Addictions

Addictions
I started sneaking cigarettes when I was a teen. My adored older sister smoked and she looked so sophisticated. My father and mother puffed like the movie stars they were imitating. George Raft, Cary Grant, Marlena Deitrich, Joan Crawford...were all so glamorous. I was probably hooked on second hand smoke even before I lit my first.

I lit that first cigarette hidden by the sand dunes near Lake Michigan with the other teens hanging out at the beach all summer. I smoked in high school, sneaking out of the lunch room when the urge for nicotine became unbearable. I smoked in college...but then everyone did. At that point, I even smoked in front of my parents. I smoked at my wedding. Cigars with fake wedding bands, beautiful match books that were printed with our names and containers of cigarettes were at each table.

The only time I didn’t smoke as an adult was when I got pregnant...Thank God! , it made me sick and gave me heartburn. But right after giving birth, I lit up and threw away the Tums and my husband passed out pink cellophane wrapped cigars at the office. Our children were exposed to second hand smoke.

I tried to quit time after time...once even succeeding for a couple of years. I took one puff - - - just to test myself, hoping it would taste terrible- - - with a drink- - -at a party - - - and I was right back to the half a pack a day.

Smoking became more and more taboo. Former smokers would sneer at me. "Quitters!", I called them, jealously. I had to leave stores, movies, restaurants, parties, even our own children’s weddings- - - just to have a couple of puffs to satisfy my addiction. My daughters had already quit and I couldn’t smoke around them or my grandchildren. I was polluting the world!

When my husband was diagnosed with lung cancer - - - I QUIT! I needed patches and noshing and I gained weight, but I did it. Now, when I walk by someone smoking outside, rain, sleet or snow, I say, "Ha. I don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t need the nicotine fix. I am master of my soul!" After five years, I’m still repeating that mantra because the smoke smells good and I take a deep breath, inhale it, and keep walking.

We all know that there are many mistakes made in the medical field. The Food and Drug Administration approves and then recalls. Doctors, themselves, refer to their vocation as a "practice". Besides proscribing the wrong medications, mis-diagnosing, amputating the wrong limb, spreading fatal germs in the hospital, those humans that we have put on pedestals expound on the findings of new studies. "Coffee is bad for you. It will stunt your growth and make your heart beat too fast. Chocolate will give you pimples. Eggs raise your cholesterol. Hormones are good for you - - - they keep you young, prevent heart attacks. Wine will ruin your liver." On and on the warnings go. And then "they" say, "Oops, we made a mistake. Coffee wards off Alzheimers and Parkinsons, and dark chocolates are full of good stuff called antioxidants and eggs once in a while are fine and hormones give you cancer and red wine is the new health food." So, if the time ever comes, and the experts say, "Oops, we made a mistake. Cigarettes are good for you!" - - - I’ll be first in line at the convenience store to buy a pack.