In defense of cigarettes

When I was at the deepest point of my depression and had self-mutilation as my drug of choice, my therapist suggested I try cigarettes instead. Unorthodox, you would say – and you would be right –, but that is how I bought my first pack.

As with everything else in my life, I had to overthink this, and so I did research on which cigarette brand I should go for. “Best cigarettes for beginners?” Hit enter. I decided on a national brand, a blue package, with “soft” in the name.

I grew up with parents who overindulged in this habit, so the smell wasn’t bothersome to me, it was instead quite home-like. The taste, however, I was not prepared for. I liked it. So, we were two for two. The things people despised the most about smoking and the reasons some eventually quit, the smell and the taste, were pleasant to me. Was my therapist that good?

My parents being heavy smokers at the time, with my father having since quit, did not mean the news of me picking up the habit well after my teen years of experimenting would be well received, so I smoked in secret. I still do. My cigarettes are kept in a safe in my room, locked behind a code, hidden amongst university books, as if they are prized possessions and not little sticks of death. 

I would smoke out of my attic window, well past their bedtime, so I wouldn’t be caught, or on the street and cafes with friends, careful to change my shirt and chew some gum before coming home, if I knew they would still be up. One time, I was smoking at the bus-stop, waiting for the bus to take me to therapy no less, when a truck that looked like my father’s began descending the street. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown anything that fast or far before.

Carol Potter wrote a poem called “Ode to Smoke”, in which she says: “We smelled bad. Everybody did. It was something to share, intimate in its way. (...) Our fingers were stained as if we had been painting with smoke, tattooed by smoke. You could lift your fingers to your nose, you could smoke the fingers. Assuage yourself. Comfort yourself a bit. (...) We were smokers and we were not ashamed to be smoking. To be walking around with that lit thing.”

Cigarettes carry something beyond the nicotine and tar. A feeling. It’s melancholy in a tube. In them I found the comfort I had been looking so hard for underneath my skin, within my blood. Of course, I simply replaced one form of self-harm with another, but smoking doesn’t leave visible scars, only invisible ones. That’s why people love them. It’s why they’re hard to quit.

Fran Lebowitz, one of my absolute idols (and I am aware she would despite that), really says it best: “I am quite well aware of the hazards of smoking. Smoking is not a healthy pastime, it is true. Smoking is indeed no bracing dip in the ocean, no strenuous series of calisthenics, no two laps around the reservoir. On the other hand, smoking has to its advantage the fact that it is a quiet pursuit. Smoking is, in effect, a dignified sport.”

Flora Watkins, of The Spectator, wrote a piece not too long ago on how smoking is sexy again, which I encourage you to read. It made me think of how I didn’t glamorize smoking until I tasted one, and then I could see it everywhere. Cigarettes are mentioned in every sad song for sad girls, and I am a self-diagnosed sad girl. I’m pretty sure seeing Alex Turner smoke a cigarette is the reason I’m not a lesbian and had to settle for bisexuality.

And when I find myself re-thinking this perspective on cigarettes, wondering if I only smoke because it’s “cool” or because I like knowing it’s ever so slowly killing me, I remember the story of how Lana Del Rey gave Miles Kane her phone number by writing it down on a cigarette, in lieu of paper (or either one of their phones). 

Smoking is the perfect suicide attempt, and although I am no longer in that headspace, I like the feeling of control. Everything can kill me in this world; I might as well be in control of one of the possible ways. You might think smoking is idiocy, and to that I say yeah, probably, but nothing feels the way this does. It’s just a drug, the only difference is it’s the last great addiction left, right next to coffee. My cigarette enjoys the silence with me, without judgement. 

Over the years, I have added vaping to this repertoire of death, only because I want to smoke in bed with a book and, like I mentioned, I smoke out the attic window if I’m smoking cigarettes. Vaping is a poor replacement for the burn of cigarettes, though. It’s the smoking equivalent of “Is Pepsi okay?”, which is why this essay isn’t titled “In defense of vaping”, and why you can keep your fucking Pepsi, thank you.

(P.S. I am certain you’re wondering and the answer is yes, that therapist remained my therapist for many months after that.)