TackleAction!

Thoughts of quitting smoking (again) have been rattling in my head as I approach the one year mark from when I fell off the tobacco wagon. The idea of not giving them up causes me more stress than shelling out $140 a month for my self destructive habit. This idea is completely irrational and illogical, but it's also very powerful. It's very hard to describe to anyone who has never been addicted to nicotine.

That being said, I found an Esquire article via Clicked that every non-smoker should read and it is called "Learning to Smoke."

The author is a 46 year old man who decides to take up smoking to discover first-hand what is exactly so great/horrible about this habit.

From the article:

hat happens when you light a cigarette in an airport -- because my advice is that you never try to find out yourself -- is that a series of reactions fall into place mechanically, like science fiction, as if the collective consciousness of the place were spread among everybody equally, allowing for one singular, zombified reaction. Heads turn on the flick of the lighter, bodies move in your direction immediately.

I took two heavy drags, because now a janitor had popped up out of nowhere and was coming up hard on my right. A gate agent was fast-walking in the distance, and a woman holding a baby approached with a scowl. Two other men stood up for a look.

"You can't smoke here!" the woman said, turning her baby from me, as if protecting it from the heat of a fire.

"Sir, put that out," the Northwest agent said, reaching me in a full-out jog.

"I'm sorry," I said to everybody, stamping it against the bottom of my foot, ashes falling all over the carpet like sparks from a welder's gun. "I just started smoking. I didn't know."

Reading the article I was upset by the premise. The guy was actually trying to start. To me this is tragic and I've been smoking for over a decade. I kept thinking, "Dude! No, DON'T DO THIS!!!" At the same time I felt as if it validated my impulses, however wrong they are. I am human, after all. I am a social creature and my brain does produce dopamine.

After quitting, the author sees smokers in a different way. I felt as if he actually understood what the whole experience is.