smoke

the turning point for me was buying that pack of cigarettes. and then smoking one on the way home from the gas station. that was when i knew things were bad. sure, i had smoked before, and i think i had even bought cigarettes before, but never with the intention of smoking them immediately, without the addition of other substances, and with the expressed purpose of anxiety relief. the point is, i didn't consider myself to be a smoker and here i was smoking. it wasn't a social thing or a drug thing, it was a life thing. and that was scary.

the cigarette made me light headed -- one or more or maybe even all of the 50 carcinogenic compounds aside from the addictive nicotine was suffocating my lungs, reducing oxygen uptake by my brain. i briefly wondered if i'd make it the 3 blocks back home. "is this how it starts?" i thought. i'm too intelligent to smoke; i know exactly what it's doing to me -- i've even seen a pair of lungs blackened by years of smoking -- and yet i still feel compelled to keep puffing. but then again, there are many, many things i did which i knew to be bad for me, and yet i readily partook in them, regardless. drinking to excess, for one. eating to excess, for another. so why not smoke?

on my way into the gas station, i had caught sight of the day's headlines: "DNA use approved in gang rape case", alongside of which were pictures of two somber-looking men i could only assume to be part of the "gang". i guess my vice could be worse, i thought. at least i don't do hard drugs, or steal, or rape, or murder -- or even shop. food and cigarettes can be expensive, sure, but if you're addicted to shopping -- or gambling -- your bank account is going to be drained much quicker than if you indulge in an extra pint of ice cream here or there.

and that thought came back to me then, as i sat on my porch, finishing my cigarette. so many methods of escape, of coping. do we choose our vices, or do they choose us? is it really that simple, or is it a complex interplay of genetics, situation, and desparation? would i be stealing and shooting instead of drinking and eating if i had grown up in the 'hood? would i be shopping and doing crack if i had grown up jersey?

my cigarette done, i went back inside and returned to my desk where my "to do" list for the evening awaited me. it was anxiety over this that had prompted the cigarette purchase and smoking in the first place. i was surprised to now find the tasks effortless. it was amazing the calming effect smoking had had on me. my entire body felt relaxed, my mind was at ease, i was no longer worked up or stressed. amazing. in the days to come, i'd think back to this effect when i felt myself getting worked up or anxious. i closed my eyes and imagined those feeling of relaxation and inner peace as i took deep breaths to calm myself down. and it kinda worked. and my world didn't end, my life didn't fall apart, like i was afraid it was going to when i made the decision to smoke. in fact, smoking helped bring about a revelation, an understanding, dare i say: a breakthrough.

this instant-calming effect of smoking made me more cognizent of my anxiety: when i got anxious, why i got anxious, and what i did about it. and i was not surprised to find a correlation between feeling anxious and urges to eat. and that's when it really hit home: i use food as a drug, a drug to calm me when i'm anxious, soothe me when i'm sad, numb me when i hurt.

i knew i used food as a way to cope, but i don't think i had realized how pervasive it had become -- or just how anxious i was. breathing deeply and imagining a quiet lake in the woods works to some degree to calm me down, but identifying and logically examining the sources of my anxiety will go much farther towards calming me down and, more importantly, will make me much more powerful to combat my anxiety and prevent it in the first place. i may not be able to control all the causes of my anxiety (my boss, lab work, friends, world events, etc) but i can control how i react to them. they don't have to make a walking ball of stress. i don't have to rely on chocolate or nicotine to calm me down. i can change the way i behave.

funny how starting a new vice can lead to a revelation into how to become less reliant on an old one. i should have taken up smoking years ago...