Cigarettes.

Every cigarette that a smoker has is going to be their "very last one".  It has nothing to do with whether or not they want another one, it is just that with the strike of the match, or the flick of the lighter, they hear the voices of everyone who has implored them to quit.  For the first two or three drags, these are the voices that one hears.  At that point, the nicotine floods the various receptors in the brain, and for a brief moment, you feel peace, and calm.  You are once again in control.  It is the illusion of control through.  It is an addict's control, a false front, where one believes that they are managing their demons, as if addictions were a team of spirited horses to be yoked into working as a team.

Why would someone smoke?  A common refrain is, "I started when I was young and stupid," which I cannot use.  I started smoking long after I knew better.  I was twenty one or twenty two when I became a serious smoker.  I may have been stupid, but I was not young.  Cigarettes do a number of things for me.  They fight of boredom, first of all.  With a pack of cigarettes, and a couple of books*, you can spend an effective afternoon ignoring people while feeling that you have accomplished something.**  Courting death, in a very long term sense, to fight off boredom seems just a bit silly though, does it not?  Cigarettes for me (and I am my own subject of study) act as a focusing agent.  It's not that I can think better while smoking, but…it is.  I have something to do with my hands, and something to focus on that allows my thoughts to flow in a coordinated fashion.  Think of my neurons like synchronized swimmers.  With a cigarette, they have music and practice, and without, no music, so…they can go through the motions, however, the timing is just a bit off.  Cigarettes force the smoker to think more clearly through the haze of tobacco smoke and to focus on living for the moment, enjoying the moment, and struggling through to the next moment when you can have a cigarette.  Smoking also allows to the smoker to recognize their own mortality in a very significant way.  Every smoker knows that they are going to die one day.  What makes them a bit different is that they would rather have the pleasure of the moment rather than longer viability into what Denis Leary referred to as the "adult diaper years".   Living in the moment becomes much more important than concerning yourself with the long term ramifications of something that is rather stupid and self destructive.

Ayn Rand wrote that a cigarette was fire tamed in man's fingertips, proof positive of a human mastery of nature and that the coal of a lit cigarette was a beacon of conscious thought.  Wendell Berry, on the other hand, wrote about the social aspects of smoking, the time it takes to smoke a cigarette is a time to connect with another person, a brief foray into bonding with someone over a shared interest.***

Therefore, I have a (semi) academic justification for smoking, but why do I do it?  More importantly, why do I promise to quit almost twenty times a day?  Am I lying to myself every single time I promise not to do this again?  Not consciously, I presume, but deep down, I know that I am a smoker.  I like smoking.  It gives me opportunities, and it (concurrently) helps me engage with other people while limiting my contact.  From my (admittedly skewed and damaged) perspective, that is what is referred to as a "win win" situation.

Should I quit?  Of course, I should.  Every person knows that.  Former smokers know this better than most.  I have been a former smoker, and currently, I am searching for ways to quit, but…

What should I replace it with?  What item is going to provide me with the immediate satisfaction?

That is the question, isn't it?

Once I have the answer, I will, once and for all time, become a former smoker.

Until then, it defines me, and limits who I am, but it makes me part of a community as well. 

Does needing to be a member of a community make me a gaping maw of need?  No.  It makes me human, with a longing to be part of a tribe, social, et cetera.  Yes, it is a tribe based on a shared (from the point of view of people like Eliot Spitzer) badness, but we are not pederasts or anything of the sort.  We just enjoy a sweet smelling weed that was introduced to Western society roughly five hundred years ago.  So…not really a big deal, right?

But it really is to a lot of people.   My health is an issue; debated in Congress, subject to taxation, and a point of criticism in the President.

Smokers get it.  You dislike us for our "disgusting" habit.  You think we should be regulated, taxed, and treated like crack addicts.

Which is why every flick of that lighter reminds us that we need to quit, even though, it feels so good.

*I always need a cigarette while reading, which is one of the reasons that I don't think I will be able to completely quit. 

**The best way to do this is a warm summer afternoon spent either in the park on a chaise or at a pub that has open air seating.  The latter is preferable because of the proximity to beer and that someone may see you (or more to the point, me) and think, "He drinks, he smokes, he reads, and he is bald!  He is perfect for me!" and buy me beer and cigarettes, compliment me on my book, and attempt to take me home for what I can only envision as something described as Dionysian.

***In this case, the interest will kill you eventually (if you are genetically pre-determined to die like this) and requires a certain amount of infrastructure to pull off.  If neither of you have cigarettes, nor a way to make fire easily (have you ever tried to make fire with a piece of bark, a stick, and elbow grease?  You can do it, I have tried and succeeded, however, [and let this be a lesson to you] my hands were sore for a week and my ability to do anything was severely impeded.  Why would I want to engage in an activity like this?  Let us refer to it as an attempt to keep a bright but easily bored five year old entertained while I was trying to relax at a mountain lake in the Berkshires.  I thought to myself, "1. How hard can it be? And 2. Every kid loves fire."  As I mentioned, it was considerably harder than it looks, which it probably why more kids don't burn down forests while playing indigenous people and white oppressors.) then it becomes impossible for you to share a "moment".  In addition to that, if your shared interest is your only shared interest, you can be friendly, but, not friends, as you are slowly killing each other and enabling really awful behavior, or so those thetruth.org commercials tell me.