Here’s Why I Don’t Smoke

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

— Aristotle

“I never knew that you don’t smoke”, said my boss, “especially considering that you are a doctor. I have never seen a doctor who doesn’t smoke or drink. You are an exception”.

I have been often regarded as a misfit among professionals, solely because in the name of socializing, I refuse to drown my senses in alcohol or, smoke away my worries, to enjoy life. However, the above statement uttered by my boss made me realize two things. First, he hasn’t seen enough doctors. Second, he has never seen a case of cancer in his family up close.

This topic has always been baffling to me from the vantage point of behavior psychology. How can’t someone see how stupid it is that they are doing? If we bring arguments of cognitive dissonance and reward circuits laying the foundation for the biological basis of addiction, which, in turn, creates a smoke screen of ignorance ahead of the nicotine addicts, I would say, okay.

But then, when questions like “Why don’t you smoke?” or “How do you resist the temptation” pop up, it baffles the guts out of me. Isn’t it simple enough? Does everybody not know it already? Surely it isn’t the mid-twentieth century. There is plenty of scientific evidence that proves how harmful a cigarette is to our health. Why, this stupid interrogation then? Why do you think that just because you are an addict, everybody else should be too?

Perhaps, they know the harmful effects of smoking, but only as information registered in the deep database of their cognition, which the addiction successfully prevents from resurfacing in the consciousness. They don’t know it as an experience. They have never seen it happening to a close family member. It has always been the 30 second-advertisements played before a movie starts, that have been all their exposure to the demons of smoking.

I can never imagine myself taking up puffs of poisonous leaves rolled up in papers treated with chemicals found in pesticides. To smoke is to die in installments, one healthy cell at a time.

Twelve years back, my grandmother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The successive two years thenceforth would form an imprint in my mind so deep about cancer, that I would shudder at the mere thought of it. I had seen my grandma becoming a skeleton to the point where skin hung from her bones. Her bald head with a few strands of hair remaining, her constant vomiting in a bucket that we kept beside her bed, the wheezing spells of breathlessness owing to the metastatic deposits in her lungs, her tongue drying away and curling upwards rendering her unable to speak, and her last action of folding hands in front of the room temple before she would close her eyes forever; all this is etched in my memory like an engraving on a stone. The picture is still vivid. How we heard a chorus of spine-chilling wails and howls from the room across the street, and when we went there, other relatives were already present, encircling my dead grandma. That was the only time I saw my Dad crying.

The memory is as fresh as ever. I have seen what a havoc cancer wreaks. I have seen days when my father would carry my grandma in his arms, out of the hospital gate, because the doctor there had denied any further possible treatment. I have seen my grandmother folding her hands and begging the men-in-white to save her, to relieve her of the pain and suffering. It made me ponder over euthanasia and the concept seemed pretty relieving. Unfortunately, India doesn’t allow active euthanasia, and it’s only limited to pulling off the life-support machines and monitors that a critical patient is hooked onto in the end days of his life.

My biggest fear is developing cancer. Since owing to my contracted fascia, I often experience severe acid reflux, the ever-gnawing fear of a carcinomatous change of my esophageal lining lingers on. It could also be that the cancer develops in the throat or the nose since the acid reaches up there. The mere thought is scary, and it sends a shiver up my spine. I don’t want to end up the way my granny did. I don’t want to live a life so miserable that I beg for euthanasia. All this of course has been instrumental in shaping my perception of life, and the way I get my hands on everything I can. I’m interested in a multitude of things, and that’s because, perhaps, I want to live my life to the fullest before anything that is beyond my control, decides to end it all.

Swimming in my bleak thoughts, it is very easy to avoid a cigarette. The temptation just does not exist.

Also, the American Lung Association informs that a cigarette releases about 7000 different kinds of chemicals when burnt. At least 69 of them have been known to be carcinogenic and all the rest are toxic. Some of them are mentioned below:

I hope to find smokers who are insightful enough to realize that their love for a cigarette is underpinned by the strong neural circuitry of addiction and that there are people who are sane enough to realize they are better off without it, so there is no point in coercing the latter to start smoking.

No matter how smart you are, if you think that I should start smoking and drinking simply because it is an essential vice gluing us together in a social event, or because it ups the ‘coolness’, or prepares one to face life’s challenges, you would occupy the lowest strata of my perceived persona of all the people.

I respect your choice, it’s your life after all. But do not enforce your beliefs upon me, or exhale the puff on my face.