10 Years No Smoking

Today marks the 10th anniversary for both Maria and I for quitting smoking. I repost this blog entry from 2012 because what I wrote then still holds.

"Today, August 12, marks the 6th anniversary for Maria and I not smoking. We began the process of weaning ourselves from this pointless addiction in 2006, pasting nicotine patches to our skin, throwing away cigarettes and cigarette paraphenalia, following the instructions I found on the web for successful cessation.

I am so pleased about this. I am inordinately proud. It is strange to glory in a negative accomplishment, ceasing a practice that should never have begun, but I do anyway. I feel like the governor called with a stay of execution, like school ended early, like I have been issued a get out of jail free card. If nothing else, I now have more money to spend on things like musical equipment. My cigarette habit cost in the thousands of euros per year. I am also free of the necessity of going out in the snow, the rain, late at night seeking tobacco. My fingers and teeth are no longer yellow. My clothes don’t smell like an ashtray. My kisses are sweet.

Tobacco addiction, like most chemical addictions is a plot to enslave us. The producers of addictive drugs seek to control our bodies and minds and to appropriate our resources to fund their own lust for wealth and power. It is the ultimate irony that tobacco companies now seek to addict the ‘rebel’ element in society by implanting messages all over the mass culture that smoking is for the hip, the intelligent, those who think for themselves, when it is precisely those people they seek to enslave and eliminate from society."

photo saskia lupini