Confessions of An Irish American Camel Smoker

Well, the quarter is over, and the grades are submitted, and...I'm smoking again.

I was a smoker for about fifteen years, and quit last June with the help of Chantix- at 130 bucks a pop, I might add. Christ, either the tobacco companies get your money, or the pharmaceutical companies get your money, but either way, its a cabal I tell you, A CABAL!- and things went really well, really smooth, for until the holidays.

See, the thing about Chantix is that it gives you a fresh start in that it reprograms your brain to before you were a smoker. Why would anybody smoke who isn't already a smoker, you might ask?

Well, here's the thing about cigs: People smoke them, and evidentally, they enjoy them, to, and while it is true that Chantix reprograms your brain to before you were a smoker in that you do not crave them at all, it is not hypnosis or a brainwipe: You still remember the good things (believe it or not) about smoking. Bars. Hanging with your friends. Good Times. Combine that with some beers, or liquor, or wine, and smoking friends...

Anyhoo, around the holidays, while out with friends, I had a cigarette. No big deal. Woke up and didn't want anymore. Went on with my life. In bars, at parties, didn't want one. This went on until around Christmas, and while at a Christmas Party, I had a few cigarettes. What the hell, its the Holidays.

However, a funny thing happened: While I was at the pub, I began to bum them-not many, maybe four a night. it was fun. It made me feel at home.

Then, another funny thing happened: I felt so bad about bumming them, that I would buy a pack of goddamned devil Camel Lights, as to not be a total mooch.

Anybody who has been a smoker, and bought a pack, knows that you have to smoke them before they go stale, usually around a day or so. This wasn't often, maybe once a week or so. I always left the pack at the bar. I had told myself, on sage advice from an ex smoker, that if you do not smoke first thing in the morning, you can quit. There's no evidence, of course, but a certain wisdom I think, certainly, a wisdom I needed to pay heed to.

No big, right? I would wake up with a dry sinus cigarette headache, and not repeat.

When I went out for my birthday at the end of January, I bummed quite a few, and when we got back to my place for the after hours, I really started smoking. Woke up, dry head, feeling tired and shitty, and thought that things were cool.

What followed in February was a swift and steady backslide.

First, the Super Bowl. A day long celebration of everything that is good in the worst possible things you can do to yourself. Copious Beers. Pizza. Beef Jerky. Potato Chips-all covered in a thick layer of processed cheese.

And cigarettes, cuz I ain't no mooch, right?

For some reason, I feel like I need to justify myself: Despite what some might say about me politically, there is something of a consensus that I am not an idiot. I have a B.A. in English Lit and Philosophy, and an M.A. in English. I teach at a large university. My favorite author is Joyce. I read Nietzsche and Derrida for fun. I'm not an idiot!!!

However, I doth protest too much. I smoked almost two pack that Super Bowl Sunday, caught up in the power and glory that is this most American Spectacle.

Now, the bad part: When I woke up, on the Deacon's couch the next day, I looked around and found my pack of Camel Lights-with a few in it-and then proceeded to cross the threshold, and I smoked one.

Then I smoked another one. I got in my car, and on that drive home, I smoke another one, wondering what I had done to myself, swearing that this would be the only time I did this, yadda yadda yadda.

When I got home, I took that last cigarette, and threw it in the toilet. Flush. "I won't do that again.”

But I did. I would go out, hang with friends and colleagues, buy a pack at the bar, return home with them, smoke until bed, and throw them in the toilet. Flush.I probably did that with around a carton of cigarettes in February.

Soon, I was looking for reasons to go out to the pub, and buy cigarettes. Hell, some nights, I was sitting there, alone, sipping my beer, and smoking, all the while justifying it as "good times". My weeks without were now only days.

It was a day or so after such a night, while out with friends, on the Friday before the Snow storm, that I awoke, made coffee, and sat down to grade, knowing it was going to be a long weekend, and I should be productive.

Except that I couldn't. I couldn't concentrate. A gnawing sensation in my guts. Fidgeting. Christ, I was fiendin.

And you know what I did. I went out in the storm, walked four blocks, and bought Camel Lights. It was only then that I could grade, concentrate, not kill myself from cabin fever. I did the same the next day. I had gotten re-addicted.

I have been smoking, almost at full habit, for about a week or so now. No illusions about "social" smoking. No bullshit about only smoking while I'm out at the pub. Nope. I wake up, smoke, smoke throughout the day, and stub that last fucking butt, joylessly, out right before bed.

Goddamn. How did it happen?

I'm not sure about a moral here, because I try not to moralize about vices. It's a tough world out there, and you have to try to find peace however you can. But, as I drag on this Camel that I use to both mark and hasten the clock to my demise, I could tell you not to start, but if you've never smoked seriously before, then you are probably thinking "What an asshole".

You'd be right. There's no happiness, no pleasure. Joyless time marking to death. I am managing stress. No. The main stress right now is cigarette centered. Let me reiterate, in case I'm unclear:

This. Fucking. Sucks.

Oh yes, the moral: I'm not, nor was I, an ex smoker who expects the world to stop for them. I don't even think that smoking need be banned in bars and pubs. I don't moralize about vices.

However, it's clear to me that it's one thing to be tolerant, and its another to participate.

I cannot be a "social" smoker. That time came and went at the end of my senior year of High School, when I first picked up the habit, and while I associate so many amazing things that I have seen or done with cigarettes-being cool in all black with my equally being cool then girlfriend, my first serious one, talking about Buddhism and pretending that we were like Sartre and De Beauvoir, all drama and cafe living; drinking excessively and trying to find love (sex) when her and I were, in fact, all drama; standing around in my motorcycle jacket with pillar box red hair and white Dr. Martens on Short Vine, feeling cynical, drunk, wanting Fugazi to set the world right, etc. etc. etc.

I never imagined in those halcyon days that it would go on like this. Yet, here I am, several brands later, in my mid Thirties, sucking these Camels like the antidote was in it.

At one time, it was. Now, it's just something I'm doing, again, marking time.

Anyway, as I sit here, my apartment smells like a VFW, and I am looking, right next to my laptop, at an ashtray, half full of the butts of a pack that I bought five hours ago, having just divested myself (or Capital One) of the 135 dollars American for new prescription of Chantix, knowing I have just days left of cigarettes, wondering if I am finally shaking the ghost of associations that were pleasure.

I know where and how it all went wrong: I gave myself permission, thinking I had it right this time, that I wouldn't pick up the habit again. I made exceptions when none should be made; "This will be the only time", yada yada yada.

Tomorrow, I'll take that first Chantix, and start again.

I think its my nature, and I'll have to find something else to compliment my life of the mind, something else to be compulsive about.

Hell,I might even exercise.