Smoking- Strange Comfort of the Damned

It is a curious habit, when you think about it.

Quite how the first smoker got the idea, seems hard to imagine.
'Oh, look. These leaves smell good when they burn. Let's try burning them in a pipe.'

The first cigarettes date to the Napoleonic wars. Some Turkish soldiers were smoking their water pipe on the city walls, when a French cannon ball ruined their moment of leisure.
Undeterred, they rolled their tobacco in the touchpapers used for lighting their cannon. The idea took off.
Indeed, the nineteenth century saw the cigarette advance to become one of life's simple pleasures.

Until we suddenly learned, mid twentieth century, that actually, smoking tobacco is really not a healthy thing to do.
A point James I had made in one of those many books he wrote. But since he also wrote books on witchcraft and thought he had been appointed by God, the wisdom of the ages had tended to ignore his occasional bouts of sense.

We've known a long time that smoking doesn't do us, the smoker any good. There are few cases were you can point to a positive health benefit.
Yet one in three of the adult population still smoke.

I smoke.

Why?

It's not as if it's confined to the stupid. At every place I've ever worked, smokers are the majority (that's possibly due to character type, as I shall come to). Most of my friends smoke.
Every packet we have ever bought has contained a happy little message to cheer us up as we have pulled away the cellophane, ripped away the gold wrapping and slide out that friendly white stick.
'Smoking Kills' 'Smoking may cause a slow and painful death' 'Smokers die young' 'Smoking when pregnant may harm your baby'
Well, I guess the last one never really worried me.

It's a daft habit in many ways. Even at my age, I know it's doing me no good. In the winter, my morning coughing session often produces blood. I can't run very far without getting short of breath.
We have to stand outside in the rain, feverishly dragging in as much as we can, as quick as we can, to get in out of the cold.

Indeed, the smoking ban in pubs, hasn't really been good for the health of smokers.

Could I ever give up?
No.
I couldn't conceive of not doing it. There are so many, many reasons. But firstly, if you are a smoker, it does literally become an additional bodily function. It's a pernicious addiction. You can go on about drugs all you like, I only know one which from my experience, is something you cannot do without.

Cigarettes.
I can remember in time gone by, having no cash till I got paid and borrowing a tenner.
Did it go on food?
No.
Cigarettes.
A day without food, doable. A day without fags? No.

You eat a meal, you smoke afterwards, in fact, you can't conceive of NOT smoking after eating. To me, it doesn't feel right, if you can still taste the food. Smoking, finishes the meal. It is the last course.

Going to sleep. Can't sleep if cigarettes are on my mind. Sex. A cigarette afterwards is a MUST.



What's the first thing I do when I leave a building?
Light up.

Like all smokers, spotting an opportunity for a quick puff, has become a key survival skill.

The funny thing is, when I meet someone, I'm always keen to see if they smoke. And I'm faintly reassured when they do.

The strange thing is, stupid as smoking is, often the best people do it. Highly intelligent, really nice people, fun people.
This might seem to make no sense. But there is a twisted logic to it.

I guess when you're a teenager, the simple fact that smoking is frowned upon, makes it attractive. It's what the rebels do. You want to be one of the ones hiding behind the sports block. You're 'hard', you smoke. It shows a certain contempt for authority.

And I suppose, really, when you meet someone, you want to know what type of person they are. A non-smoker, never rebelled against authority as a teen, they are a sensible, follow the rules type, with a pension plan, never gone overdrawn or got into credit card debt.
Or if they did smoke, they never got hooked. They never really embraced the danger, really dragged it in, till one day, they couldn't NOT drag.

Smokers LIVE a risk, they have and display, a certain two-fingered salute to mortality. It's shrugging your shoulders and saying 'Yeah well, it's stupid, but I don't want to live forever.'

For what you get out of it, it's nothing earth shattering. The joy is in the first couple of drags 'Damn, that's good, needed that.' In some ways, I think it IS like sex in that respect. It's more you DON'T enjoy going without, than that you really derive a huge amount of pleasure from it.

And, just like sex, give it half hour, you'll be thinking about it again.

I now smoke about thirty a day. But average twenty a day over 15 years, I've smoked about 5,500 packets- or 110,000 cigarettes. When I started, it was £2.40 a packet- now they are £5.60 a packet. If we average that out as £4 a packet, I've spent £22,000 in my life on tobacco.

Ouch.
And yet, partly, that's why giving up seems a waste. When you've wasted all that money on it, doesn't going for Nicorette make you a quitter?

There was an anti-smoking poster once, which was withdrawn, because psychologists said it had the reverse effect. It had a picture of a person sucking a dummy. It had the reverse effect, of course, because one of the attractions of smoking, IS the fact that it is a comforter- and far more acceptable than going round with a dummy in your mouth.
And I'll admit, for me it's partly that. I used to always carry a Kinder Egg toy around with me as a child. I'd dismantle it and re-assemble it when I had nervous tension. Now of course, I smoke. In fact, when I'm wound up, I do literally put one out and light a fresh one up, sometimes up to four or five in sequence.



They'll never stop people smoking, they'll never stop them starting. Because even now, there IS, whatever anyone says, something visually sophisticated about it. A woman with style, can make it look sexy, a man can make it a gesture of character, a Clint Eastwood gesture.

It will always be seductive, it will always allure and unless you really want to escape from it with all your heart, you won't.

Why change the habit of a lifetime?
That's what it is, you see. Smoking really does control you.

Depressing, isn't it?

Think I'll go for a cigarette.