I'm not sure Sir Nick is saying he couldn't give two shits at my confession or whether he's suprised that I was ever a smoker at all. I'm asthmatic, you see - always have been. What crazy darkness within me thought it was a great idea to pick up the tar sticks? Really? I fell for that too cool for school thing? Yeah, kinda did. Crouched down in the toilet block, taking frantic puffs and looking under the door for 'teacher shoes' so we could piff them, smoking under the portables, coming home and rubbing my hands with the rosemary bush to disguise it from parents who years later said they knew full well I was dabbling with the devil.
How could I resist the lure of tobacco? Below is Townes Van Zandt, a gorgeous cowboy and lyrical genius offering me a dart or a joint or both. I mean, when a cute boy pulls out his pack of Winnie Blues (yep, it was Australia in the 1980's) you aren't going to say, nah, I don't smoke. You're going to nonchalently take one off him, swallow your coughing and pretend like you've done it since you were born. And then you'll get down to sucking smoky face
And then there's Jimmy, blasting out of my walkman whilst I'm waiting to paddle out for my heat in a surfing contest, and I've just finished a fag yet I've got the lungs of a young girl and it doesn't make much difference, and I win my first trophy and my last. It's washed out with Lucozade and chased with salt water. Here's me, healthy vego yoga surfer girl, sucking smoke into my lungs to dampen the anxiety of having to perform.
It would take me years to realise this, but it was more than definitely my nervous energy that made me a smoker. Smoke dampened the intensity of my emotional spirit, which I couldn't rein in and didn't know how.
There's Bobby D as well, that clever Nobel lit prize winner that totally divided people into two camps - those that thought he's a lyrical genius and those that couldn't separate his voice from his words. How could not light one up as I listened to Visions of Johanna where the 'ghosts of electricity howl in the bones of her face' - I was feeling all that nostalgia and regret and the only way to quash that one down was with smoke:Growing up with Dylan, I can't help but think of the Stones. I'm still slightly in love with the young Mick from the cover of my Dad's vinyl. I think of Marianne Faithful's husky voice ruined from drugs and think of how romantic I thought that whole era.
When I'm watchin' my tv and a man comes on and tell me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
And how can I neglect Patti? Leaving a chef boyfriend far too old for me, who smoked Benson and Hedges 16's, where I'd take out my earring and poke a hole in the filter so I could smoke it without totally annihilating my lungs. I strutted out of there and went straight into the arms of another lover who drowned all his angst in bongs and Sisters of Mercy.
Don't look for me
I'll get ahead
Remember darling
Don't smoke in bed
Being stoned and listening to 'Horses':
There was was Tom Waits too, who forever reminds me of travelling west in a '76 Ford Falcon, which my girlfriend eventually crashed into a tree because she dropped a fag in her lap. I remember she told her folks she was changing a tape.
When I left Australia, it was a whole new smoking world - Lucky Strikes in the Czech Republic and eventually Champion Rubys in the UK, which were a firm favourite. Those days were paraphernalia days, having tins for your tobacco or leather pouches with room for pills and Rizlers. The tunes got more techno and reggae and cigarettes calmed the wirey feeling of a night out with substances that eventually we'd kick because it wasn't a world we could stay in.
I'd light one roll up off the other in the hazier moments. What else could I do with all that nervous energy? I needed something to do with my mouth, my tongue, my lips, my fingers. The smoke would calm me, like an old friend stroking my back when I was at my most anxious moments.
Eventually, it had to stop. I got really bad pneumonia and ended up in hospital in Bath for a week, and that was in the early days of my relationship with Jamie. Poor guy had to look after a kid he barely knew and come and visit a woman he'd lived with and known for only months. He was terrified of losing me and I couldn't breath at all - the peak flow meter that measures your breath read 10 and it was meant to read 400 - that's how bad it was. Feels like a life time ago. How could I have ignored those warnings for so long?
I did though, for a few more years of trying to quit. Everyone finds their own path, and I don't want to give any advice. Eventually it took both of us travelling for Asia for a few months (we hated smoking in the heat) and landing in Australia where we had to stay with my folks in a non-smoking house, and with no friends here to speak of that smoked, the habit just died. We'd kept saying over and over and over that we were non smokers, imprinting new neural pathways without knowing that's what we were doing. I had lapses, over the years, of course - nights out, hedonistic days where it seems more than reasonable to take everything you can and fuck the consequences.
Now, breath is everything to me. As a meditator and a yogi, dampening my life force with smoke is inconceivable.
But still, sometimes I find myself searching in my pockets for a lighter.
Glad you gave up smoking, I watched my grandad die of throat cancer when i was 12. Decided at that time never to smoke or even try one many years later i still hold true to that choice i made all those years ago. So happy for you quitting them:)
Yep .. have not smoked now for 10 years. I think i had a weird death wish. Not any more ... and thank god i really pushed it on my boy to not smoke. He looks at me as if I was n idiot for ever going there. And I was. But you do what you do when you're young and wrapped up in stuff!
Ten years now that's great keep it going :)
Oh I will never smoke again!!!! Not in a million years!!
You got to take things cool...life is beautiful!
I'm @tomfreeman!
Well done You!!!! Any worthwhile conversation or is that it darling?
@rossfletcher thought there maybe a few good ones here for you...
Loved this post. It was a popular time to smoke. It was tough to say no when the whole world thought it was cool. I gave it up a long time ago, but it took many years to stop wanting to light up. It is seriously addictive. 🐓🐓
It's funny ten years on .. It's just an echo of a habit where my brain forgets I don't smoke. Like... right, finished the chores, cuppa and fag time. So glad we gave up. But yes it was more popular then... not so much now..It's So expensive too! Thanks for your lovely comment!
Incredible how parents always know everything. I remember when my brother told everyone he had been smoking, their response was "and the news are?" hahaahha
Poor Ford Falcon, or the tree I'd say. Those cars were made of pure steel, it may have destroyed the tree. I'd love to hear the full story.
I remember smoking sometimes while camping with friends, just for the vibe it produces. But I've never been a smoker... funny is that one day I was hitchhiking in a truck and the trucker offered me a cigar, guess I had no option but taking it HAHAHAH
I'm glad you've stopped! i'm trying to make my dad stop, but it's real hard for him.
Oh I know.. I hid my tattoo from Dad for years and he always knew and didn't care!!!
Tam told her parents the truth very recently and they laughed their heads off.
Those truck drivers sound intimidating @mrprofessor!
It's hard to giive up... and least we had each other to support each other to do it.
Uhhh! I sooooo relate to this! I used to loooooooooove smoking. My parents took my pacifier away from me when I was three and I freaked the fuck out. I think I found my adult pacifier. Then I got horrific eczema and that was the end of that. I have NO idea how I did that to myself. I now take my body SO seriously and won't even eat macaroni and cheese for God's sake!
I know right! It was that handling of emotions that got me. I'm in control of that now... the thought of being a smoker now... yuck!!!!!!
Yeah you gotta just feel sorry for poor us in this crazy world without the skills to handle it.
I know right? I was just so different to how my beautiful parents handled life and they didn't have the skills to teach me otherwise!!