I’m starting to write this article after smoking my fourth cigarette of the week – meaning that I’m writing this whilst feeling a little bit dizzy, partially anxious/partially relaxed, a tad bit rebellious (sigh), and most definitely wired (the cup of coffee that I drank prior to smoking the cig is definitely doing its own work). But I’m also writing this article as someone who is caught in a vicious cycle of continuously trying to quit smoking (it makes my nails smell bad).
If I could psychoanalyse myself, delve into the depths of my psyche and make public all of my flaws and fallibilities, I would be able to tell you the root of my “all or nothing” tendencies, and how this mindset of mine often leads me to my own undoing. But I’m not going to do that, because I can’t, and honestly don’t have the time to intellectualise my vices. I don’t explicitly know why I have this mindset; all I know is that as a result it does often lead to my own undoing. What I am going to do instead is provide you with some context about my ugly (very cool and mysterious) smoking habit. My aim in offering myself up is the hope that you are able to do the analytical work for me, and maybe take something away from this that you can apply to yourself.
I started smoking when I was 19. I can say with a self-critical certainty that my desire to start smoking stemmed from admiring the performance of it. I thought it was cool. All the cool, mysterious, beguiling people in my life, or outside of it, smoked, and I wanted to give off the same impression. But as I progressively smoked more and more, this translated from me wanting to perform a specific social code, into a reliance on it. It became a way for me to navigate social settings. I wasn’t simply performing the act of smoking for the sake of appearance anymore. A cigarette became an accessory – an extension of my gesturing whilst I conversed, a safety blanket to hold onto. It transformed into a symbol, offering a space of quiet sociability, a respite away from the noise and heat of the inside of a club, or an exit from the occasional awkward conversation I might have found myself in.
But anything sweet, once no longer taken in small doses, turns sour. I found myself no longer restricting my desire for a “cheeky” cigarette to environments that warranted “cheekiness” (A.K.A the drunken cigarette). I was smoking too much during the daylight hours of my ordinary life. I was not a casual, social smoker anymore. So my “all or nothing” mindset began to rear its vicious head. And I felt a shift into the “or nothing.” I woke up and declared one day that that day was the day that I stopped. And at first this worked, I committed. I really and truly did, the only exception being that I didn’t commit for long (I continue to write this as I start to experience the comedown after smoking a cigarette).
Yet it’s my ability to concede and make this exception that continues to trap me in the same loop, because as a result, I am able to oscillate between the “all” and the “nothing.” This is because it became all too easy to ignore the promise I had made to myself, because how else do you reward yourself for committing to quitting smoking, other than by having another “cheeky” cigarette. I think my failure has been that I’ve swung between extremes, I’ve never been able to reconcile myself to indifference (I’m an overachiever).
So I’ve formulated a plan – as an attempt to slowly wean myself (rather than going from smoking 6 cigarettes in one evening to quitting, cold turkey, the next day) I’ve been smoking one cigarette per day for this week to finish off an old pack, and once that pack is finished, I’ll try to be done. My hope is that the drawn-out nature and restricted amount achieves a middle ground that I have lacked in previous attempts. I try to absolve my own guilty conscience with this thought: is there really anyone alive who isn’t carrying some vice of their own, who doesn’t also feel riddled with guilt over something they’ve done or are doing? If you’ve been doing the analytical work that I hoped you would, I suppose I pose the question to you of: is there anything in your life in which you’re failing to allow yourself the leniency of a middle ground?
Header Image by Charlotte Dorward (@_twostepsforward) for The Student
Second Image byTracy Ratliff (@paisley_pen_creative) for The Student
