Original image courtesy of r3v || cls
I started smoking when I was sixteen years old. At the time I was convinced that I was young and invincible, despite the fact that I had proof of the dangers of cigarette smoking living with me in the form of my lung cancer ridden Grandmother. Truth be told the reason I started smoking is even stupider than the act of smoking itself. I liked a girl. She didn’t like me back. She hated smokers and I was convinced that I would “show her” by picking up the habit. Apparently being stinky, having yellow teeth, spending money I didn’t have, and significantly increasing my chances of dying due to any number of horrible diseases was the perfect way to get revenge. I’m surprised I didn’t follow up by huffing spray paint. That would have really showed her.
I have, in the course of the last twenty years, stopped smoking several times. The last time I did so was in February of this year, and while I have slipped up and had a few cigarettes in the months that have passed on the whole I have remained smoke free. Regardless of the fact that I’ve gone through it several times, though, quitting has never been easy. There are many situations in which I simply want to smoke, and there are physical symptoms of withdrawal that I go through as well. Those symptoms have included the inability to concentrate, shakes, extreme headaches, and intense irritability (the latter being so extreme that in several cases my significant other and I got into fights that almost led to the end of our relationship during periods in which we were both suffering from nicotine withdrawal).