I Don’t Want to Quit Smoking

It started out innocently enough is the cliché, but it’s really true in this case. The irony is that I never smoked a puff until my first month of medical school, at 21 yrs of age. I was living in a craphole on the Southside, near the last remnants of Little Italy in Chicago. At the time the area was largely populated by poor, black people, many of whom I think were homeless or living in the projects. And they would have no qualms with smoking a bowl or crackpipe on the porch of their palatial estate.

I walked past the projects and went into a 7/11-type store to buy my first pack of cigs. I asked the clerk, an obese black woman with a kind and gold-plated smile, “What brand do most people buy?”

“Here, most people get these.” And she handed me a pack of Newport Menthols, the 100 variety (extra long). I didn’t even know the stereotype that mostly poor, black people smoked these but I didn’t know anything about cigarettes, not even how to hold one without looking like a total asshole. But I learned quickly and went through phases from Marlboro lights, to Turkish Blends to Camel lights and occasionally Djarums or Dunhills. So many cigarettes smoked in those 4 yrs of med school. Aaaaahhhh.

When I moved to Texas for residency, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the $7 Camel lights I bought in Chicago were now $2.80 in San Antonio. There was no way I was quitting at that price. I never tried the patch or nicotine gum. I did take Wellbutrin/Zyban and I guess it kind of worked. I stopped smoking for like a month. Then one day I was thinking, “Boy, it’d be really nice to have a cigarette now”. So I did.

I know a chief sign of chemical dependence is denial. I have never experienced nicotine withdrawal, as far as I know. I just really wanted to have a smoke. It’d be like if one day someone said, “You can never have milk again.” Eventually you’d want milk or something made with milk (chocolate, baked goods, etc). That’s my explanation of it all. As I sit here, I feel fine and it’s been about 4 days since I had a smoke. But eventually I know I will feel like having a cold, white, glass of nicotine. And it’s going to taste good. Because what it all comes down to at the end of the day; I don’t want to stain my teeth or have my hair and clothes smell like an ashtray. I don’t want to reduce my exercise capacity or increase my odds of stroke and heart attack. And I certainly don’t want to get lung cancer and I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to quit smoking, either.