I Think I'm Quitting Smoking This Week

Maybe...

[lighter clicks]

Season 1, episode 6 of Breaking Bad opens with Walter White teaching his high school chemistry class:

“Chemical reactions involve change on two levels: matter and energy. When a reaction is gradual, the change in energy is slight. I mean, you don't even notice the reaction is happening. For example, when rust collects on the underside of a car.

But if a reaction happens quickly, otherwise harmless substances can interact in a way that generates enormous bursts of energy… And the faster reactants, i. e. , explosives - and fulminated mercury is a prime example of that - the faster they undergo change, the more violent the explosion.” 

In the context of the episode, it can be read as Walt referring to himself as the “otherwise harmless” substance, with the monologue also foreshadowing him use of fulminated mercury as a negotiating tactic. Taken in context with the entire show, the episodes themselves -  which almost always feature a MacGyver-esque “science-your-way-out-of-this” plot device - are the small, rapid changes meant to distract us from a much greater transformation: like rust on a car, the overarching narrative arc of Breaking Bad was the slow and gradual deterioration of Walter White from the anxious, nerdy chemist, into the terrifying One Who Knocks. In the early seasons, when Walt is still dealing with terminal cancer, it’s much easier to defend his decision to start cooking meth as a way of providing for his family. This is virtually impossible by the end of the show as he reveals himself to be the true villain.

I watched it. It was good. El Camino was fine but not really necessary. “Baby Blue” by Badfinger slaps.

I’m saying this as way to explain how addiction doesn’t always happen immediately, it often creeps up over time. It isn’t until we stop and take notice of the change that has already occurred that we start to realize: “Ah, shit.” 

My first cigarette was given to me behind a hockey arena at a concert I played high school. I was 16, surrounded by friends, and along with the alcohol, the Belmont I accepted made the rural Ontario winter a little more tolerable. The idea of actually of developing an addiction felt far off, and to this day I am still what you would call a “light” or “social” smoker, (around 5 a day, maybe a pack a week, more if I’m drinking). I used to frame it as: “I’m not addicted to smoking, just standing outside bars and leaving social situations.”

In university, I made plenty of friends from going to the Butt Huts outside the residences or sitting on the weather-beaten couches that littered the porches of the student ghetto. We were all there to get away from the noise going on inside, looking for some kind of solace in a world we had been just been thrown into. This was our taking of communion where we burned our little white torches with names like Player, Next, or Classic. As we huddled together for warmth against the bitter winds of time, we looked for a way to step away from the crowd without having to feel alone.

Two years later, I realized that I had smoked every day for a year. I was smoking Viceroys at the time (a friend showed them to me and they were cheap), and then that Mac Demarco song came out. For whatever stupid reason, I still get defensive over saying I was smoking Viceroys before he wrote his ode to them. Hearing the warbled opening chord while smoking in the bedroom of my student house, I remember thinking:  “Oh man, I’m never quitting now.”

It felt like fate.

[lighter clicks and I think about how Mac Demarco doesn’t smoke anymore]

When it comes to drug use, I’m what you would call boring. I smoked plenty of weed in my late teens and early 20s, never used any psychedelics, and I’ve done cocaine a handful of times (which I should add is fucking gross). Now, I stick to cigarettes and alcohol: a practice I like to think of as being “New York Sober”. 

I’ve been on-and-off for some time. Before the pandemic, I was on tour with my band, ingesting nicotine at levels high enough to give a horse a migraine (travelling is a trigger for me). I bought a Juul, tins of Skoal (I’m from rural Ontario), and of course, any brand of cigarette that isn’t available in Canada (oh, the thrill of a meeting someone who’s just returned from overseas and comes bearing a pack of Camel Crushes). Touring was stressful so coming home felt like opportunity for me to relax and quit. I came back, was slapped in the face with a project deadline, and immediately found myself in a 7-11 saying “Next Blue. Small King.”

At the beginning of the panini, without the social pressure of having to leave my apartment, I didn’t have any cravings. It wasn’t until the summer that I started bumming darts again, an instinctual reaction to the practice of “hanging out with people”. I was at the Toronto Black Lives Matter protest in what felt like the biggest crowd I had ever been in, overwhelmed by the tsunami of humanity that surrounded me, I thought to myself: “Fuck it. I need to burn something”, and bummed a cig.

I’ve listened to (the famous) Easy Way To Stop Smoking on audiobook twice, and yes, it has worked for me. For those who haven’t read it, it’s an effective way to stop, but only if you are actually willing to quit. That aside, even the book itself will tell you that plenty of those who are successful will still relapse, and as anyone who works in addiction services will tell you: relapse is a part of the recovery process, which is lifelong.

Those who have never smoked will ask what the attraction is, and anyone who’s quit will understand their confusion. After quitting, you start to realize that all this time you’ve smelled like shit, your chest constantly felt like there was kitten sitting on it, and you had a lack of energy that (almost) felt like having depression.

However, for many of us who smoke, this feeling is not entirely unpleasant.

The most embarrassing thing about smoking is that you’re willing to feel like shit in exchange for the privilege being this “special type of person”. The bohemian drifter, the drunken poet, the romantic intellectual: The person who sees the world for what it is who’s mind is rich with filth and wisdom. It’s a passport to the underworld.

As I write this I imagine someone reading that telling me: “Yeah, you’re entering the underworld because you’re going to be dead”. 

I then roll my eyes, light a cigarette, and promptly tell this imaginary person to shut the fuck up.

Let me be. I am practicing what the Buddhist’s call vipassana. I am destroying the illusion of the Self and as I attempt to achieve Nirvana. I am a radically indifferent, apathetic, and cynical person; but above all, I am enlightened.

I am sitting in my car, listening to Roger Miller, enjoying a cigarette.

[Lighter Clicks]

In Easy Way…, Allen Carr will tell you that there are no benefits to smoking, which isn’t really true. As someone with ADHD, it actually forces me to stop my periods of hyper-focus and actually take breaks. Anyone who’s worked in a restaurant will know that most service industry jobs won’t let you take breaks unless you smoke; studies have shown it may delay or event prevent the onset of Parkinson’s disease, which my father struggled with towards the end of his life. Ane yes, it has allowed me meet plenty of new people. If you want to be realistic about it, there are “benefits”, but the pros do not outweigh the cons. If it has any “benefits”, they’re just all done in bad faith. 

I hesitate to describe myself as a person who struggles with addiction given that it feels incredibly narcissistic to compare my struggle of smoking less than a pack-a-day with someone who’s dependent on opioids. However, listening to people talk about sobriety (physiological aspects of addiction aside), addiction is rooted in how you relate to yourself, not so much the substance. It’s the practice of endlessly filling in a hole that never goes away. It allows you avoid dealing with the underlying issues that drive you to use, shifting your anxieties from many, into one.

[lighter clicks]

Addiction is the square peg that we jam into the last of our round holes (I’m not re-writing that). While it’s easy to admit that this doesn’t work, the real challenge is knowing that the hole can never actually be filled. Niko Stratis wrote in her excellent blog post, “I Am Thinking About Smoking Right Now”:

… I thought about smoking every day. I felt shame, reluctance, and acceptance. I accepted my desire to smoke as I did my desire to drink, my desire for drugs, and my other addictions. These are just parts of my life that I cannot run from or escape. What matters is how I choose to live with their persistent nature.

I read this post a year ago and found myself nodding along. While I hope this doesn’t come off as labelling those who struggle with addiction as entitled or “choosing” to use (there are many different factors that contribute to addiction), I was struck about the idea of how one chooses to live with their addictions. Making decisions is a pain the ass because it means referring to yourself as an authority. It means liking yourself enough to care about what you actually desire as opposed to what you are being told you should desire. It means thinking about your decision and taking responsibility for its effects. It means seeing yourself as someone who doesn’t deserve to suffer for every one of your mistakes. It means treating yourself like a person that you are responsible for helping (something I first read in Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life, a fact which annoys me to this day).

I’d be lying if I said I never found smoking pleasurable, but outside of smoking with others, the urge to light up doesn’t necessarily come from any sense of pleasure. I smoke when I’m anxious because it lets me stop thinking, and I smoke when I’m depressed in order to bask in my depression. Writing this, I tried to add: “I smoke when I’m happy because…” and realized I couldn’t finish the sentence. No one takes a cigarette break from their own contentment, and if they do, it’s because they uncomfortable with the thought of being content i.e. If you are not currently punishing yourself for being the Big Bad Person that no one else knows you really are, something starts to feel off.

The hardest decision any of us can make is to show up as we truly are. I’ve set my quit date for today (4/21) and I am now dreading how supposedly annoying I’ll become once I am filled with the moral righteousness of living a smoke-free life. With a set of clean lungs, I will step into the light and walk amongst the living, no longer able to disappear into a grey of haze of “fuck you”. These are the things I think to myself as I finish off this pack of American Spirits and wait for my quit day, wondering if this is really the last time, or just another break from a long abusive relationship between me and myself. 

Here’s hoping.

[lighter clicks]