I am so absolutely goddam friggin' lucky that, at 14, when my terribly impressionable mind and unreasonably pure bloodstream was first introduced to nicotine, I wasn't introduced to heroin instead of cigarettes. I'd likely be dead by now, if the tenacity and intensity of my addiction to cigarettes serves as a model of my addiction behavior.
Cigarettes are an intoxicating combination of alluring mistress, daily payoff, defense mechanism, boredom combatant, coolness-quotient-booster (I hope, given the lack of smoking now in mainstream media, that this aspect cools off for future generations, Lohan et. al. shenanigans notwithstanding), security blanket, self-definition tool and probably a kajillion other things that I'm forgetting right now, and they are wildly unhealthy, and they are fucking addictive as all fucking get out. I mean, truly, I have lent so much of my mental space to cigarettes over the past 20 years that I am not surprised that a lot of other things I've needed to think about haven't fallen into place (more on that at another time).
Look, here's one thing that happened to inform this latest quit. My mom died of cancer 10 months ago. She had tumors in her lungs for years, but her doctors and she surmised that those tumors were from BEING SPRAYED BY DDT in the concentration camp she stayed in as a kid, which was how they prevented bed bugs and lice from becoming rampant amongst, uh... campers. I'm calling them campers so I don't have to refer to my mom as a prisoner. Fucking deal with it. So, there she is, as a little child, being doused with carcinogens in what basically amounts to a racist-ass prison, and she ends up with lung tumors, which are ultimately not what did her in, but still, and here I am SMOKING, LIKE AN ASSHOLE. I am an asshole. Do you see? Do you see why?
That was a rhetorical question, because I'm going to tell you why anyway even if you said that you did see why. So, the thing about cancer is that - and we need to face this as a generation - it will most likely kill you and kill most of the people you know. In general, you can expect that cancer will destroy all of your emotions and also your body. Your people, your inner sanctum, they're all going to get cancer. Ok, well maybe one of them will get heart disease and two of them will get diabetes, but everyone else is going to get cancer. And they will die from it. You don't get better with cancer, it doesn't go away. Don't listen to that bullshit, it's a hoax to make you buy into the cancer-treatment factory that hospitals all have now. You die. It might hide out for a while, you may hang on for years, but it will come back, and when it does, you will die. Fun fact. Fun fact, in fact, even for those of you who have never smoked a day in your life. Look at Walter White. What did that guy ever do (well, OK, he probably inhaled a lot of unsavory shit as a chemistry teacher, but you get my point)?! So what makes me an asshole, to address my own rhetoric, is that I'm using a thing on my body that I know gives people cancer. Like I'm gunning for it or something.
And, bottom line, if both of my parents have had cancer and it destroyed one of them so far, then why am I spending my time smoking? What kind of crazy batshit logic is that?! And I saw it all first hand. The pain of cancer isn't the death itself. We all survive, and everyone dies, it's fine, it's life. It's the suffering leading up to it that will eat you alive. The first thing that happens is that, say, you get a constant cold and can't shake it and then you go to the doctor and you find out you have cancer and then you have to have an operation and you can't walk for a little while and that's frustrating because walking is sorta cool, then once you get better you find out the cancer migrated and you have to have a more difficult surgery, and when you come out you find out you'll never drive again and also still can't walk all that well, and then you start chemo and you get sick all the time and your tongue has lesions on it and your feet swell to three times their size and you can't eat and you can't sleep and you're dizzy all the time and you don't want to see your friends or talk to anyone and when your daughter calls you you don't even feel like talking and your grandchildren come over and you can barely get off the couch to enjoy their company and people stop calling and coming by because you're SO DEPRESSING and they can't handle watching someone die and you are basically a sad, depressed, terrified shell of the person you were and then you decide you don't want treatment anymore and you have to sit in a hospice and wait to die while shitting in a diaper and THAT, friends, gentlemen, the like, that is precisely why cancer can fucking blow me. So why the fuck do I smoke?
I have no idea. I've really been wrestling with it lately because this fate, the one that's been sold to me by Marlboro and Camel over the years, it's a horrible fate that I would never wish on anyone. So I quit a few days ago. It's super hard, y'all. Wish me luck. I'm so terribly relieved I never visited some sort of moribund, Trainspotting-esque fate on my family by getting hooked on dope or blow, THANK GOD. But there's a little part of me that always wonders if cigarettes, in a certain way, weren't a worse fate. Trust. Yup.
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