There was a time in my life some years ago when a dark fear stalked me: that I was destined to become the last person on earth who could not kick the smoking habit. Like a fat person in a bakery, I was losing control.
Reminiscences about smoking seem such a grubby subject for a blog, but I was heartened to read a wonderfully penetrating essay on this very subject in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine this week. Written by David Sedaris, and titled Letting Go, I urge any former smoker to read it. It will kindle a bonfire of memories of your own smoking journey through life.
Johnny Depp once remarked in an interview (without a hint of sarcasm, I believe) that the one thing he was really good at was smoking. It resonated deeply within me. I was far better at smoking than at maths or science or sport at school. I think I could have got a B+ if they had awarded grades for smoking effort, focus and (brand) loyalty.
Sedaris pokes wry and sometimes wrenching fun at the fact that we children of the 1960s grew up at a time when smoking was untainted by health concerns. When, for example, my own step-father, a physician, smoked 60 Van Rijn plains a day; when, in a gesture of spontaneous love, my mother would buy me a carton of Stuyvesant. My friends were so damn envious. How cool was my mom!
In those days smoking offered a smooth ride to adulthood, a gateway to sex, drugs, rock and roll. Cigarettes were the glue that held the whole wonderful puzzle of life together.
Smoking was not just physically and emotionally satisfying, it was also politically comforting. In the newsrooms of the Rand Daily Mail, Post and City Press, smokers literally puffed on their ideology. If you smoked Mills you were Congress; if you smoked Consulate you were Black Consciousness. The cops could have hauled in the entire UDF if they just focussed on arresting Mills smokers. It was that obvious.
In those days Steve Biko really had a grip on the political mind of the country so I too joined the migration to Consulate — though it gained me no acceptance.
I finally ended my smoking career as a Camel loyalist. Their pay-off line was pure genius and, as every smug Camel smoker knows, it was 100 percent honest: The Taste. Those ffing bastards were killing me with the sweet smoothe truth.
The mystique of being a Camel smoker was brought home to me one day in the Drakensberg when, riding on the back of a bakkie, a freezing thunderstorm descended upon us. I demanded that the driver stop and let me into the cab but he just laughed and said, “C’mon, your’e a Camel oke, you can take it.” As I forced my way into the front of the bakkie, I hauled out my pack of smokes and waved them in front of the driver muttering, “Camel Lights, you fool!”
Such are some of the hazy, lazy memories of a dedicated smoker; Go read Sedaris’ piece and give yourself permission to savour your own smoking history, and let the memories drift leisurely over you like that plume of satisfying smoke from a cigarette at the butt-end of a great meal.
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33 Responses to “How I loved smoking”
I smoked for a total of two weeks in my life when I was 19 - because she was a smoker and dated only cool guys (read: human chimneys). Pack of Craven A’s a day. (I know.)
When my filthy mission was accomplished, I threw the pack with about ten ciggies in the bin and never smoked again. Well, if you disregard the few blunts that were shoved in my face all through my twenties.
Tobacco is the best antidepressant known to man. If you choose to forego this advantage for a daily handful of Big Pharma’s products, I feel sorry for you. Living under the delusions of the masses is no way to live, in my opinion.
Plainly put, smoking is a disgusting endeavour. It smells bad, looks bad, tastes bad, coats your lungs with tar and kills you. It lingers. When my smoking aunt comes round, it takes a whole day for the smell to dissipate, with every window thrown wide and doors left open, and for me to be able to breathe properly again.
remember ‘After action, satisfaction.Smoke a
Lexington. It is alive with flavour’.
Nothing beats the clean smell of fresh tobacco.
That it is addictive is no maybe but that a smoke and a cold beer after a day of sweat and tears
especially in the army, go together like braaivleis,rugby and ja Chevrolet.
Bryn, you’re the perfect example of a deluded individual. It tastes and smells heavenly and doesn’t hurt me a bit. You’ve been listening to paid liars and you want to help them out by bad mouthing smokers. I find that to be a disgusting endeavor.
I’ve been intrigued to see how quickly anti-smoking attitudes have become par for the course. When I was 15 or so - so 12 years ago - all the “cool kids” used to gather at a spot just outside the Waterfront to be seen puffing away. I joined in, and for a couple of glorious nights I was just a little cool. Now, my 18-year-old sister doesn’t smoke; nor do any of her close friends. The smokers are not considered the cool kids; in fact, they’re considered a bit sad!
Very few of my close friends still smoke. Smoking went from being a badge of honour to something a little grubby, in my experience, and it seems to have happened over the course of about 10 years - as smoking ads have been phased out and our knowledge of what smoking can do to you has advanced.
Wonder if the same thing will ever happen with drinking, for instance? As for my views on smoking, I long for non-smoking nightclubs because I am desperately asthmatic and a night out means I can’t breathe properly for three days afterwards. Still, if you don’t exhale in my face, or smoke while I eat, I reckon it’s live and let live.
The current hype against smoking make me hesitant to be lyric about my father smoking cigars and the surrounding after dinner rituals. My mother asking for a “smell” and my father just moving the freshly lit cigar under her nose. Taking the paper band of just before it would burn.
Then my first experience with cigarettes on the back of a truck. Not this luxury stuff. We rolled out own from the cheapest tobacco one could buy in Holland: “zware van Nelle” and a pack of Rizzla cigarette paper. Over the years one learned to roll one with one hand while riding a bike. Lighting against wind was another skill. First puffs with a little bit of sulphur flavour. Some 15 years later, I quit. Me and a friend having a bar session and after some beers and lots of smokes -staring at a full ashtray- I commented and said: “filthy habit, I will quit smoking”. “Bet you can’t” “Bet I can” “crate of beer?” “Yes, crate of beer”. So,I quit. 3 weeks later we had a crate of beer together. I started some years later and quit and started again when in South Africa because the cigarettes were so cheap. Smoke up to 60 Stuyvesants a day. 2 boxes of 30. Then marriage came around. “Only if you quit smoking”. So, I did. This is 22 years ago. Where smoking used to be part of the social scene, it is now considered a-social. Could it be that aggression in society has increased due to reduced smoking?
Good idea to bring it up.
After forty years of puffing away, I finally decided to give the habit up on May 1st this year. Yes, that’s about one week ago.
Both of my parents recently died of long drawn-out smoking related illnesses and I was beginning to feel the effects myself, especially in the morning. Wish me luck folks!
Sorry mate but the ciggie smell -is- disgusting. You’re obviously being paid by the cancer-stick men to spout on about how wonderful smoking is, so have fun and may your lungs continue to be healthy and pink.
Joe - sorry but who exactly is lying and gaining from advising that smoking is bad for you? I am really interested in your point - who do you think is getting paid to lie? Cancer Associations (they are non profit)perhaps? Very strange proposition indeed?
Out of interest, if you have children, would you like and / or encourage your children to smoke seeing as it is so fabulous?
You’re goddam right I’m serious, You’ve been brainwashed by paid liars to badmouth tobacco. The answer to your foolishness is on the Internet. In the meantime, I would ask who’s minding your business.
When William Reilley– the senior Bush’s EPA chief– had his antitobacco study declared phony by a federal judge, Nazis then put out the word “Well, you don’t have to believe it’s deadly. Just say you don’t like to smell it.” Millions of hostile, intolerant busybodies, including yourself, leaped to obey. Smoke is one of a thousand smells and bettter than most and your concocted displeasure is no reason to inconvenience smokers.
As for that deadly business: Extensive studies were done back in the fifties that subjected lab animals to heavy doses of smoke and failed to prove causation of any disease. These studies were conclusive and unimpeachable. So if you feel better not smoking, it’s all in your mind.
Asking dumb questions doesn’t shed much light, The answer to your dumb question is Big Pharma, whose obscene wealth finances the totally fraudulent Tobacco War. If they can get it outlawed, they can replace it with their own products at ten prices,
Moreover, they can use this ill gotten gain to finance a total takeover of the political systems worldwide with the phony excuse that they’re “preventing” disease. This means your personal lifestyle will be dictated by medical hustlers. That’s slavery.
“Love is the drug and you need to score” - but wait, not in stock right now, how about a little… valium?
Scotch is good. Hey? Wild coast green will lighten your load… or Smack, Crack, Codine, Pethedine, Morphine, X, E, A… How about processed products? MSG anyone? Flavourants, colourants, enhancers, prehancers, smoke and mirrors?
We’re all chemical brothers. IMHO. Whether we like it or not.
Society is steeped in this stuff: Painkillers, thrillers, trippers, distillers; relievers, believers, enhancers; convincers; killers.
Wait, that’s media and government. You feel the need, you feel the greed, you find the chemist. Even words can thrill.
Either dial that unnamed number on your cell, or slip out and buy a pack’o legal contraband.
@ Sue
If you really want to quit -and you must really want it- you just do it and tell all around you that you have quit. And….do it now! Both the quitting and the telling. It takes about two to three weeks for your body to adjust and the habit to go away. People will tease you, which is even more encouraging (if you have some pride in sticking to commitments). Enjoy the kick off and -be careful- don’t replace one habit by another.
Joe - are you not reading the comments properly or something? Alan comments that he has quit because both of his parents died from smoking related illnesses, and all you can say is that he has been brainwashed- are you saying his parents’ doctors lied about their death? Why???
Please answer my question - who do you think is lying,and for what purpose? Would you like your kids to smoke?
‘You’re goddam right I’m serious, You’ve been brainwashed by paid liars to badmouth tobacco. The answer to your foolishness is on the Internet. In the meantime, I would ask who’s minding your business.’
Joe, I used to buy a pack a day at a cost of say R 15.00 per pack. That adds up to about R 5,500.00 every year. After forty years I have spent roughly R 220,000.00 at today’s rates on this pointless and deadly habit. Now I have given up, and you think someone is paying me to badmouth the tobacco industry. Methinks you have been smoking something a little stronger than Camels.
Smoking is a killer. Get used to this news because it is the truth and it will not go away just because you are angered by it.
I’ll gladly tolerate your blind devotion to smoking if you’ll tolerate my need for relatively clean air. In other words, you can smoke all you want … when you’re not around me. If that means that I have to inconvenience myself by moving somewhere you aren’t, then that is an inconvenience I am more than happy to bear. Just as you are entitled to puff away to your heart’s content, away from us horrible, inconveniencing non-smokers.
Extensive tests in the 50’s? It’s 2008, don’t you have more recent facts to back up your argument? Not that I am terribly concerned for a smoker’s health. You took the decision to start smoking, you accept the consequences (if any) of that decision. No amount of tests done in the 50’s is going to convince me that smoking smells great though.
I need to smoke, you need “clean air”. Your rant is comical considering
the fact that you’re breathing two pounds of automotive and industrial pollution per day vs. cigarette smoke too dilute to measure.
The smell is subjective, but let me say that I never heard a complaint about it until 1992 when the gummint exhorted complaints. You think you’ve won your antismoker argument with your hypersensitive nose, but corrupt politicians won’t act on your displeasure. They’re committed to phony “public health” claims.
The 50s studies were extensive and conclusive no matter how long ago or who paid for them. Why don’t you dispute the Law of Gravity? It’s positively ancient.
Were Alan’s doctors bald faced liars? Damn right they were. If a smoker dies of the mumps, smoking caused it.
These blogs arre an exercise in hot air, because these matters are not governed by bloggers, They’re governed by the law, which is the province of bribable politicians. You can cheer Big Pharma on in their evil quest, but that’s all you can do.
If you’ve been a smoker for forty years, chances are you’re prone to clinical depression kept at bay by your cigarettes. If you are lathered at the cost of cigarettes, try Big Pharma’s alternatives. You’ll find they don’t work, cost a fortune and interfere with your ability to eat, sleep and copulate. You’ll need plenty of medical attention which ain’t very cheap.
Joe
Were Alan’s doctors bald faced liars? Damn right they were. If a smoker dies of the mumps, smoking caused it.
Joe, I watched them die painful deaths caused by lung cancer brought on by smoking cigarettes for most of their lives.
You are an entertaining provocateur but there is no substance (other than hot smoke-filled–air) to any of your posts. Are you paid to rant against anti tobacco blogs?
I you really want to stop smoking don’t throw
your cigs away,because that craving hits you most
if you don’t have a smoke handy.
If the urge hits you go and do something else
to take your mind of it.I quit after almost
36 years,starting as a youngster of 15 helping
myself to dad’s springboks.
Joe Chemo - I bet you you wouldn’t want your kids, or if you’re citing research from the 50’s, your grandchildren, to smoke. I would really like an honest answer to this question, because I suspect that the answer is that you wouldn’t. If the answer is that you do want them to smoke, well then I think that you must be being paid a hell of a lot of money by someone who has brainwashed you good and proper!
Honesty demands that I speak against the Fraud of the Century, unlike the hustlers getting rich from it.
I told you already that animal studies failed to cause any disease, much less cancer. Maybe you can explain what causes lung cancer in nonsmokers. (Don’t say secondhand smoke.)
My posts lack substance?? What do you call your delusions??
You’re trying to make me lose my temper aren’t you? Let me answer your stupid question in the simplest possible way: I don’t give a rat’s patootie whether the next man –including my son–smokes or not. That is none of my business and that goes double for you. I would be unable to take any pride in the fact that my progeny is suckered by the Fraud of the Century. Are there any other abysmal questions you want to ask?
Seeing as you invited another question Joe, here it is - if smoking is so good for your health, and is the “best antidepressant known to man” as you say, why are you so obviously tense?
It’s time to say goodbye. I’m obviously not going to get anything intelligent out of you. If smoking abstention is so good for you, why are you so obviously stupid?
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I smoked for a total of two weeks in my life when I was 19 - because she was a smoker and dated only cool guys (read: human chimneys). Pack of Craven A’s a day. (I know.)
When my filthy mission was accomplished, I threw the pack with about ten ciggies in the bin and never smoked again. Well, if you disregard the few blunts that were shoved in my face all through my twenties.
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