Why I Became a Smoker: Coming Clean

It is easy to find reasons not to smoke: lung cancer; a weakening immune system; mouth and throat cancer. So why do so many people smoke? Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I know what drove me to smoking, and you might find it quite surprising.

I started smoking when I was drinking my sophomore year of college. I didn't inhale, it was just something to do when I was drunk. Anyone who smokes when they drink can tell you what a lovely combination it makes, the light-headed feel of the alcohol combined with the weight of thick smoke. But there came a point when I wasn't just smoking when I was intoxicated anymore, I was smoking on a regular basis.

When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer I felt like I was losing my mind. My mother had always been my best friend. My attachment to my mother could not be compared with my attachment to any other human being, she had always allowed me to talk to her about absolutely anything. I knew that my mother's love for me and my siblings was absolutely unconditional. I admired the sacrifices my mother had made for me when she became pregnant at 18 years old. I couldn't believe that this woman went without food so that I could eat, that she had abruptly quit partying, and that any day that she had off from her job at Wendy's was spent with me, and that she actually looked forward to spending her only day off with me. In my mind my mother was and still is a super hero. So when I found out that my super hero had contracted the family medical curse (my grandmother and great grandmother both had breast cancer) I felt like my world was collapsing, but what was most upsetting to me was not the simple fact that she had cancer but that she had just started living life for herself rather than solely for her family when she was diagnosed.

At first it was easy to tell myself that everything was going to be alright because she didn't seem that sick. However, even though it was easy to imagine our lives being normal again someday, I still had the strong urge to buy a pack of cigarettes. I know it seems like a strange reaction to finding out that your mother has cancer, wanting to buy "cancer sticks" but I felt like I needed something. Freud would make some connection between an oral fixation and a fear of losing my mother, I would chalk it up to my already anxious personality going into overdrive.

I held off the urge to smoke for six months, and I am not really sure how I did that without becoming an alcoholic or something.

Then over the summer I went home and took a job at the shop where my mother worked in the office. I felt like it was a great way to spend my summer, with my favorite person, not to mention I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her "just in case." At the beginning of the summer my mother was doing alright, she was still working and acting like herself. But over the course of the summer she became increasingly sicker, and not being able to stay awake all day, she had to stop going to work so that she would be able to nap throughout the day. This hit me so hard, going to work in the morning without her, that I started to try and escape it by hanging out with a guy I met at work and his friends. We would party on the weekends, and all his friends smoked. Before long I was no longer only smoking when I was drunk, I was smoking whenever I could find an excuse to leave the house. I found the light-headed feeling that cigarettes left me with an escape from the pain I was feeling about my mother's deteriorating health.

My mother knew I was smoking and she wasn't happy, having been a smoker for about 13 years herself, she definitely didn't want her kids smoking. But I felt like cigarettes were the one constant in my life since my mother had been diagnosed. I don't know when I am going to quit, if I don't pick a time on my own then I will quit when I decide to have kids. Whenever I do quit, my mother's memory will be my motivation, just like her illness was a catalyst for me smoking in the first place.