history with tobacco
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I quit smoking January 1, 2019. My habit was American Spirit menthols, about one to five per day. I have quit before—when I was trying to get pregnant, when I was pregnant, and for over a year after. Then, in the quiet hours after my baby had been put to bed, I was back to picking up a cigarette and heading to the backyard for the simple release, the ritual of lighting, inhaling, observing the smoke creating designs in front of me before disappearing.
It's not as though I was unaware of how cigarettes, particularly menthols, compromised my health. I grew up in a smoking household. When I picture childhood, my mother is smoking. I first lit up with one of her Marlboro 100s when I was thirteen while she was at work. Later, my friends and I smoked our lungs out. One of my friends would bring a change of clothes in a tightly sealed large Ziploc bag so she could change before going home so her mother wouldn’t smell the cigarettes on her. Meanwhile I’d negotiated being able to smoke in my room because my mother couldn’t stop me, and she was a hypocrite to tell me not to smoke while she was perched on the couch every night in a hazy living room.
I don’t even remember the reason for quitting in 2019. Months later I was really pissed off when I found myself in the emergency room and was later diagnosed with a heart condition. But I’d just quit smoking! Wasn’t my health supposed to improve? I even wondered if the condition was a reaction to having quit. The one to five cigarettes a day was maybe the way my body found regulation. When my father died in 2014 I smoked more, sometimes beyond the five a day. I indulged in much more than usual because something in me either shut off or turned on, the gates opened, and I allowed the little green packs of cigarettes to become a part of my ongoingness. Swerving into the 7-11 parking lot on Wilshire on my way to hike at Griffith Park to buy two packs. Smuggling them into the house. Walking into liquor stores I would normally never enter hoping they’d have my brand. My kid was young enough that we could switch off taking a smoke break in the evenings and head off to the backyard and she wouldn’t ask what we were doing.
Maybe the reason I quit in 2019 was because my kid was older and started asking what we were doing in the backyard.
In my mind, as with many other aspects of parenting, I believe I’m doing way better than my parents did—at least I never smoked in the house. At least my kid was protected from ever seeing me smoke. But I knew the day would come when it had to end because the sneaking, the hiding, was no longer sustainable.
When I quit it was easy. That’s how it usually works for me—I decide and I do it, at least when it comes to substances. It reminds me of how the first time I ever tried meth—16 years old, in a bathroom of an unfamiliar house with a boy I had a crush on—was also the last time I ever tried meth. We ran down the middle of the empty street laughing. I loved everything, I loved life, I wanted more. And that’s how I knew I could never, ever touch it again. And I didn’t. I hadn’t fallen in love so immediately with other substances quite like that—there were usually side effects I felt too distinctly, or they were too hard to obtain on any regular basis.
So it’s now been 5 years since I quit. We never acknowledge this anniversary in our house—it’s like a quiet one that keeps passing us by. When the pandemic was raging and we were learning more about how it ravaged lungs and hearts I remember thinking, Wow, glad we quit smoking! and me, menthols no less! I have glanced a few times at those calculators that show you how much your lungs and overall body recover and improve after you quit smoking, in days, months, years. I don’t need to look at it now. I have this heart condition, even after quitting. There are other matters I have to attend to in my aging body. Some are comical, some are fucking annoying. Either way, I have to deal with them.
After a friend’s birthday party in 2019, I wanted one, so much so that I left the bar we were in, ran across the street to the 7-11, and bought a pack. I hastily ripped the plastic wrapper off and we went outside to light up with a book of matches. My friend who had always bummed cigarettes off of me, who I’d used to smoke with after a drink, joined me. And the feeling was…utter disappointment. It tasted gross. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that I would smell like cigarettes afterward, taking the scent home with me in the car. I flung the pack into the trash. There went $7!
Still, when I watch tv or movies and see people smoking, I have moments of wishing I had one. I feel that way watching people drink coffee, too. Oh, the allure. Oh, the side effects. Lol. I can’t deny that there is something pleasurable to me in seeing people partake. My brain seems to have combined sexiness with scenes of cigarette smoking a long time ago and it’s hard to sever the connection (the tobacco industry and pop culture did a great job in making this true for millions).
Will I ever have one again? Probably. Maybe when my mother passes. She herself quit years ago in preparation for her first hip replacement. The doctor scared her into it, and she quit cold turkey after at least forty years of a couple of packs per day. I don’t know how she did it, and I don’t think she fully knows how she did it. I can, though, envision a day when I think I want one, to commemorate her passing, perhaps, but I just as easily can imagine throwing the rest of the pack away, again.