Spicy Tales of My Life

I distinctly remember  when I smoked the cigarette for the first time. The reason for it being very stupid and it’s not exactly a reason but more of an excuse, I might say. It was just to prove a point that I now have became the master of my life (I felt then that I was leading my life rather by circumstances and not in a way that I wanted) and am able enough to do whatever I want. I might have tried any thing sane to prove the point but me being insane choose the stupidest thing that I ever could. Also It was a desperate moment in my stressful life of a software engineer, and I had this weirdest imagination that by doing so I might somehow become able enough to evade the helplessness of the life that I was in. But all it has ever done to me, was to leave me in a helplessness of an utter kind.

Even the very first time that I smoked, I got no pleasure or relief of any sort but numbness. A numbness followed by displeasure and an intense cough. A feeling that I cannot precisely describe lasted on the mind for a few minutes. You must be smoker to understand the feeling that I am talking about. This is neither a good nor a bad feeling but definitely a peculiar one. So peculiar as to one might want to try it another time.

Obviously, I tried it another time and many times after that, just to re-experience the peculiarity of numbness on the mind. I always expected to get more of the cigarette before I smoked but got less after, and feeling disappointed smoked it again to get more of it the next time. I fell into a vicious cycle of smoking and smoking more. Cigarettes work with people because they explore this exact stupidity of human mind and there is no definite cure for this or any kind of stupidity. Before I can understand all this I have fallen prey to this stupidity. Even though I was getting addicted I never felt that I might be getting addicted to smoking since it always left me in an illusion that the habit was always under my control when it was precisely the other way around. “What is in it”, I used to say, “After all, I am the master of my life. So when I have the power to start it then I have the very power to stop it.” Even so, I have never realized that stopping the habit has never crossed my mind in a year after my starting it.

Then one day some something happened that made me start realizing how worse the things can get with this habit. A friend of mine who used to smoke along with me took a medical, leave only to be seen after two months with bandages all over his chest. Because of smoking his veins or arteries in the area around his chest got blocked and had be cut through by a surgery to unblock. (I didn’t exactly ask him whether if they were veins or arteries cuz his face was so pale that time that I did not mind asking him what precise pipes have been cut through his body). Since I saw him, I too started feeling a blocked vein in some or the other part of my body. At First I thought it was all some psychological hallucination (I am in a habit of hallucinating a lot of things) and kept smoking but when the unusual activity started spreading from veins to other parts of the body. I then started feeling a little something in the lungs. It was not bad though but also not good but a little weird numbness. Instead of considering it a danger I complacently considered it something regular.
(FYKI the guy whose veins have been cut through resumed smoking after 3 months.)

I took a wakeup call when I came to know that danger is not just confined to the pair of my lungs but to a sacred pair of the precious something. Thanks to a program on national geographic channel on hazards of smoking, I got to know the worst that smoking can do to a man (not a woman to be more precise). As soon as I have known it I did not wait for symptoms to show this time. I wanted to stop it for once and for all. My determination was so powerful that it lasted an eternity short of an perpetuity. In other words, its just a day.

But this time smoking was different. With every cigarette I smoked there a came a lots of anxiety followed by guilt. I started giving lame excuses to smoke to smother my restlessness. Every time I thought this is going to be my last cigarette, very soon it became the last but one cigarette.

As I was going through this emotional atyachar, the year of 2009 was coming to an end. I heard this concept of New Year resolution and got overwhelmed by it. I thought it to be the only way to put an end to my habit. I made a strong resolution for it and doubled my intake of cigarettes during the month of December thinking I will not be smoking any cigarettes from next year. Exactly on the 31st as the clock was about to struck 12, I smoked which was going to be one more last cigarette for the rest of my life.

How good it could have been if the above line would have been the end of this tale but unfortunately it isn’t. Exactly after 15 days I smoked 5 cigarettes at an occasion and 5 more cigarettes after that. Again I am back to the vicious cycle of guilt and started looking new excuses to stop the habit. I know this is all stupid but just to understand how stupid I am being, I wrote this article. I want  to see if my understanding of the stupidity of this habit can help me quitting. Wish me luck friends.

(I haven’t smoked in last 5 days. Pray for me that I smoke no more.)