The World Is My Ashtray

Like many unfortunate things in life, my addiction to cigarettes can be blamed on men. My first pack of cigarettes was purchased at the age of 19 in Buenos Aires after a remarkably bad dinner with a French lawyer. The latest, and likely not last, was bought last night at Tommy’s because my boyfriend refuses to admit that he’s a smoker and instead bums off me. (For the record, a “real” smoker is someone who puffs through ten or more cigarettes a day. Parliament Lights, a popular brand among artsy Harvard kids, do not count.)

The Addiction, as I fondly call my dependency, manifested in June 2006 after my boyfriend dumped me over the phone while I was living in Madrid. When a tragic artist-type like myself is in a deep malaise, the neglect of health and sanitation is not only pleasurable but necessary. This includes not showering, wearing black, and smoking fiercely.

Somehow, between that dreadful break-up and now, I became hooked. What began as a benign emotional crutch is now a consuming physical and psychological addiction. If I go two or three waking hours without a smoke, my hands tremble and I become unbearably bitchy (even worse than PMS—God help us).

Cigarettes can do vicious things to good people. They make you stink. They make people self-centered as they interrupt conversations for a smoke break. They make generous people miserly as everyone and their mother tries to bum a smoke. They make nonsmokers into judgmental, disapproving assholes.

On the other hand, cigarettes can do wonderful things too. They make decidedly uncool people (like myself) socially passable. They are a great conversation starter if you’re trying to score a date. They sustain you on a late-night Adderall binge with a paper due tomorrow at 5 p.m.

The closest I came to really quitting was in August, after I started getting stabbing pains in my leg. I went on the patch and had to stop drinking alcohol, coffee, and soda. I couldn’t eat proper meals because I always had a cigarette after a meal. I avoided hanging around any friends who smoked.

After nine days without a cigarette—the longest I had gone without one since starting—I was lulled into a false sense of security and had one. My emotional dependency reared its ugly head, and as I became stressed out at the beginning of the school year, quitting was forgotten.

Of course, there are ways to make The Addiction more tolerable. That inevitable $5 tithe I pay? I make it a sport to find the cheapest place in the square for cigarettes (for the record, it’s Tommy’s Value). I compare prices in other cities and states like I would stocks on the Dow Jones. The environmental guilt? I snub them out and throw the butts into trashcans. The extra smoke in the air? I inhale ever more deeply.

Yet despite our social consciences, smokers are constantly villainized. Miramax and Touchstone, both subsidiaries of Disney, are now discouraged to include “depictions of cigarette smoking” in their movies. (This is the same Miramax that distributed Pulp Fiction.) A depiction of smoking can now bump up a movie from a PG-13 to an R.

But like it or not, there are a lot of us around—even on campus. And, for the most part, we do not care if you do not like the smell of smoke when you are sitting near us outside ABP. You’ve taken our bars, restaurants, campus, even Leavitt and Pierce; at least let us shiver over a smoke outside in peace. That isn’t to say that we don’t plan on quitting, of course, just give us time. Maybe even a sympathetic smile or a high-five.

My formerly carton-smuggling grandfather gruffly asked me in July, “Do you control the cigarettes, or do the cigarettes control you? You decide.” The decision was made months ago. It just isn’t going to happen until I finish this pack. And then maybe after the next one or the one after that…

Thea S. Morton ’06-’08, a Crimson photo editor, is a history of art and architecture concentrator in Dudley House.