TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
BY JUN PRADO

Just trying to be cool

WHEN I was still at university, I see them all the time, boys and girls hanging out, puffing cigarettes. I wanted to grab them by their grunge necks and shake some sense into them, tell them to turn back before it’s too late.

But they would look at me the way I would have looked at an adult when I started to smoke some twenty years back.I was about nine years old when my buddy Fred and I first lit up. We combined our allowances, walked to the nearest sari-sari store and bought Kook cigarettes. Fred thought that John Wayne smoked Kools. Now we would too. We went to a field, hid in the shrubs and fired up.

We didn’t know about the art of inhaling, and we failed to smoke rings.

But the strong menthol smoke still burned, and that was okay. I looked like one of those tough guys in the movies. They all smoked. Humprey Bogart chain-smoked. Eric from across the street smoked Camel cigarettes. They didn’t have filters, and sometimes he’d spit out little pieces of tobacco. He looked really cool. He was 18.

One day I told Eric I also smoked. He offered me one stick and I lit up. My virginal pink lungs recoiled at the onslaught of soot, carbon monoxide and tar. I spit the smoke out in violent spasms. Eric laughed. I was determined to learn to inhale without coughing. I worked at it, forcing my body to accept the poison.

At 12, I made a new buddy who smoked like an adult. When he got near the end of his cigarette, he pinched the butt between thumb and forefinger, took a final drag and then flicked it away.I wanted to smoke like that. I practiced lighting up as if I weren’t paying attention, then let the ash accumulate like I was a regular smoker.I confess I really don’t know at what point I became addicted.

But smoking slowly evolved from something I did because it was cool to something I did because my body craved the nicotine.I barely had enough money to make it through university, but cigarettes held top priority on the spending list.

My entire life was geared around getting my next fix of nicotine. In the end, that disgusted me even more than the hacking, the stink of smoke on my clothes, the globs of phlegm I coughed up every morning.

That is what made me finally quit.

I put a single cigarette on my coffee table and swore I would not smoke it. That cigarette called to me like the sirens called the sailors in the story of the adventures of Ulysses.

I thought about it first thing in the morning and all day at work. I dreaded going home to face another night of unrelenting craving.People who have never smoked or who have never hooked on alcohol or drugs cannot comprehend the agony of withdrawal.

Next time, I’ll be writing about my grim experiences on my abuse of the use of the stuff which is alcohol and my battle with the devil bottle which I believe is more grim than my bout with nicotine.It’s like an eternity since I quit smoking and I hope I have quit for good. But I still got cravings. I saddled myself with this for the rest of my life without knowing what I was doing. I was just a kid trying to be cool, wanting to be an adult.

Thousands of people who took up smoking as kids are going to die from it today. They will be replaced by thousands of kids who are going to take their first puff today.Just like all the kids I saw at university campuses.

LAFF LINES

A man goes to the doctor suffering from premature ejaculation. “Can you do anything to help me, Doc?” said the man.“No, but I can give you the address of a woman who also has a short attention span,” replied the doctor.