St. Nic

I smoked a bit recently, and more than I would have liked, once I woke up the next morning wishing I were dead. I used to smoke, though, and less than I would have liked at the time, as I would have, were it possible, smoked in class, at yoga, at the symphony, in the shower, and while asleep. Now, by contrast, I smoke perhaps a cigarette or two a month, if the situation presents itself and I feel like it.

I didn't grow up smoking, or even around smokers. The only smokers at boarding school were what seemed to me frighteningly mature European voluptuaries with recklessly free-style hair and a penchant for wool vests, and louche Americans whose older sisters brought them drugs for their birthdays. Later, though, once I was married, I would keep a pack of cigarettes in a sealed plastic bag in the freezer, and once every couple of months take one out and smoke it while cleaning house. Sometimes my husband and I would each have one, walking around the lake or sitting at table after dinner. I didn't know how to inhale, but the act of it was pleasurable, and I liked the smell.

Once my husband turned gay and I moved to Greece, it was a bit different. In Greece, smoking it not merely encouraged, it is nearly enforced. My first memorable Greek smoking experience was being offered a cigarette in a bank by the teller as consolation for a lengthy but inexplicable wait. I gleefully (I'm smoking in a bank! I'm smoking in a bank!) accepted both the cigarette and a light off his Zippo, and felt dangerous and sophisticated and almost truly Hellenic myself. I wished Veronica Lake or Alan Ladd could have been there to see that I now could wait for a train as fashionably as they could.

My brands of choice were Gauloises and Kiretsiler, both very spicy, rich, and aromatic. You can't get Kiretsiler outside Greece, and these days in North America you have to go to Canada to get Gauloises, but those were simpler times, and smokier. I eventually learned to inhale, but I figured it was unlikely I would become addicted, as being attached to, or consumed by, things, was never one of my especial weaknesses. Eventually I did, but it took a long time and I enjoyed both before and after. I never felt much of a 'rush,' but perhaps that was because with not inhaling for so long, the amount of nicotine I was receiving very gradually built up as my smoking expertise developed.

Any arousing aspects seemed more to come from the physicality of smoking, not what was actually being inhaled. I didn't like to feel any kind of intoxication, and would always eschew pain medications after surgeries, so that suited me well. I knew there was nicotine, and nicotine was some kind of mild stimulant, but so was caffeine, and that didn't seem to be a big concern for most of the people who loved coffee, as evidenced by the overall lack of ruined espresso junkies in business suits begging for Change for a Venti Please outside Starbucks.

At the same time, I knew that cigarettes were implicated in heart disease, emphysema, lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, asthma, sinusitis, high blood pressure, COPD, digestive problems, dental problems, circulation problems, arterial sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and just about everything else except Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, with regard to which there exists an inverse association. But, we are all going to die of something, and while smoking-related deaths are among the more ghastly and prolonged ways of accomplishing this, I would have no ethical or logistical problem with using my last Social Security check to buy a Glock and avoid Stage Four of anything, particularly since I would be, if not of sound body, at least of sound mind at that point, owing to nicotine's anti-Alzheimer's properties.

So that was fine. I was never a talented smoker, not only remaining ignorant of the arcana of smoke-ring blowing and the esoteric 'French Inhale,' but continuing always to look vaguely ill-at-ease in both embouchure and grip. Nonetheless, I persisted in my hobby, partly because there is nothing like a smoke break when you are going to school 'double full time,' doing an internship, and working thirty hours a week. (And maybe the stimulant action didn't hurt, either, but again, I didn't actually notice it.)

Then, I read about smoking and dopamine. Basically, smoking both inhibits dopamine uptake and promotes the release of more dopamine -just like the clearly psychotropic drugs which had always scared me. Certainly I had heard the oft-recited 'smoking is as/more addictive than heroin/cocaine,' but I didn't think of it as getting me high like that. As I viewed it, I had an addiction to a fairly innocuous drug. There was no euphoria, no distortion of reality, no belief, not even once, that I could fly or pick, unassisted, a good muni fund. Frankly, I didn't even feel more energized after a cigarette. The side effects of the method of delivery, smoking, were odious, to be sure, but the drug itself, nicotine, was not a concern.

Dopamine, by contrast, is a big deal. It is a hormone and a neurotransmitter, and involved in learning, pleasure, reward-oriented behaviors, memory, attention, desire -- in brief, cognition and desire/emotion. As that sunk in, it was patent that I was the same as the cocaine or meth junky. I may not be feeling as high as her or him, but my brain is doing exactly the same things in anticipating and receiving the drug. Studies showed smoker's dopamine levels spike from just seeing a lighter, or even a stepped-on cigarette. Far more so if the smoker's nicotine level is low. Then, when the reward is given, the first puff is smoked, there is another, higher wave of dopamine caressing the smoker's brain.

Which repelled me, so I quit. The first day was hard, because of course you think, Oh, I'm doing X; I should light a cigarette. But then the next day you can look back and see that you survived, and quite handily at that, blow-drying your hair or painting your toenails without one, so it's fine. Moreover, you can answer any momentary But I - with a factual Nooo, you don't, because you don't smoke, darling, because you have proven that you don't, because a smoker would have already had five that day before you started that abortive whinge, so shut up and get on with it, already.