DOSE:

5

smoked

Tobacco - Cigarettes

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

109 lb

I have always had an addictive personality. Any time I try something, I feel compelled to do it over and over again. When I was fourteen, I was in high school and had started a band with a few of my friends. One day we went over to our guitarist’s house and all my band mates were smoking cigarettes. He asked if I wanted to try one, a Doral menthol, and after seeing everyone else doing it, I decided to try it.

I remember not understanding how to light it. My band mates told me that I needed to suck in while I was lighting the end. I eventually gave up, and my guitarist lit it for me and then I began smoking it. I started smoking regularly, but I didn’t inhale. In the mornings my mom would drop me off at school early because she was a teacher at another school, so I would go behind the school band parking lot into a wooded area we named “Pot Smoker Land” (we called it that because my friends and other people smoked pot there a lot), and smoke my cigarettes. Because I was underage, I would have to give money to my friends and they would buy them for me. At the time cigarettes only cost a little over $3, but I would give them a five dollar bill for their trouble. Finally one morning I figured out how to inhale the smoke, and I got a great buzz, like my body was totally relaxed and I felt great. That was the beginning of my addiction to tobacco.

I began smoking around seven or more cigarettes in “Pot Smoker Land” while I waited for school to start. I tried other things for the first time back there, but always smoked my cigarettes because I thought they made me look cool. I was the singer in my band and took voice lessons, so when I told my voice instructor Mr.G about my tobacco habit he got pissed off because he didn’t want me ruining my voice. After my freshman year didn’t go so well, my parents sent me to an all girls Catholic school for my sophomore year. After I had made friends, I started riding to school in the morning with a fellow smoker who lived in the general area I did. We would chain smoke on our way to school, then wait all day until school got out to smoke some more. Towards the end of my first semester, I ended up getting mono because my friends and I always shared our drinks and food, so I had to leave school for over a month. Classes there were very competitive, so when I couldn’t catch up, I left in the second semester to the school I went to for freshman year.

I continued my smoking habits, and found a new school over the summer I could go to that would help me earn all my necessary credits and graduate early. This new school had breaks, so students could leave whenever they wanted as long as they completed to necessary twenty hours a week. If I wanted to go on break since I didn’t have a car yet, I would walk over to a convenient shop and because I became friends with the owner and the workers, they would let me smoke inside whenever I wanted. My friends still had to buy my cigarettes because I was underage, but I never had a problem getting the packs I needed. I had been smoking a pack a day for a long time by then and continued to do so. I still thought smoking cigarettes was the cool thing to do and was beginning to become addicted.

One of my friends at that school was on adderall, and let me try one to see if it would help me. I took one and started doing my work super fast, getting even better grades, but it made me want to smoke really bad. After talking to my psychiatrist (I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was fourteen, so I had been on meds for that) she put me on adderall and then klonopin when I started getting anxiety. I started chain smoking again because of the adderall, but usually never went over a pack a day.

Fast forward four years, and I was nineteen and incredibly addicted to cigarettes. I had massive cravings, and would get withdrawal symptoms if I went too long without one. Cigarette prices had gone up, and now they were nearly five dollars. But I didn’t care, I needed to smoke, or so I thought. I had lots of other drug use, but cigarettes were becoming a big problem. I started getting acne more frequently, the fingers I used to smoke were yellowing, whenever I coughed I felt nasty things in my chest, and I was unable to run because I would get incredible pains in my sides.

In January of 2009, I went to a treatment center for my eating disorder and found out that I wasn’t going to be able to smoke there. I had tried quitting before with the gum and patches and it had failed to work, but now I was forced to really quit. I stayed on the 21 mg patch during my stay there. After I got out, even though the cravings were much less intense, I went back to smoking. It tasted disgusting at first and didn’t even give me a buzz that the first cigarette after a long time without smoking usually gives, but after a few days, I got back to the rhythm of smoking, though a pack now lasted me two to three days.

Throughout my life as a smoker, my parents had pleaded with me to quit, they both had never smoked and couldn’t understand why I had even started in the first place, having not grown up with it. I thought, hey I’m smoking less, you guys should be fucking proud of me! I continued smoking until I started going to college for the Fall 2009 semester. The school I go to is a tobacco free campus, and even though I would sneak off to smoke, if I got caught the police would definitely give me a ticket. I thought about the consequences of smoking, how it had affected my life, so in early September 2009, I got on the patch and made my last ditch effort. On a particularly stressful day a week later, I wanted a fucking cigarette. I ripped my patch off and called to beg my dad to tell me where my cigarettes were because I had given them to him to hide. He pleaded with me not to smoke, but eventually told me and I went outside to smoke. Since I had only taken the patch off a few minutes earlier, I had a lot of nicotine in my system, and when I smoked it tasted completely disgusting and nasty. So I waited a while and put a new patch on, renewed to commit to not smoking. And I was able to not smoke for over two more weeks. Then today after not having a patch on for over twelve hours, I smoked a cigarette and got completely sick, but totally buzzed. I had that nice buzzed feeling pretty strongly, but then nausea overcame me and I lost my breakfast in the toilet.

I think I might smoke another one, but then I’m going back to the patch, because life without cigarettes is worth so much more than having cigarettes in my life. I know how difficult it is to quit, and how addictive my personality is, but I want to continue down the path to become a non smoker. I might give in every once in a while, but my goal is after today to never give in again.

Exp Year: 2004-2009	ExpID: 81467
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 14
Published: Dec 12, 2016	Views: 4,600
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Tobacco - Cigarettes (266) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), Various (28)