DOSE:

smoked

Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

It all started about six years ago. When I was in university I had a friend who seemed to be a musical genius but would constantly be smoking cigarettes even when there was no occasion for it.

Up until that point I had only smoked cigars when I was in junior college, once in a while, only
Because I remembered my dad smoked them when I was growing up. To make a long story short, I had grown up mostly with an aversion to tobacco in all its forms because of the well-known health dangers. Yet for all the dangers I was aware of what could be deemed a conversation with tobacco in a sense snuck up on me before I realized how much time had passed and I found myself still smoking. Not constantly, only sparingly because what caused my initial aversion to tobacco was definitely nausea and vomiting.

I think I can most illustrate this by briefly mentioning my family trip to San Francisco when I was about 20 years old. All I remember was smoking a small cigar in the downtown area while my parents were busy shopping in a mall. Somehow I had believed that all the mellow cigars I had smoked in my life until that point were basically no big deal and so another small cigar in the heart of the city would be fine. From what I remembered in that instance, I had accidentally inhaled some of the smoke and this strange freight-train feeling snuck up on me. My parents had finished shopping and were driving me to the hotel when I was gradually hit with the worst nausea imaginable, combined with a sort of motion sickness from the traffic. The only solution seemed to be to have the window rolled down and my face in the wind hyperventilating. Definite sensations of needing to vomit but not wanting to because I hate vomiting.

Then my tobacco journey all hit home one day when my chain-smoking friend and I were on a mushroom trip together, I had gone into that trip feeling like I needed to be away from all other substances like tobacco. That's when my aversion to tobacco was at its peak since I was taking a course in college about the dangers of tobacco. When we were at this perfect scenic spot near a picturesque river my friend lit up a cigarette which threw me a bit into a bad trip. We spent the rest of the time arguing about it and my friend finally said he was going home after a few minutes of trying to convince him not to smoke. That was, then, my most notable past experiences with tobacco. I had quit for about 6 months and then even when I had sworn off cigarettes, which I had moved on to from cigars, I still found myself smoking even when I knew it was wrong.

Fast forward to today, I've been rationalizing it by telling myself I will only smoke sparingly and keep notes about how many I smoke, the exact number to be sure that I don't make a habit of smoking too much, since that usually just makes me sick to the point of vomiting and feeling like I'll die just from the nausea. So I switched ultimately to a light natural cigarette.

I started to notice in the past year that I would convince myself that I was enjoying a cigarette and so right after I put that one out I instantly consider smoking another right after even though I realize at the same time that it's having negative effects on my body. Although I'm not at the point of smoking packs for day I feel like it's still the same insidious process at work. After 1 cigarette I feel invigorated, tingly , and somewhat racy and that fades into a slightly relaxing type of buzz, perhaps like Nesbitt's Paradox. I've become more fearful of what I'm doing to my body even with smoking so few cigarettes that I'm throwing out half the pack, smoking only half of the cigarette, and tapering down from nine approaching something like up to 5 half cigarettes about 2 times a week. I have also noticed though that there's this weird feeling that when I have the cigarettes I don't want them and when I don't have them I want them. It is extremely perplexing. I think perhaps my awareness of these observations may be all I really need to finally quit for good.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 109315
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Oct 8, 2016	Views: 6,898
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Tobacco - Cigarettes (266) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11)