This might be one the stupidest articles you’ve ever read. My apologies for that.
Four months ago, I decided to start smoking. Why? I don’t know. Probably a combination of factors: I was fascinated by the series Californication, in which the main character (Hank Moody) smokes. Although it is sad to admit, it might be that watching him smoke sparked my curiosity about why it is people grab to cigarettes. Also, I have always been wondering whether smoking is primarily a physiological addiction (an addiction of the body) or a psychological one (an addiction of the mind). I could never understand why less than 25 percent of those who want to quit smoking, actually manage to do so. I always thought: if you want to stop, then you can stop. I mean: if you want to stop travelling by car, you can just stop taking the car, right? So given these ‘rational’ considerations, I decided to take up the cigarette, and start my journey of addiction.
Now, four months later, I have decided to stop. My little ‘experiment’ has provided me with the information I was looking for. I experienced what it is that makes you want to light up a cigarette. And, what I can say, it is more of a psychological addiction than a physiological addiction. It is the feeling of allowing yourself a break from what it is that you are doing. Also, the habit of smoking a cigarette every morning during your ‘morning walk’ gives you a clear signal that the day took off; a feeling as if the referee blew his whistle and the match has started.
However, I must admit that there are also physiological factors that make you want to grab a cigarette. In case you drink coffee (which is more likely than that you smoke), you can compare it to that longing for a cup of coffee to give your the energy you need to get through the day. And, as with drinking coffee, the first cigarette/cup of coffee gives the relative biggest ‘boost’; the relative biggest satisfaction in calming down your longing for nicotine/caffeine.
I’m not sure whether I have become truly addicted to cigarettes. I can only tell how I feel, and that’s what I’ve described above. And – since I’ve been drinking (much) coffee for the last couple of years, and I can fairly say that I’m addicted to caffeine – I think my smoking adventure will have likewise effects. Probably, even though I ‘quitted’, I’ll keep (at least for a while) on having that same longing for cigarettes as I have for coffee. I wonder which impulses will be tougher to handle: the psychological or the physiological. I am curious, and a little anxious, to find out.
What do you think?
Hahaha. I kind of did the same thing. I can also confirm that it is psychological. Having opened that niche of psychological procrastination, its hard to know how to replace it. I do also have a bit of an addiction to drinking water already. A certain state of mind makes me refuse to bow to earthly demands because I like the concept of having free will.
It is odd that a part of why I started smoking was a rebellion, recently out of a relationship where my ex hated smokers. Rebellion has a place in the minds of many smokers, although rebellion, like smoking, does not represent freedom, but rather in some ways the opposite of freedom. I don’t think I want to be a non-smoker. I quite like the ease with which one can start conversations with other smokers over a mutual poisoning, and also the consumption of cigarettes as a meaningless activity on a drunken night, and also the ritual of rolling them. But I think as a human being, my happiness is enhanced by rebelling against anything that feels like a compulsion. I challenge myself to take each decision from the point of freedom to choose. Maybe smoking is for occasions and not for every day.
I see your point. But I have one question: don’t you think that it is difficult to – on the one hand – be someone who smokes and, on the other hand, someone whose happiness is enhanced by rebelling against anything that feels like a compulsion? Because – I don’t know how it feels for you – smoking can very well feel like a compulsion, and hence, by smoking, you do not rebel against this compulsion, thereby decreasing your happiness. What do you think about this matter :)?
I wanted to be a cigarette smoker. I watched and read articles on how to smoke. I tried full flavor Newport’s, Camel’s and Marlboro Red’s. I liked Marlboro Red’s best. I smoked a few cigarettes a day at first as I was learning to inhale smoke. I increase my cigarettes every day. I was curious if I would get addicted. It has been a year since I first learned to smoke. I wake every morning and need to smoke upon waking. I smoke over a pack of Marlboro Red’s every day. I enjoy the powerful cravings I have 30 minutes after smoking. I did not start smoking to try to quit. I can honestly say I love smoking and buy my cigarettes by the carton whereas early after smoking, I bought my Red’s by the pack. I associate smoking during all my daily routines. Turns out, smoking is extremely addicting.
I love smoking my Marlboro Red’s and smoke upon waking every morning.
I’ve not read the research on cigarette addiction and its degrees, but having been smoking for six years across several long hiatuses, I’m reluctant to believe that someone quitting who’s only smoked for four months experiences anything comparable to the effects of withdrawal most quitting smokers experience, or any effects most prominent in the popular understanding of cigarette addiction. Addiction is insidious and four months of smoking is not long enough to let the behavior permeate your existence. Absences arise sporadically that cigarettes take root in and fill. Those arisen from sorrow come to mind. When sorrowful and purposeless, cigarettes don’t just delimit a day but come to give it purpose altogether. The only apparent reason to rouse yourself is to light a cigarette, and the only upside of many mundane behaviors is that they are accompanied by a smoke. It gradually erodes all structures of fortitude and lucidity one has built to make banal life glorious. Or so it all feels.
I realize that everybody is different but, as a nonsmoker for more than 50 years, I decided to try this experiment because, in this case, it bugged me that I never could understand why anyone would smoke.
Unlike the author here, though, I didn’t stop. Actually, I kept giving in to smoking, even after the 4 months. I realized that, for me, the addiction was strong. I actually got bad headaches when I suddenly stopped. My old thumb sucking habit started up as I was waking up sucking my thumb!
I figured that, because I was smoke free for so long, it’d be OK (I know, a smoker’s typical rationalization but, at a certain point I didn’t care anymore).
So now I’m one of “them”, smoking over a pack each day, often not even realizing I lit one.
My suggestion? Don’t try it. :(
Just checking in again after my post here. And, yup, still smoking. At this point I realize I’ll be smoking for the rest of my life. Well, I certainly satisfied my curiosity and found out why it’s so hard to quit. Same advice: don’t even try it.
I have been smoking since I was 12 years old, and I can tell you it is a lot more than psychological. If I go more than an hour or two without a cigarette, I get intense cravings, that get worse and worse until I smoke.
Sort of same here. I started because of my boyfriend, he’d always smoked and, though i wasn’t anti smoking, i wasn’t a particular fan either but i tolerated my boyfriend smoking. After we’d been together about 8 months and, at times, he had tried to persuade me to try a cigarette, i’d got to the point where i was becoming quite irritable about him smoking. Obviously he wasn’t best pleased when i started to “suggest” that maybe he think about quitting. As he was so adamant that no amount of “nagging” was going to make him quit he kept on trying to goad me into joining him. After we’d been together about 16 months and after a particularly drunken night out, for whatever reason, i don’t know, i asked for a drag from his cigarette. Even though i was drunk i coughed and spluttered after i tried to imitate him, vowing never again. Over the coming months my aversion started to become, usually when we’d been out drinking, to have an odd drag from my boyfriends cigarette, to sharing an odd cigarette with him, to joining him for an odd cigarette. Though, according to him, i wasn’t smoking properly, in that i barely inhaled but, as more months passed, the odd cigarette had become a more regular thing and i didn’t even have to be drunk at that point to smoke one. Without even realizing i began smoking 2 or 3 cigarettes a day, not being drunk and actually inhaling properly. As the weeks passed my boyfriend “encouraged” me to smoke more, though, at that point, he really didn’t need to as i’d begun to enjoy it. Fast forward another year and you find me sitting here smoking what will be my 14 cigarette of the day at just gone 4pm. Yes i wasn’t a fan of smoking and, yes i tried to get my boyfriend to quit but given that i’m now a smoker myself, yes, i am and i don’t mind saying it, i totally get where my boyfriend was coming from when he said that i didn’t have a clue about why he liked smoking and wasn’t going to or, more so, didn’t want to quit. It’s taken me nigh on 3 years but i know what he meant, i to don’t want to quit and i like, no, i love smoking and have no visions of me not smoking for the considerable foreseeable future.
I remember as a young teen, maybe around 14 or 15, I was hanging around with my mom who was a 2-3 pack a day smoker. I found myself one day intentionally leaning into the unhailed smoke from her cigarettes’ trying to secretly inhale it. I’m not sure if that was out of curiosity or as a result of the nicotine which over time, having a family member who smoked. That day I stolen a cigarettes’ from her and eventually smoked it. That one cigarettes’ was the only one until a year or two latter when my best friend shared here curiosity and I shared my experience which I kept as a secret. That set our interest in motion and we started smoking together every time we were together. It was easy since her dad smoked and her mom didn’t mind so we were always at her house. I can remember how much I looked forward to going there just to smoke. At first it was just a few cigarettes’ per day, 3-5. Over time, in school it was sneaking off campus at lunch which included 1-2 before school and 3-5 after school. I didn’t think about addition. it was never an issue beyond just looking forward to smoking. But I always had cigarettes’ on me even at school and I took a break from high school sports as well.
Then one day, I was with my parents in the car. It had been about 4-5 hours since my last smoke. I remember sitting in the back seat when suddenly I started to feel a very strong nervous anxiety and a bit of nausea. This was the first time I had ever felt like this. All i could think about was the need for a cigarettes’. When we finally got to our destination, I mad an excuse to take a walk away from the family and when I was out of sight, I chain smoked 2 cigarettes’. It felt so good. I had been smoking for about months and probably up to about 10 cigarettes’ a day on average. My habit really caused me to sneak around a bit since I was hiding it from my family. Then I got caught and I lied that it was just one and would not do it any more. That was when I decided I would quit.
Quitting wasn’t immediately but I was determined and said to myself I would no longer walk up a long steep hill to the liquor store. Quitting as I recall was easier than what most go through from what I here. Part of it was I got back into running and the running high I got I think took the place of nicotine. I also developed a disgust for the smell of cigarettes’ and smoke. Something I here is common. But here I am, decades later and because of my experience still have an attraction to the addiction I remember and actually psychologically developed a fetish which is only in thought because I know how bad it it and watched my mom die for suffocations from COPD. I wonder if I would ever start again if I got drunk and was with someone who tempted or dared me. Its a good thing though that I don’t drink or hang out with anyone who smokes. But I wonder if this fetish is a result of the nicotine on the brain 42+ years ago.
Thoughts?
It’s more than just saying to oneself… just stop, like your statement suggested. It’s boredom, to consider. Pain, a whole new life . I’m sure their trying..
I started 2 months ago. I smoke 4 a day. I’m 17, turning 18 in 2 months. I do get mild cravings and when I see that my pack is about to end I get mild panic attacks. I like it. I feel like I made a new friend, something that helps me take a break from all the stress I’m going through. I feel good when I smoke. Honestly, there is a part of me that keeps saying that I should stop, it’s not healthy. But in reality I don’t want to quit, not at all. I want to keep this going, don’t know for how long. Maybe one day I might get the sudden motivation to quit. But I will come back for sure: it’s such a nice addition to this absolute race that life is.