Today is exactly twenty years, eight months and five days since my last cigarette. This happened after 16 years of heavy smoking, struggling to quit, getting a few days or a few weeks and then relapsing and getting full-on addicted immediately and feeling ashamed and demoralized.
I started to smoke because I heard I'd lose weight. And I did! At first. My mother smoked heavily while I was in the womb, and I wondered if this explained why the little buzz of nicotine felt so wonderfully familiar and comforting, from the very first time I smoked. I used to stand outside and hit my cigarette and think to myself, "God, I love smoking..." Cigarettes were my way of taking a break, collecting myself. They were my antidepressant and anti-anxiety and anti-anger and anti-grief medicine. They gave me just a little extra distance from a threatening world, which is something like strength.
At first.
Attempts to go without a cigarette used to make me feel so wretched and depressed, the only SANE thing I could do to save myself was to smoke again. I smoked when I was sick, I smoked when I visited my mom while she was dying of lung cancer, I smoked while I was spraying bleach cleaner on a moldy wall and inhaled the particles. I put myself in danger, smoking outside bars at night. I tried to hide my smoking with constant tooth brushing and hand washing and ... Read Full Article Here
Anna Runkle is a video producer in Berkeley and writes the blog www.CrappyChildhoodFairy.com.
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