in the hopes of landing on an old episode of Perry Mason. Actually finding him was often the highlight of my day. I wouldn’t change those special years I had with my children for anything but the fact of the matter is, there were times when my brain didn’t function at full steam and TV is great for that type of brain. It also provided an escape mechanism for some areas in my life that weren’t working.
I started smoking in my early teens. I think I was about 13 or 14. For some reason I liked it immediately. I often ask non-smokers in my age group how they managed to make it this far without having smoked and they unilaterally respond they didn’t like it when they tried it. I believe it’s the same for me when I first sampled beer. I just didn’t like it. So I guess some of us find our addiction with a simple taste or use. For me it was cigarettes. I liked them immediately. I didn’t love them at first puff or crave them, but I enjoyed them and I thought I looked sophisticated. Just like all the advertisements of the era.
With smoking most people increase their consumption over time. By the time I was in my 20s I had gone from a few cigarettes a day to a full pack a day. I had started buying them by the carton when I was around 18. When I stopped at about age 30 I was up to two packs a day and more on weekends. I had started experiencing pain in my chest in the mornings and could not stand up straight for the first few steps. Usually by the time the coffee was made I could finally stand up straight and was ready for my coffee, newspaper, and cigarette.
When I got pregnant with my son at age 27 the doctor did not tell me to stop smoking though I asked. By the time I got pregnant with my second child the doctor “recommended” I stop. Times have certainly changed since the ‘70s. I don’t believe women are allowed even an aspirin these days. I didn’t stop right away when I discovered I was pregnant with my second child, but soon after learning of the pregnancy I decided to stop since I still couldn’t stand up straight in the mornings and it started lasting longer and now the pain came with a cough. The telltale smoker’s cough. Sometimes I was hunched over until well after the coffee was made. I had a suspicion that wasn’t good for the baby.
The pleasure received from smoking is multi-faceted. First, there’s the incredible taste of a cigarette after a good meal. Once the smoker is firmly established in the addiction, food plays an important role. So important in fact that when the smoker stops smoking eating becomes unbearable. To complete a meal without a cigarette is gnawing, twitching, agony. For the first year or so after I stopped smoking I could barely stand to eat. Eating for me at that time was to simply stuff food in my mouth to get it over with. When a person does that weight gain is on its way. I knew I had to eat but I didn’t want to sit down to a nice meal. Not without a cigarette for dessert. So I would quickly stuff my face and move on with life all the while craving my cigarette. Chocolate and large quantities of coffee and soda filled the aching hole left in my blood stream.
Another favorite time to smoke for me was my morning cup of coffee, especially on weekends. I absolutely loved having a great cup of coffee while reading the paper and having two or three cigarettes. It was many YEARS before I could drink coffee and not crave a cigarette. For quite some time I gave up coffee and the morning paper because I couldn’t stand the agony. It is my understanding that cocktails and smoking also go hand in hand. Though I did smoke while drinking an occasional cocktail, imbibing was not something I did often so no craving for that combination was established.
Over the years of my smoking addiction I went to extreme measures to find a cigarette if I stupidly ran out. Sometimes late at night I would discover I had miscalculated and did not have a cigarette for my pre-bedtime puffing nor for the morning coffee and cigarette. I would first check all the ashtrays in the house for butts, then the trash (and that includes the garbage can that contained actual, true garbage), then the car ashtray. Sometimes the car ashtray contained just what I needed because often while driving I would get to my destination before finishing a cigarette and I’d put it out, run my errand, then when I returned to the car I’d light a fresh cigarette. Sometimes there were three or four fairly long butts in the car’s ashtray. A bonanza.
A coworker of mine often darted outside to have a quick few puffs after smoking was banished from public buildings and he’d leave lengthy cigarette butts in the outdoor ashtrays. A string of homeless people knew this and made regular rounds. This was years after I had stopped smoking so his butts were of no benefit to me. Had I still been smoking that would have been a treasure chest. There may have been a standoff with the homeless people had I still had the habit.
I recall once finding a long cigarette butt in the trash that I needed at home and it was wet. I had no idea what the liquid was but I knew I could dry it off and so I did. I held it over the gas stove flame carefully with hot dog tongs and it dried quickly. When I smoked it I discovered the liquid was coffee. Not my favorite way of having my beloved coffee and a cigarette.
I had a roommate who had a nightly routine. She would circle our apartment and dump all the ashtrays. She didn’t like the smell coming from dead cigarettes and ashes and certainly didn’t want that smell first thing in the morning. We were both smokers. Her tidiness was often my salvation when I ran out of cigarettes. She usually dumped all the ashtrays on top of the trash so they were not soiled. You would think smokers would not run out of cigarettes but they do because some days they smoke more than other days. Smoking is also a stress releaser and having a cigarette after a bad incident usually helps a great deal.
Long after the craving for nicotine ceases, the smoking addict still desires a cigarette. With me it was quite a few years, possibly three or more. It wasn’t the same skin crawling craving to smoke but the desire was still strong. There were countless triggers throughout each day that brought the desire full on to me: running into a friend I used to smoke with; going to a restaurant where I used to love to eat and then sit and smoke while visiting with friends, (remember, years ago smoking was allowed everywhere including restaurants, theaters, and airplanes); hopping in the car to go anywhere always started with lighting a cigarette so that hopping in the car without smoking was always painful; going on vacation without smoking was horrible. Even today when I travel I recall the pleasant times sitting around a picnic table or beach BBQ fire or sitting in a snow lodge and drinking hot chocolate with a shot of espresso and a cigarette. Seeing someone light up and passing by and catching a whiff of that delicious and satisfying scent would make me crazy.
Smokers often gave each other beautiful gifts of lighters with matching cigarette cases and sometimes a carton of their favorite brand of cigarette. I still have my dad’s beautiful cigarette lighter. He died when he was 38 from kidney disease complications, but cigarettes played a part in his early death. He was a heavy smoker, hard worker, overweight, and a significant beer drinker. Youth does not always protect us from ourselves.
Several years ago I went on a trip with two friends to Costa Rica. We had busy days of walking and sightseeing and at night we would have wine and dinner and I desperately wanted a cigarette. This was then about 30 years since I had stopped smoking. I contemplated buying a pack with the promise of tossing them upon departure. One of my friends was also a former smoker and I suspected she wanted to also but I didn’t mention it to her nor did she mention it to me. Our third travel friend had never smoked and that’s the only thing that stopped me. It would have meant I would have had to leave my little group of three and go elsewhere to smoke and my desire to stay with my friends was stronger than my desire to smoke.
After we all returned a few weeks went by when I mentioned my temptation to the companion who was a former smoker. Her look puzzled me. I thought at first it was disgust at even the suggestion that we would have smoked, but then she said she too was tempted. We concluded that without our third companion who had never smoked, and would have hated it if we had started smoking on our trip, we would have both started smoking on that trip. We were very thankful for our friend.
I still have a few friends who smoke and they always ask if it’s okay if they smoke in my presence and I always say yes. I say that because I know the isolation they feel surrounded by a world of non-smokers. I would rather visit with them than remove myself from their company while they have a cigarette or two. I also know that if they don’t smoke while we chat they will spend the entire conversation thinking and twitching about when they can get away from me to light up. And I still like the smell of a freshly lit cigarette, especially if it’s lit by a match instead of a lighter. A fresh cigarette and sulfur. Ahhhhhh.
I have a similar problem with chocolate. I like sweets but can do without them for weight control and general over all health. But if I have chocolate I crave it for days. Sometimes I have chocolate then purchase more over a period of a few weeks. Quite a bit more. Giant, large quantities. Finally, I realize I’m in the chocolate trap and I give it up. I will then think about it all day for about a week and finally the craving subsides. Nowhere near as strong as my former desire for a cigarette but it’s still a craving. Just writing about it now makes me crave it.
In fact, I suddenly would like a nice café mocha and a cigarette. Pathetic.
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