Smoking Away My Woes

 A solid sign someone isn’t doing so well is if the first thing they do in the morning is quickly pour a cup of coffee and head outside to light up a cigarette. This could also just mean they’re European, but me being an American as well as the main character here I can say with confidence mental illness looks like needing to fulfill your nicotine habit before attending to anything else. A sure fire sign I am in the wrong headspace is if I don’t even change out of my pajamas before lighting up. Things are not going so well when I go down that road. The same is true for any smoker who engages in this nasty habit so soon in the day. 

I had a roommate at my sober house who would go to bed clutching her vape. Her alarm would go off for an hour or so and I would ignore it, knowing that the only reason she got up was to go to work and her alarm always went off hours before she needed to be in. I would attend to whatever business a newly sober person has (usually catching up on Real Housewives) until my house mom would get fed up with the relentless noise and come upstairs to shake my roommate awake. Of course, the first thing she did was puff on that vape like she was chugging water after a hangover. About a week after I moved into her room she OD’d in the shower and ended up spending quite some time in the hospital. A tragic incident indeed. But real recognize real. I saw it coming. 

I myself have been a smoker for over a decade. It wasn’t like alcohol or other drugs for me where I had one and was off to the races. I was able to put cigarettes down as quickly as I picked them up, but I did always pick them back up at some point. Vapes came around when I was in the midst of crippling drug addiction in college, and god did I fucking love vapes. The Juul craze (RIP) was so intoxicating to a young drugged out Lizzy. There was nothing quite like popping a few oxy and melting into my bed while puffing on that vape in between bong rips. I needed the release. Nicotine is both stimulating and relaxing. There’s no other drug quite like it, at least not for me. I never could say goodbye to cigarettes for good, even with the vape. There’s an aesthetic value to cigarettes that the nostalgic, Lana Del Rey, Spring Breakers lover deep inside of me craves.

I smoke more when I’m reflecting on aspects of my life that are distressing. I have many of those troubling moments to look back on, and they haunt me. A memory comes to mind of standing outside my shithole apartment in Corvallis, Oregon after a particularly brutal rape inflicted upon me by my boyfriend at the time. I was tripping on acid and was smiling a goofy psychedelic smile, not one of joy, random smiling is just what happens to me when I’m tripping. I had a fresh pack of light blue American Spirits in the pocket of my stained, ripped and burn-hole ridden hoodie. I lit one up and saw figures in the smoke when I exhaled. I saw women. Women crying. Women in pain. Women screaming. I have to get the fuck out of here, I said to myself. I have to leave or he’s going to kill me. I didn’t leave. I just kept smoking. 

My Oregon days are years in the past and my nicotine addiction is the only thing I share with that past version of myself. As I continue to process the rapes and the mental illness and all that drug use, one thing I require is a cigarette. A vape will do in a pinch, but a cigarette is preferable. I like how they help me think. I can stand outside on a cold night and remember the women screaming, how I was once one of them. I can light up when the sun is setting and think about what a fucking miracle it is that I can still crack a joke. My nicotine addiction is going to have to end at some point. I’m going to encounter some problems from it. I’ve been indulging in bad habits long enough to know there is no such thing as a free lunch. The high I get from cigarettes is awesome, way too awesome to last for much longer. I’m an addict which means I know perfectly well when to stop, I just don’t fucking want to. Not right now. I need to remember the women screaming so I can remember how it feels to not be one of them anymore. 

Being a smoker is both a blessing and a curse. I get to reflect on the moments of my life that are painful with a little ease from the ciggie, but when I go too deep in the rabbit hole I require more and more cigarettes to ease that pain, which just ends up making my lungs hurt. I’m in the rabbit hole right now, which is why I’m smoking more than ever. Smoking isn’t the worst thing in the world. I think stress or depression might be worse for you. Both of which I suffer from greatly. If I’m not mistaken the leading cause of death for people my age is suicide, which I feel justifies my smoking habit. At least I didn’t go through with my suicide attempt, I say to myself. Then I’d really be in hell. I’ll light one more just because I’m grateful to be alive. But I know that’s bullshit. I’m lighting one more because I can’t drink alcohol or do drugs anymore. I don’t get a glass of wine at the end of a long day of thinking about painful memories. I really, really wish I did though. I miss drinking. I miss being high. All I get is nicotine now. Too many cigarettes bring me closer to relapse mode. Smoking in the morning, throughout the afternoon, chain smoking at night, makes me think that it might not be so bad to have a drink or two. Alcohol and cigarettes are a classic combination. Alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine really get the party started. Maybe I should start doing drugs again. I know that’s what my roommate was thinking when she was hitting that vape first thing in the morning. She was choosing the slow way to die, same as me, but we’re choosing to die all the same. 

I’m currently spending 2 months traveling around Europe all on my own. My nicotine addiction is about as bad as it’s ever been. I still see my therapist twice a week, even if I have a session over the phone while standing in a train station. I’m having a really hard time processing everything that we’ve been talking about in a way that’s healthy. We discuss the recent breakup I went through, how he left me feeling unwanted, undesirable, and unworthy of love. My therapist is helping me realize this guy was a real Fucking loser, but she’s also pointed out that my relationship with him was not unlike the relationship I have with my father, not unlike the relationship I had with both drugs and my boyfriend in college. This is distressing to me. I do not like being one of those desperate people who can’t choose a good partner. I do not like that I’m a woman who was raped. I do not like that I’m the child of an alcoholic. I just want to be a woman. I want to be a child. I never asked for any of this excess baggage, and right now it’s eating me alive. There is nothing I hate more than not being able to make choices for myself, and it’s really fucking frustrating learning that my choices are currently limited given what I’ve been through. I’m still living in the shadow of my alcoholic father, choosing men who are unstable, unavailable, and sometimes downright mean for reasons that escape me. I’m living in the shadow of my rapist, choosing the slow way to die because I really don’t wanna pull that fucking trigger but I don’t want to live too long either because my heart can’t handle anymore pain. 

I’ll never hear an apology from any of those men. They’re all the same. They lack the insight necessary to think deeply about all the ways they did me wrong. It’s up to me to find ways to love myself because I’m worthy of that. But I’m really tired of having nothing but love to give and no one who wants to give it back to me. I’m a really caring, kind, genuine person. I’m a ride or die bitch. Unfortunately, none of the men in my life have ever wanted to take a trip with me. They couldn’t give me the love that I was able to give them. I’ll never get any answers as to why that is. This is crushingly painful. I think I’ll have to smoke about this. If I look hard enough maybe I can see messages in the smoke, messages with women laughing, feeling joyful, being in love and being loved back. A girl can dream. 

I’m making my whole way of life look really tragic. I promise I’ve done more on this European adventure than smoke and think about all the ways I feel I’m being held back in life. I’ve visited some pretty sick places, even when I’m having really bad days. I’m able to get out of bed even when I don’t want to. I visit churches and castles and vintage clothing stores and go on adventures to cemeteries. I’ve done some pretty epic hiking. I rode a scooter down a mountain in Switzerland. I’ve met some dope people as well. People who are enthusiastic about life. People who aren’t addicts. Everyone I’ve met enjoys a cigarette from time to time. But they’re more choosy than I am about when they enjoy one. They’ll have a few drinks before lighting up, smoke one or two and then call it a night. They’ll eat a really good meal and finish it off with a Marlboro. I respect that. Their way of living is inspirational to me. I could be like that, too. If only these damn rapists would get out of my head. 

I want to enjoy life the way that the people I’ve met on my travels do. I want to have a nice meal and have a laugh over a beer. I want to have a few drinks and know when to call it. But I don’t get to live like that, unfortunately. That’s just not how my brain works. If all I’ve got is a cigarette then I’m smoking the whole fucking pack. But I’m learning about all the ways that I can enjoy life even if I can’t drink. I don’t need to do psychedelics to see messages. I see messages all the time. Someone scrawled “fuck the cops” in spray paint on a wall in Peja, Kosovo. Someone wrote “fuck nationalism and the patriarchy” in sharpie on a lamppost in Vienna. Someone put a sticker that said “fuck joy, be sad” on a stop sign in Switzerland. It’s nice to know that we’re all united in our pain that comes from being part of a system that holds us back. 

I’ve learned a lot about the way that I want to live since I packed up all my shit and left Boston. Sure, some days I wanna eat McDonald’s and watch Selling Sunset, but those days don’t last for weeks on end the way they did when I was at home. Some days I’m so uncomfortable and overwhelmed I want to crawl out of my skin. On those days I smoke right when I get up. But I always shake it off. I go and find the beauty in life, which is what I’m after more than anything. I found an old missile base in Bratislava, Slovakia that was covered in really cool graffiti. I went to the baths in Budapest and relaxed in the warm water for a few hours. I sat on a beach in Dubrovnik and watched the sunset while I talked to my therapist. Nothing I’ve done has been particularly groundbreaking, but that isn’t why I was traveling, anyways. I just needed to see more things in the world that remind me I don’t need to live in this alcoholic, rape victim box. The day is mine, and no one else’s. I can do whatever I want with it. If I let enough days go by where I’ve done all that I wanted and nothing more then I might find my perfect life. I don’t have any limits. I know that’s out there. I’ve seen the people I’ve traveled with obtain it. Or maybe we’re all just fucking delusional. That could be just as true.

I’m rooting for my fellow morning smokers. We are fully capable of kicking this ugly habit and all the ones underneath it for good. There are plenty of cures to the gnawing nicotine need that resides inside of us. There’s the tea cure. Mint tea in the mornings is so delicious. So is coconut tea. Why be stimulated by a cup of coffee? Start the day off slow. Then there’s the cold shower cure. One of the addiction meme pages I follow on Instagram recommends that. That’s almost as psychotic as smoking in your pajamas. Of course, there’s the walking cure, music cure, reading cure, writing cure. Long story short, you just need a damn hobby, something that reminds you you’re alive and kicking, something to do with your hands instead of hanging onto a cigarette for dear life. 

Of course, all these cures go better with a cigarette. That’s just a cruel fact of life. So next time you find yourself wanting to light up I recommend booking a ticket to Europe. Your nicotine addiction will only grow worse there, you’ll certainly find yourself lighting up first thing in the morning, but the European countries are far more gorgeous than the hideous, unsafe USofA, so you won’t feel so bad about yourself when you’re smoking in your pajamas on a terrace in Positano. There’s nothing quite like lighting up a cig in a café in Vienna, or on a bridge in Budapest, or riding in a TukTuk in India. I recommend this experience to anyone who’s a little off the deep end. 

Maybe that’s the cure: traveling! Your brain quiets down when you’re in a new place. The anxiety no longer haunts you to the point where you HAVE to pick up. There, you just smoke because you’re enjoying life. I guess you could say the same about doing Ketamine at Berghain, but that’s the nasty thing with addiction. Your brain will always find ways to dupe you into getting high. What’s a girl to do? Nowhere is safe if your mind has anything to do with it. Call your psychiatrist, I guess. I bet there’s a med that makes you sick when you smoke. I just haven’t had any interest in trying it. I’m enjoying life, after all. Trying to, at least.