PERSONALITY FEATURE: THE SOCIAL SMOKER
What makes one addicted to smoking? Is it the chemicals and satisfaction one feels after puffing the cigarette? Or does one smoke just to fit in? Let us step out of our comfort zone and look at things from a different perspective with Jeremy as he brings us into his world and his struggles as a social smoker.
Jeremy, 19, struggles between his personal beliefs and the norms of society. Unfortunately, due to excessive peer pressure, he eventually succumbed into society's cruel temptation. They say, some habits are hard to cultivate, while others are hard to break. For him, smoking was somewhere in between those lines.
To Jeremy, smoking is instinctive. The cigarette fits smoothly between his fingers just as it is designed to be held, to be touched. Then right when he lights it, the very soft crackling of burning tobacco speaks to him like a whisper. Next, as he inhales the cigarette, it fills his lungs with the familiar peaty scotch taste. It burns his lungs and makes it feel a bit tight yet alive, just as it should. Finally, he exhales and starts to puff out cloud-like shaped smoke from his mouth and nose.
“Every time I do that, I feel like a dragon. It makes me feel cool too,” he says as he draws the cigarette back to his lips.
Till the end of the cigarette, Jerermy enjoys and savours each puff that he takes. However, as much as he enjoys it, he believes that too much of a good thing will be a bad thing after all. But how can smoking possibly be a good thing?
“Personally, as an awkward person, I feel less awkward when I have something in my hand. When I smoke, I am able to talk to someone and then take a hit from the cigarette as they take their turn to talk. It's like going out to coffee, when one person talks, the other can take a sip of coffee and keep going back and forth,” Jeremy explains.
Thus, that is one of the reasons that he calls himself a social smoker. He doesn’t smoke alone. To him, if he was going to poison his lungs, he’d rather do it with a friend to make the whole experience worthwhile.
“In addition, sharing a cigarette is the perfect length for a conversation. It is just long enough to get into something interesting, but not so long that you're not stuck in the conversation forever. When the cigarette's done, you have an excuse to get out of the conversation.”
According to Jeremy, the taste and smell of cigarettes is an acquired taste, like beer or coffee or wine. For example, the first time when one tastes coffee, it's so bitter that you have to put in a ton of sugar and cream just to get it down. But eventually, you can take away the sugar and cream and start appreciating the flavours that hide behind the bitterness. It's the same way with cigarettes. What smells awful to others is sweet and flavourful to cigarette smokers. The taste of a cigarette can be delicious on the tongue and the smoke can be delightful.
The public education campaigns and efforts to raise awareness of the negative effects have been effective to the extent that even the cigarette packaging have the warning label on it. As aware as he is to the dangers of smoking, he believes that whatever he does, it's his choice and he is willing to bear whatever the consequence may be.
