I started smoking when I was seventeen. About a month after my mom passed away, in fact. I told myself that it made me feel closer to her, but the truth was that I didn’t really give a shit. Smoking when you’re seventeen, when you can’t even fathom the life before you, is probably the easiest thing in the world. And, much like my mother, I proved to be a natural smoker. I was up to a pack of Camel Lights a day within two months and I continued this trend for the better part of the next sixteen years.
I have seriously quit four times. By seriously, I mean for three months or more. The first time I accomplished this, I very smugly thought the monkey was off my back. Even through each relapse and new attempt to quit, I continued to think I had mastered the monkey. Yes, this time, I’ve done it. I’ve figured it out.
Last summer, I quit again. It was easier than all the other times, and again I believed I had won. For nine months, I gave up cigarettes with hardly a look back. Willpower, I thought, is just desire. It’s wanting something badly enough. I still think that’s true. But I no longer think of quitting as mastery. On some level, addicts always wrestle with addiction.
And so I have had a relapse. Granted, I’m not smoking a pack a day, or even every day. But I have been smoking and I recognize all of the anxiety and rationalization that has characterized my past failures. The monkey lies to you. You lie to yourself.
My girlfriend, a casual social smoker, believes that my physical impulse to smoke is a distortion. It is all in my head, she says. Why can’t we have a pack of cigarettes in the house and smoke one or two when we feel like it? Why can’t I “feel like it” just once in a great while?
Because I can’t. I either smoke, or I don’t. I can’t open myself up to the possibility of cigarettes without being a dedicated smoker. Perhaps that is all in my head, but far easier than trying to change the way my brain works – with the ridiculous reward of again smoking cigarettes, however casually – is to eliminate the possibility altogether. All or nothing, for me. All or nothing.
Today I rode my bike all day with aching lungs. Today I rode around all day with aching lungs, berating myself, while still acknowledging the little demon whispering, “You have those cigarettes at home….” And after I locked up my bike and took off my helmet, I sat by the window of our apartment and I fucking smoked one.
Then I poured water over that pack and threw it away. All or nothing. All or nothing. Ok, monkey. Let’s try this again.
