The year was 2012 and It was the morning of my eighteenth birthday just before school and I walked into the convenience store to buy my first ever pack of cigarettes. Keith who was a friend of my father Dan was standing behind the counter, almost like he expected to see me. “Hey Keith,” I said to him “I’d like to buy a pack of Marlboro unfiltered, please”. “Okay, but just know that it’s really easy to get hooked!” he warned. I ignored his warning and excitedly picked out my first ever lighter as I handed him a twenty. After collecting my change, I walked out of the gas station with my back against the wall, like the rebel I always imagined I’d be. I distinctly remember coughing and choking, struggling to adjust to the harshness of the chemicals that I had just inhaled. I always loved the smell of cigarettes but never imagined that actually smoking them would be such an unpleasant experience.

I was originally exposed to cigarettes by my Grandfather James who was an indoor smoker. I recall being as young as seven years old and bombed with the aroma and blend of sweet Camel and bold Marlboro coffin nails mixed into the air inside of his home. I could never put my fingers on it, but the way they smelled always appealed to me combined with images of tough guys in movies and the desire to grow up way too fast. My grandfather lived in the next town over from Louise in a place called Black Forest. As the story goes, my Grandfather was a biker who sold black market items, had an extensive criminal history and even at one point struggled with a heroin addiction. James lived in a heavily wooded area, owned a pet snake and a couple of dogs named Tuba and Crystal. My grandfather would die when I was still very young and my grandmother would pass just a handful of years later when I entered into my early adolescence. Reaching eighteen finally meant I got a chance to see what my grandfather loved so much about cigarettes, but my taste for them was acquired over time and not something that I fell in love with immediately.

I would go on to experiment with a wider range of tobacco and nicotine products, including pouches, snuff and chew. As I expanded my horizons, I became more addicted. More dependent on the buzz that I would experience from these high risk products. As it turns out, Dan was a dental hygienist for many years and he had a friend named Trudy who happened to be an oral surgeon. Her job was to treat people with oral cancer, a common issue with people who smoke, drink and chew tobacco for many years. I would go through stages of avoiding dental appointments, seeing white spots called “Leukoplakia” on my lips and gums, then panic and demand to see an expert only to find that nothing was wrong, yet. This became a reoccuring theme in my early days of using tobacco. Over the years, I would manage to kick the habit for various lengths of time and at one point managed to quit for over a year, but still came back later on to resume the habit.

I am now thirty-two years old and as I type this I have a “fat hog’s leg” of dipping tobacco in my mouth as I type this out, with my vape pen by my side. I typically stick with Zyns or other types of pouches and away from Copenhagen or other brands of oral tobaco precisely because of the cancer risk, but once in a blue moon I’ll stick pick up a can. I might finish a quarter of it or even half before throwing it away (wasteful, I know). One of the hardest things about quitting tobacco and nicotine in general is that it’s all over the place. If you go to an A.A or an N.A meeting, it’s fairly common for the folks there to be smoking or vaping out front before and after the meetings. I sometimes worry for my health especially as I continue to age, but there’s no question that I’m still hopelessly hooked. It seems I need a hit of something here and there to keep me focused and motivated as I work through assignments in my college courses or do anything really.

While I can’t see into the future I can surely hope that if my habit persists for the years ahead, I’ll still be able to at least do less of it. I’m nowhere near the nicotine fiend I once was when I first started. I remember sometimes smoking two cigarettes at a time or chewing nicotine gum while smoking. The resulting cramps and repeated bathroom breaks did little to compel me to stop and whenever I would throw in the towel, it would last but a couple of days at most and it wasn’t until I became a little bit older that I finally managed to put a reasonable amount of distance between me and the next “fix”. If there’s anything I’ve come to realize, it’s that anyone can learn from you, but no one can learn for you. I would urge any young person out there to heed my advice and stay away from as many vices as possible. I’ve been addicted to most of the major vices that one could think of and I can tell you it isn’t easy or pretty.