Why You (Probably) Smoke Cigarettes

I quit smoking cigarettes five years ago. I smoked for 14 years. I'm astounded that I used to be a person who did that to herself for that long. Nearly half of my life at the time I quit. But really I'm not astounded. I now understand a lot about myself and what made me do that. Here's what I now understand about why I smoked cigarettes. Maybe it'll give you some personal insight, and maybe you can use it for your own benefit.

Cigarettes are adult pacifiers. I was three years old when my parents threw mine out, and they tell me that I went insane.

My mom smoked while I was growing up in the 80s. I remember sitting on her lap on Friday nights and reveling in the smell of cigarettes on her because it smelled like home. It smelled like her. It was comforting.

The first time I smoked I was 16. I was a "good girl," but I also had a massive rebellious streak. When I saw a couple of acquaintances of mine smoking I asked if I could try. I kept trying it literally because I felt really cool doing it. It felt like home to me. It added an edge to my good girl-ness.

The first time I smoked more than one drag I've never felt so awful in my life. It was a disgusting feeling. My friend and I were walking down my street, and we felt so nauseous we could barely walk. But it intrigued me. So I kept doing it. I thought addiction was only for weaker people. I didn't think I had it in me to get addicted. After all, my mom wasn't a regular smoker. She only smoked when she was partying with her friends.

Soon my best friend and I were spending our weekends hanging out in her room drinking her parents' liquor while they were out of town and chain smoking Maverick Menthol after Maverick Menthol.

I loved cigarettes. Now I'm in my twenties and my friends are commenting about how I chain smoke when I drink.

I'm a full blown addict. I decided to quit in my mid-twenties and felt so out of sorts that I tapped another car pulling into a parking spot at Blockbuster.

Approaching 30, I was waking up at 5am and not smoking a cigarette for two and a half hours or so after waking. As soon as I took that first drag of the cigarette it was like whoosh the world was crashing in. "Ok, we have to do this and this and this and this!" This is the first time I realized that I was actually constantly on a stimulant and that this stimulant was making me anxious. So I quit. Several times in about six months. The correlation between smoking and eczema became utterly apparent. And I finally quit for good.

Many of my friends smoke cigarettes. Being a rebellious edgy type and smoking just go hand in hand I guess.

One of my best friends quit ten weeks ago. A year ago she told me that cigarettes were part of who she is. She told me about how much she enjoys the intimacy shared between strangers outside of a bar during a smoke break.

It came a time for her that quitting was a no brainer. She smoked her last cigarette on her 27th birthday and never looked back. She's so proud of how easy it was for her. Here's why it was easy: because she acquired the necessary skills within herself to nurture herself through life. Cigarettes are pacifiers for adults. I believe that the vast majority of us were not given the caring nurturing we needed as babies and children. We don't know how to care for ourselves. So we light up the comfort stick, get comfortable and zone out into that zone, the zone where the world is shut out and it's just you and your flaming comfort stick. It's your safe place, your retreat from the world.

We also smoke when we want to be more engaged in what we're doing, when we're excited. When we want to hone in on what we're doing. Smoking is like a meditation in many ways. It's just a very poor substitute for one. But for many, many people it's the only way they know how to do it. It's the only tool they have for comforting themselves and for shutting out the world.

Cigarettes and all addictions are resistance to life and resistance to ourselves. It takes so much time, money, focus and energy to fulfill our addiction that we can take our focus off of a good portion of life. And if life is difficult or not too enjoyable, this is a welcome distraction and point of focus. Better to focus on the addiction than the yearning or fear or anxiety or vulnerability inside.

We can quit smoking when we find tools within ourselves that work. We need to know how to comfort ourselves, how to go within and be centered and find peace inside. We need resilience.

We need other things to put our focus on that are fulfilling. How much of smoking is boredom? Addictions take a lot of energy. When that energy is freed for other things in life, we heal, we create, we change, we really live.

And honestly we're not really taught how to do life in this culture. We're taught to follow along and work. We're not taught the important things. Most people are just surviving. Most people are addicts. Most people don't have a clue about what they're doing here.

So we must learn ourselves.

To be healthy and free we need to love ourselves. At the end of my fourteen year foray into cigarette addiction land I looked down at my cigarette and asked what I was doing to myself. I felt that I loved myself too much to harm myself.

My friend who quit ten weeks ago will tell you that she loves herself way too much to do that to herself.

Why is it that edgy twenty-somethings feel that they're "really living" by smoking? The fringe dwellers and weirdos are the most valuable people on the planet. You're the talented ones, the ones who make art and shock people and think outside of the box and make people uncomfortable and question. You make shit move and change and evolve on this planet. Addiction and getting wasted are actually the last thing you should be doing, because you should be healthy as fuck and going out there and stirring shit up. (Sorry, I hate shoulds.)

Quitting smoking is not about giving anything up and becoming a non-smoker. It's embracing what we do want. Non-smoker is all about what you're giving up. When you quit smoking you're not giving up anything. You're facing toward your natural self. Health and vitality. Self care and nurturing and respect. A clean body and a clean life. The list goes on. It's when we embrace what we do want that the decision is already made. And there is no effort in quitting - just a time of feeling really weird as your body rids itself of nicotine and readjusts to normalcy.

To be healthy, happy non-smokers we need to know how to breathe. Do you know that the vast majority of Americans literally don't know how to breathe properly? I find that fascinating. Inhaling cigarette smoke gets you a really deep, satisfying breath. There are many adventures and states to be experienced with breathing exercises. Long deep breathing connects us to who we are and makes us feel calm, centered, and secure.

What if all you had to do to be a non-smoker was turn toward health and vitality if the idea of that excites you, and breathe and focus on deep self care and love during your usual smoking times?

We all have a deep void in us. It can only be filled with us. Addictions don't fill it, they only distract you from yourself.

You know when everyone's drinking and there's that one annoying person who doesn't and says "I'm high on life?" Being vitally alive is the best high in the world. It's absolutely exhilarating. When your body is clean and pure and healthy and you are confident and well and know how to care for yourself, it is the best feeling in the world. It's everybody's birthright to feel vitally alive and high on life. You just need to learn how to do it, and it's not hard because it's our natural state. Once you get that first glimpse of freedom and the sharpness you feel you build momentum and it gets easier and better and better and better. It's only when you've been free of your addiction for a couple of months that you begin to realize how numb and dead you felt when you were stimulated and addicted. Oh, when the brain is sharp! It feels so good.