Patches, sprays, gum, cold turkey, prescription drugs. None of them worked.
Monday being World No Tobacco Day led me to consider my war with smoking.
I hated how stupid it felt to keep on smoking. But still.
Being stinky, sucking on various asthma pumps and taking tons of antibiotics for constant bouts of bronchitis, laryngitis, tonsillitis and, some years, borderline pneumonia, couldn’t sway tobacco’s grip.
Anxiety at the death-rattle wheeze as I lay my head to sleep disappeared the moment the alarm went off. Bed was abandoned, accompanied by great hacking coughs, to go and have a smoke.
Mentally, there was much cussing and wishing the fleas of a thousand camels would infest the armpits of those who grew rich by killing me slowly.
I read every “how to quit” publication; called a helpline (only once because it just rang); hung on the words of everyone who was willing to tell me how they did it.
I stopped going out because it was too annoying, inconvenient and even embarrassing to leave the event for a fag, mostly alone or with one other pariah. And then return, smelling disgusting to all the non-smokers.
I often thanked the gods that I had become addicted at this level to cigarettes, and not any of the drugs that cause social devastation.
Through all this personal warfare, the one thing that infuriated me more than the fat cat tobacco folk were the smoke police.
When the new laws were first introduced, their enactment stirred my inner rebel. The tone was “you wouldn’t listen to us, so now we’re deciding for you”. Principal to unruly Grade Rs. Wise ones to fools. There was, as I recall, no hint of recognition that quitting smoking is as hard as getting off heroin (apparently), no support or guidance for those targeted. No understanding of just how hard it can be.
It was the same tone at the start of hard lockdown.
Which brings me to e-cigs and plans in the, er, pipe-line, to regulate them too.
No problem: we shouldn’t put stuff in our bodies that cause us harm, and we need to know what is in the products we choose from. Under-18s, like with alcohol, should not be able to buy them. There’s another full column here about how well that works…
For 15 months before the hard lockdown (when crime was done, but I take the 5th and will reveal nothing) I had e-cigged. When e-cigs went back on sale, I was first in line and the bank was pushed to the limit for stocks as siege mentality took hold.
I knew I would not survive another ban – the coughing, wheezing, inability to breathe, asthma pumps, smell (Okay, stink) – all hit back with increased ferocity. Shortness of breath, a sign of Covid or a heart attack, was constant. Anxiety added to the habit, and unlike having a puff or two of an e-cig, you have to finish a whole cigarette because otherwise it’s a waste. I was death waiting to happen.
My plea to the government is to treat adults like adults and let smokers/vapers choose.
Perhaps your vapid attempts at alcohol abuse education could do with some focus instead.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday