I started smoking at the end of my spring semester of my freshman year of college. To this day, I cannot tell you what drove me to start. All I know is that one day I decided that I wanted to start smoking. So I went to a gas station and bought three packs of cigarettes. I suppose that my past self knew that one day, this would grow into a full-fledged addiction. I started smoking a few cigarettes a day and slowly it had increased to anywhere between five and a whole pack in a twenty-four hour period. As my addiction has developed, I have learned more and more about myself through this process.

When I first started smoking, people would often times come up to me in public and ask me, “Do you know that smoking is bad for you?” To which I always replied, “Yes.” I never understood why someone would think that I was smoking cigarettes without the knowledge that they could one day cause me some form of medical issue that may or may not lead to my death. We live in an age where everyone knows that smoking is bad for you so this has always caused me to wonder why no one ever asked me why I smoke instead of asking me if I knew it was bad for me.

I smoke for several reasons. The first is something that I had never thought about until I took Psychology of Human Development with a professor who liked to be referred to as “Brother Kunkel.” He used to say that “people smoke to remind themselves that they can breathe.” It became apparent that not many people in our class understood what he meant by that. I took it to mean that people smoke in order to remind themselves that they are alive and that although breathing is an automatic action, when one smokes, they are in control. I feel that smoking allows me to have control over some aspect of my life even when I can control nothing else.

Smoking helped me through my depression. Although my depression is not gone (because that is not how it works), smoking allowed me to feel like I could control one thing in my life even though I could not control my unruly emotions. Smoking also gives me a sense that I can control how I die and what kills me to some extent. I do not want to kill myself, however, knowing that you control an aspect of your death can be empowering, and it is for me.

I smoke to be defiant. Many of us have seen the anti-smoking campaign commercials as well as the posters. The state of Georgia has also banned smoking and tobacco use on all college campuses recently. I understand that the reason for this is because smoking is bad for your health. However, I do not like that society is trying to control what I do. Whenever I see an anti-smoking commercial, it makes me want to smoke more just to defy what they are advertising. These commercials also convey that we will be the generation that quits smoking. This is not true. Even if smoking or tobacco use becomes illegal, it will not be stopped, just as the illegality of marijuana has not stopped its use. Tobacco is such a large market that there is no way that our generation will be the ones that end smoking.

I urge all of the nonsmokers to consider why your friends and family smoke and to really take into consideration their thoughts and feelings on the subject before judging them. I have heard smoking called “gross” or a “disgusting habit”. But I have never heard it called these things by people who actually do it. I label myself a casual cigarette addict because my addiction to cigarettes is my own choice. My mother used to say “I could quit if I wanted to, but I don’t want to quit.” Many laugh at this because they honestly think that because it is an addiction, quitting is not as easy as it sounds however, if I honestly wanted to give up something that gives me the sense of power and relief in my life, I could, but only if I wanted to. When my friends call me an addict, I do not deny it because an addict is what I am.