Part of me wants to start this article off the way Ted Mosby starts off almost every How I Met Your Mother episode. However, I’d probably offend a lot of you if I addressed the audience as “kids”. It just seems fitting though, because I know what I am going to tell you about cigarettes is exactly what I am going to tell my kids someday.
And no, I am not going to tell any of you not to smoke.
I am so tired of the “don’t smoke, kids; smoking kills,” cliché. Yes, it is a cliché, because it is an overused statement that completely lacks original thought. Smoking kills, but so do a lot of other things— drinking alcohol, texting and driving, eating too much bacon— yet it doesn’t stop us from doing them.
Personally, I would rather die young than quit eating bacon, and that’s probably why I lacked the self-discipline stop myself from smoking that first cigarette; and that, kids, is where it all started to go downhill (yeah, I did the “kids” thing anyways. Deal with it).
I used to tell myself, “Self, nothing is stronger than your will. If you started to smoke, you could quit easily. But you’ll still never do it.”
Zero for two on that one, buddy.
My first cigarette was at a party freshman year. I had just moved to Florida where I was attending the University of Tampa. I was young, drunk, and dumb as ever. Someone offered me a drag from their cigarette. I didn’t want to be rude (not that that is an excuse) so I took it.
It wasn’t as gross as I expected, and when the guy offered it again later, I took it and he let me finish it. What a gentleman.
From there on, I was no longer a stranger to smoking. I smoked almost every time I got drunk. That’s what I told people to excuse myself from participating in such a nasty habit: “I only smoke when I drink.”
It was only a matter of time until that was no longer true.
I bought my first pack of Marlboro reds on November 3rd, 2015. Before then I was always bumming cigs off of my friends. I smoked at least two cigarettes a day until December 17th, when I decided to quit.
Quitting cigarettes was one of the hardest things for me to do, not just because nicotine is the most addictive substance known to man, but because I am a creature of habit, and when I break from my daily rituals, I get some pretty serious anxiety.
It is now May, and I still crave cigarettes every single day. I did some research to find out when these cravings would go away, and what I found out was probably the worst news I’ve gotten in a long time.
The cravings never go away.
People who commented online about their experiences with smoking confirmed it. The oldest person said they had quit smoking over 50 years ago, and they still crave their daily smoke.
As much as it sucks to want to smoke all the time, there is a silver lining to my experience.
Now, even though I know how bad they are, even though I truly wanted to quit, I will never not want to smoke for the rest of my life, and that is what I will tell my kids someday, because I know if someone had told me that, I would have turned down that cigarette at the party last year. I would have never started.
So that’s why I’m not telling you to stay away from smoking. Go ahead and pick up that cigarette; see for yourself how hard it is to quit, and how long the cravings last.
It won't be the end of the world, and you'll probably live long enough to tell your kids about your experience with cigarettes. They will pay much more attention to you if they know that you experienced it yourself, and in my eyes, it is worth the sacrifice to provide your future kids with the firsthand knowledge of the real cost of smoking cigarettes.
Maybe then the next generation will be free from addiction to those death sticks.
