I have an addictive personality, and smoking is the “in” thing at the moment.
That being said, it’s not something I’m overly keen to stop. Whenever the graphic quit smoking ads appear on television, I will do everything in my power to try and ignore them; ironically I usually do this by getting a cigarette.
I enjoy smoking. It satisfies me, relaxes me and allows me to think straight. Also it could kill me. Yet I tend to conveniently that aspect every time I fiddle around in my pocket, looking for a Zippo.
Smoking has always been glamorous. I remember vividly watching Sunset Boulevard as a child and watching Gloria Swanson chicly draw back on her cigarette, held tightly between the most fantastic cigarette holder I had ever seen. To this day, I scroll through the wasteland of the internet, desperately trying to find one. I’m yet to find ‘the one’. (It’s the one in the picture above, should any of you find one and let me know. I’d be forever in your debt.)
My fellow TGUK columnist Chris Bridges wrote a column a few weeks ago, which summed up my exact feeling toward cigarettes perfectly.
“I fetishize cigarettes. I love the smell of fresh tobacco, the blueness of the smoke in sunlight and the look and feel of them. I love antique smoking paraphernalia. I had hypnotherapy and lit up as I left the office. I can tell you exactly what each nicotine replacement product on the market tastes and feels like. I start to fret if I have less than 60 cigarettes in the house and used to keep a backup pack in my locker at work. I’ve smoked in lots of places I shouldn’t have and braved wind, rain and ice storms to go outside at work for one. I think I may be a hopeless case.”
If memory serves me correctly, a few months ago Chris and I actually vowed to quit and perhaps document our progress and help each other out. As of yet, silence has ensued from the both of us.
Smoking is terribly anti-social. Having to awkwardly excuse yourself from a party or bar then meandering outside into the cold just to get one’s fix, is dreadfully monotonous Although I have come to find a sense of community with fellow smokers, we’re a dying breed… (Literally)
I have tried various alternatives. I find all of them insufferable. The gum is essentially regular, less minty gum with a different packet. The patches make me twitchy and the new kid on the block “E-Cigarettes are utterly vile. They taste as if you’re licking a well-used ashtray and made me cough and splutter like somebody who just realised they ate a cheesecake made of asbestos.
I hate smoking yet I have no desire to quit. I know that eventually I will have to, either because of a demanding boyfriend, an intervention or through the eventual exile of all smokers, an exile being led by a growing army of self-righteous past smokers who have recently quit and feel it’s their duty to preach about the benefits of being clean-lunged. Preach all you want, just don’t ram it down my throat, I need my throat clear for all the smoke. *Complete bastard smirk*
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