SMOKING BRAT
Apologies in advance... This is a very long page. I do waffle on when I'm being nostalgic...
I smoked from the age of eight. Yes, eight. My dad used to smoke Woodbines, filterless lung-bleeders, the dockers' choice. He'd usually only smoke half a ciggie, nick the end off and leave it in the ashtray for later. In our house, there was an ashtray in every room. In every ashtray, there was a selection of stumps ranging in size from 'uselessly smoked to the bones' to 'almost a real full ciggie'.
When Dad wasn't looking, my brother and I used to collect the good stumps, steal a few matches, and nip over to the jiggers at the back of the terraced houses. We would make sure we were out of sight before smoking them with our friends. FACTS ABOUT CIGARETTE SMOKING
I was the first of our gang to inhale. I never forget my first actual inhalation; I was showing off. Another group of kids had congregated in the entry to see what we were doing. One of the girls was much older (maybe ten or even eleven). She was a seasoned smoker; did it properly, like the grown-ups. Her name was Helen. She was very cool.
To this day, I recall her scoffing in disgust at my friend Karen. You see, the crime Karen had committed was to take a tiny whiff of smoke into her mouth and puff it straight back out, without even breathing in. What a baby! Well, I couldn't bear to be mocked in such a way. I mean, I had been smoking for weeks now. I was no baby. I couldn't let the side down...
My turn came and I took the woody between my fingers, propped myself against the entry wall, sucked hard on the soggyish tip and breathed it right in, just like they did on telly. All the while, I kept my eyes on Helen, to bask in her admiration... EFFECTS OF SMOKING A CIGARETTEIt must have taken a few seconds for the enormity of what was happening in my body to actually register at brain level. I remember feeling my face flushing so hot and red, even though I wasn't embarrassed (yet). Then, an overwhelming dizziness nearly took me off my feet. I slid down the wall and onto the cold cobbled cat-pissey floor, trying to do this casually, fighting against the urge to just flop onto my face and vomit all over the bin bags.
Next, my lungs realised what had happened. I felt, all of a sudden, as though they had filled with dust and all manner of not-nice-things.
I held my lips tightly together, stifling the world's most urgent need to cough. This caused my face to flush harder and my head to spin. I charitably passed the ciggie over to my brother before erupting into the worst coughing fit I had ever known. It wasn't a dignified 'ahem' nor was it a respectable 'hacking up a phlegm ball'. This was a snot-bubbling, slime-spitting, tear-squirting torrent of dishonourable weakness. I thought I was going to die, right there, on the floor, in the entry.
Everyone thought it was hilarious. NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF CIGARETTE SMOKING
I could have died from the shame.
Anyway, this is where I made a decision. A life-determining decision that would set in place the course of my life over the next twenty-odd years. I decided I would never again be put in this humiliating position...
Unfortunately, I didn't decide to never again smoke. Oh no, that would be giving up! Instead, I decided to practice smoking—privately—until I got it just right. COSTS OF CIGARETTE SMOKINGSo, I became very very good at smoking. At my best, I was racking up nearly sixty a day. Of course, this didn't come without a price. I was lucky though, my price was small compared to some. I just developed asthma and a chronic mucoid cough (very attractive).LOSING THE HABITI don't recall exactly, but somewhere in my mid twenties, I thought I'd try to quit smoking. My motivation was to get rid of the cough and have some spare money for a change. So, I let myself run out of ciggies and prepared for my smoke-free life...
I couldn't do it. Really, I couldn't stop. I thought, 'This is impossible!' It was impossible, so I popped out and bought some ciggies to help me think through my next strategy.
So, over the next few years, I tried every known way. I paid good money to be hypnotised by a man in a white suit who wore a very big fake sapphire ring. Before the session, he said it was important I feel relaxed and comfortable, so I thought I'd better go to the toilet and make sure I wasn't distracted by bodily necessaries. I discovered, to my horror, he had porno pictures all around the bath. Needless to say, I couldn't relax enough to be hypnotised, so I just pretended to be in the trance, all the while, desperately worrying about what kind of perverted things he had planned for me. I lit up as soon as I got to my car.
I did all the usual things: bought the herbal ciggies (my god! How horrible are they?), took herbal supplements and vitamins, got acupuncture in my ear (it got infected), bought self-help books, cassette tapes (no cds or mp3 then), tried nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, and just about every single thing available. I was desperate. But I couldn't do it. Maybe I'd last six hours, maybe nine, but the urge to smoke was stronger than me...
This went on for many years. Then I found a way. And it was very very very very very easy. This is how it worked:
Instead of trying to stop smoking, I DECIDED I would stop smoking, no matter what, no excuses, nothing. I wasn't going to let myself off this time. I was finished with smoking and that was that. No more try.
I read everything about smoking and urges and addictions I could get my hands on. It helped because I could now see my cravings in a different way. I learnt that cravings were not me or mine...
The craving—it—was like a spoiled brat. Every time I felt like smoking, I told myself it wasn't me that wanted a ciggie; I told myself it was this snot-nosed, spoiled little bratty kid. This kid would spoil the film I was trying to watch, it would distract me in work, it would poke me in the ribs while I was eating a nice meal, it yelled, it cried and it threw big wobbly tantrums...
So, I decided to ignore its tantrums. At first, they were very loud and very disruptive. So many times I wanted to give it a ciggie, just to shut it up. But I refused. I knew it would get easier, eventually...
And it did. The brat wasn't so cocky any more; it's tantrums changed from full-blown kicking-wobblies, to yelling, to swearing, to threatening...
And then it was more of a cry, or a whimper...
Until eventually there was silence.
That, believe it or not, was how I packed in smoking. I still have a little brat inside me that wants to smoke, but I DON'T LISTEN to it. Every blue moon, it gives me a jab in the ribs, but I just bat it aside now.
I'm not a smoker. It's not who I am. Neither are you. Smoking is just something you do to keep that brat quiet.
I don't need to wish you luck. It's easy when you make the decision to take no more shit from your inner brat. from SMOKING BRAT to SYNDROME X
|
