So I’m thinking of giving up smoking.
I’ve been doing it on/off since my early teens and it’s getting a mite ridiculous. So far I’m not suffering any of the traditional ailments of it – no smoker’s cough, no lack of stamina (although I’m nowhere near as fit as I was when I was 16/17, but that’s just good old-fashioned laziness) nor all that other trivia anti-smoking types love to throw at us – bad skin, yellowing teeth and fingers, bad immune system, premature aging, bad circulation, impotence, you know the drill. I’ve been smoking for around eight years and it has yet to (noticeably) take it’s toll on me. I do however dread to think about my sperm count or liver. I assume I don’t have cancer.
No, to quote Agent Smith, it’s the smell. My clothes absolutely stink. Every morning in the shower or even in the rain my hair positively reeks. My books are pungent with it. Whenever I come home, even my cat smells of fags. Until pretty recently I was wholly against the national smoking ban here in the UK, but then it occurred to me that the overall stench of tobacco doesn’t exude from every single pub and club in the land, and that’s clearly a good thing. Having worked in a Student Union bar for a time before the ban, setting foot in there on a Saturday morning could make one faint. Of course, existence being what it is, one bad smell must be exchanged for another, so now said establishments suffer from the pervasive, seductive aura of B.O.. Mel Brooks was right – Life Stinks (and so did that particular film, for the record). But that’s beside the point.
In early October last year I had an absolute fucking bastard of a flu and didn’t smoke for almost a week and a half. After a few days my senses became more attuned to it. I could smell from a mile away when my friends or family had just had a ciggie, and it wasn’t pleasant.
“Is this how I smell to other people?” I would wonder.
Of course we all know the answer to that, but it didn’t matter. As soon as I was well enough to run, I promptly did so to my local newsagent. That is my one big regret from last year. That opportunity to give up was fucking gilt-edged and I blew it. Psychological addiction is a mistress every bit as successful as she is cruel, and she prevailed once again. C’est la vie.
I’m really going to make a go of it this time. Sometimes you have to be shocked into these things and boy was I shocked today. I’m currently at home with my mother and this morning an old friend of her’s came around. Now this fella, let’s call him “Chris”, for that is his name, is 35 and a former semi-professional athlete (I believe triathlons were his big thing). This was the first time I had seen him since my going off to university three years ago and back then he looked perfectly fine; pretty much how a retired athlete of his age should.
Today he looked cadaverous.
His teeth were a dark shade of gamboge, the appropriate fingers of his right hand a deep shade of brown and the nails almost black. His hue was pallid and deathly. He looked like a man in his sixties, and a sick one at that. The coarseness of his voice would make Nick Nolte weep with vitriolic envy. Every twenty seconds he would splutter with coughs so loud and guttural that my mind would involuntarily begin to calculate what the response time for a local ambulance could be. I hoped they were quick. It was a most disquieting experience.
At this point allow me to clarify a couple of things – this man has never imbibed alcohol in his life. Never. Ever. Not once. As the son of an abusive alcoholic he vowed to himself at an early age never to drink; never to risk awakening any potentially inherited predispositions and inevitably becoming his father. He was better than him and he was going to prove it; he was going to end this cycle of addiction and abuse. Whether this mindset also applied to drugs, or whether it is just another remnant of his athletic past, he maintained a ruthlessly steadfast avoidance of any and all illegal substances, experimentation of that sort never even occurred to him. So, aside from the unfortunate nicotine addiction, he is the very definition of “straight-edge”.Which means that as far I can surmise, cigarettes are the sole cause of his current health issues.
In the hour or so he was here he went through at least fifteen roll-ups. It was like a factory line, one after another. He would actually start rolling another while still smoking the previous one. Before today I would read of men who smoked a hundred a day and be unable to even conceive of such a thing. “They are merely legends, surely?” Not now, my innocence gone in a puff of smoke. He says he started smoking at around 13/14, the same age I did. Which is absolutely terrifying.
I’m not an idiot. Knowing that cigarettes can be harmful is like knowing that flies can fly, that oranges are orange and that Johnny Borrell is a cunt. Yeah, and in other news the Byzantine Empire just collapsed. And I’m sure you’ve all seen those horrible anti-smoking adverts showing real-life smoking victims. The one with a woman on breathing apparatus, which makes an utterly disgusting sound, still haunts me. But no, what really fucked me up was seeing a man who ten years ago could run a mile in under five minutes need three attempts to stand up from his chair.
Lest this post appear to become yet another piece of propaganda, I feel obligated to say that smoking is not all bad. Let’s face it – smoking’s cool. It’s naughty. It’s rebellious. It’s downright sexy. Thunderingly cliched though it might be, a cigarette after sex is a glorious thing. After alcohol, it’s the best social stimulant I know. Another unexpected benefit from the smoking ban is the sheer number of friends I have made because of it. In July 2007, when we social pariahs were forced to congregate outside to feed our dirty habit, smoking became a real group activity, a social exercise. We get the chance to talk to people we otherwise wouldn’t, and for a figidity sort like myself it provides a perfect opportunity to move around and mingle. Staying one place all night just makes me feel claustrophobic.
And, well, I just enjoy smoking.
Giving up’s gonna be hard. Wish me luck!
xxx
P.S. For the record, I’m currently on exactly ten cigarettes a day. I buy a ten-pack of Pall Malls every morning and make sure that lasts me for the whole day. And it does. It only costs £2.12, which is why I haven’t gone down the traditional route of moaning about the financial implications of smoking. The £15 a week it costs me is acceptable, I can afford it, especially since drastically curbing my spending elsewhere. I wish it was more of a burden, to be honest. Nothing would provide more of an incentive to give up than the idea of me not being able to buy as much alcohol as I’d like.
This shit just got real.
