Here we go again. The world is clean and clear and everything rosy, optimism and joie de vivre reign.
Then I light a cigarette and my well-being collapses.
I only get one chance every day. From the moment I light the first one, I know I will keep on smoking at regular intervals till bedtime.
I can feel a pain in my chest. My chest feels painful. It worries me. I worry about having a heart attack and being breathless. I would like to have more energy, more breath and feel better but I have not yet been able to stop smoking.
When I don’t smoke, the world is good, it smells nice, with bright colours, lovely sights, etc. As soon as I light a cigarette I feel a pain in my chest, it hurts me, the smoke, because it is damaging my lungs and I have been doing it for over 30 years. Roughly speaking, you could say that twenty times a day for the past 32 years I have done something to damage my lungs. The cumulative effect is appalling.
This is surely madness? Non-smokers think we smokers are mad, they cannot understand why we smoke. Most smokers don’t understand it either. It is a trap we fall into, and once we are ensnared, there is no way out.
Whether it is our bodies that crave nicotine or some part of our brains or emotional psyché that craves punishment or self-destruction, who knows. The end result is the same: we cause ourselves harm and pain.
Regularly, frequently, we breathe into our lungs a smoke that contains carcinogenic substances. Day after day, week after week, year after year. In periods of great stress we wake up in the middle of the night to do it again. Why do we do this? It is difficult to avoid the truth that in fact we do it to make money for the owners of the cigarette companies. The people who are entitled to a share in the profits of the tobacco companies are the only human beings on earth who stand to gain from me lighting my next cigarette. I certainly won’t gain, and nobody else I know will gain. In fact, it will harm each and every person I know and care about, including animals. It makes me shudder. I feel guilty at not being able to stop this destructive behaviour for the sake of other people. This is part of the most horrible sensation of all after the first one is lit, because I feel impotent, unable to stop myself, pathetic, then I go down a vertiginous spiral of self criticism which ends in self loathing which only reinforces the justification of go on yes, you may as well smoke because you don’t deserve to be healthy.
Personally, as a smoker I feel guilty about smoking because it is a filthy habit, and I feel guilty about not being able to stop, and I feel guiltily self- and over- indulgent every time I light one, and every day, when I give in and light that first one which is always the first of many, I loathe myself for giving in. My body is being damaged by the smoke and my mind is being damaged by the feeling of psychological helplessness nicotine addiction induces; it is drug dependence, and through some sort of monstrous misunderstanding I feel responsible for not being able to stop, I feel inadequate because I have not been able to stop, when in fact the responsibility lies with those who encouraged me to start in the first place, with those who packaged the cigarettes in bright, shiny packets and showed pictures of beautiful, interesting people becoming even more beautiful and more interesting because of a white short pencil-like object in their hands, and who wittingly altered the composition of the fumes they give off when lit to make it even harder for me to kick the habit.
Let’s go back to that first cigarette. The lucky few never light it, or never put it to their lips and inhale from it. They are a privileged elite. Many people don’t persevere past the first one, because the effect is so disgusting – nausea, mostly, a wrenching of the guts and tightness then light-headedness. It is probably the light-headedness of the first cigarettes that convince us it is an exciting thing to do, to smoke a cigarette, and it makes us want to keep going. Ironically, the effect doesn’t last, and we are left with the unpleasant consequences, tightness in the chest, the shock on the lungs, cold hands and feet, the bad breath, breathlessness, etc., to mention only the physiological inconveniences.
Yet we keep going, generation after generation.
My 14 year old son just got out of bed at midday, had his breakfast, and came into the office to ask me for a cigarette. I scream at him. I feel very guilty about him starting smoking, about not being able to stop to set an example. My attitude towards him swings wildly from resignation at him having been hooked, in which case I feel obliged to give him cigarettes, poor soul, its not his fault, and anger at his stupidity at starting – how on earth can you smoke when you don’t have a job and can’t pay for them? 5 euros a day = 35 euros a week = 1,820 a year = 72,800 from age 20 to 60. Incredibly, that means €72,800 each smoker pays to destroy his/her health.
Tuesday
I have already lit my first cigarette today, and taken a draw. It made me feel horrible. Panic. It makes me panic. Just before I lit it (2nd puff) I felt I could cope with life, but when the smoke and the nicotine hits me I instantly panic and a feeling that is the opposite of well-being takes over. It’s winter and cold and so I can’t open all the windows all the time and the house constantly reeks of old smoke. That’s disgusting. It is demeaning and horrible (3rd draw).
Even when I don’t smoke or haven’t smoked now I feel a pain in my chest. A constant, dull, unpleasant pain. It worries me. I have smoked for 30 years and this is when it takes its toll. I love fresh air and walking in the countryside (hot flush – the cigarette gives me the equivalent of a hot flush, my face tingles and burns. I feel hot and sweaty. Tightness is also an unpleasant symptom.)
So is this madness? It is certainly a kind of madness. Self-destructive behaviour. There seems to be no reason for it other than habit (dependence, addiction). When I don’t smoke I start to get really angry at everything… then I smoke and it calms me down somehow but at what price? At the price of my health and my peace of mind.
I am more and more afraid of the pain in my chest. I feel an increasing desire to stop smoking. I think psychoanalysis must be working because I am able to use the word desire. Still I don’t really contemplate it. I have a packet and a half somewhere. I know I’m going to smoke later on, even if it will feel like firing a gun at my chest. I feel the lancinante pain in the chest, the stabbing pain in my chest and it reminds me of the cold burning my throat and my chest being all inflamed when I was a child. Agony. The agony of icy air and snow and white knuckles, so cold, and the wind stabbing and knees burning, burning red, because you were wearing a skirt and not trousers, though thin trousers were not much protection either. All your tubes and respiratory system all clogged up and raw and painful and sensitive and coughing is really agony and the cold cold air with the ice and the pond and the sharp prick of holly (red berry, yellow berry) and mistletoe as white as the driven
- So this is where you’re living, now?
That’s all very well, and I fear I shall not be able to cope with Christmas this year, I fear I shall have a nervous breakdown with the emotional overwhelmingness of it as the questions reel in my head
Why?
Why what?
Why -
· do I know I will inevitably light a cigarette today
· will I smoke the first cigarette today
· do I smoke even though I can feel it is harming me
· do I keep on lighting up and hating myself for it
· do I hate myself for something I obviously can’t control?
Another morning. I feel good. I want to put some essential menthol oil on my nose to heighten my awareness of my breathing. Last night I felt a pain in the left side of my chest. Every now and then, I feel a pain between my shoulder blades, or in the middle of my chest.
I feel great. I go to make myself some grilled cheese on toast. When it is ready, I make some tea, and the taste and smell of the cheese is very present, and I pour the boiling water on the teabag (so far so good) and then I pour some milk into the cup and as I pour the milk into the cup I imagine myself lighting a cigarette. I haven’t even had my breakfast. I am annoyed at this occurrence. I feel like a prisoner. I can’t escape. “Cup of tea” is connected to “cigarette” in my memory/head/brain and breaking free of such an omnipresent monster seems well nigh impossible or at the very least slightly hopeless.
And yet I know I can do it. Other people have done it. My health is suffering, I am inflicting real pain on myself, plus the worry and anxiety of self-harm. I know I can give up this self-destructive habit, and live a more pleasant life. All I have to do is find a way to work through the irritation that’s set in – no, that doesn’t even last long, the irritation that sets in when you haven’t smoked for a while. I stopped for 2 years once. The problem is the absoluteness of it. Total abstinence. It only takes one cigarette and you are back on the slippery road to 20 a day.
Coughing up thick lumps of phlegm. Kidding myself that it’s a good thing because it shows that my lungs are healthy enough to clean themselves and throw out all the gunge that accumulates, as if I was saying to myself your body is so sturdy and strong it can cope, it can get rid of all the phlegm. But the phlegm is only the result of the paralysis of the cilia, and does not constitute the real damage to the bronchia. The phlegm means that you have smoked little enough to allow the elevator to work again, to catch up on the backlog, but as you are about to light up once more all that gunge will fall back down again and it will be back to square one, except that in addition to having your bronchial alveoli full of rotting phlegm, all the carcinogenic substances in the cigarette smoke, including the tar, will have hit your lungs again a further twenty times in every twenty four hour period.
I could succeed if only I could stop smoking.
I could be happy if only I could stop smoking.
I would feel so much better if only I could stop smoking.
I would feel better if I could stop smoking.
I would have more lung power and I would cough less; I would cough up less sticky phlegm like sperm.
My house would smell better if I could stop smoking.
My breath would smell better if I stop smoking.
I would wake up more easily if I stop smoking.
I will feel much better when I stop smoking.
In the meantime, here I am again in the magic of the “decisive” moment; I’ve just had lunch and am thinking about my first cigarette. I haven’t had it yet. All morning – in fact, since last night, late in the evening, as I was preparing to have my last cigarette before bed, I have been floating on the bouncy feeling that I can stop today. Today will be the day when I won’t hammer my bronchia with tar and acrid carcinogenic substances that make my head reel and my soul shudder. Why would anyone want to do themselves that much harm?
I think of the passage I read in Lacan last night that related to just this. “Car qui ne sait, à la vérité, que la reconnaissance la plus parfaite des conditions du bien n’empêchera jamais quiconque de se ruer dans son contraire ?" Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, p 212 (Knowing what is good for you never stopped anyone from doing the exact opposite).
When I chose the title of this blog, I thought “Vita Brevis Ars Longa” meant life is short and art is long – i.e. takes a long time and lasts a long time. The whole motto is: 
