A Smoker's Paradise
Micah Weedman
July 1, 2001
It's ritual that borders on the liturgical. Every morning, I rise from my bed, shower, brush my teeth. I put on some coffee, read through the prayers of the day, pour my coffee. I step out into the cool fog of the morning, take a quick sip, and light up the first of the eight or nine cigarettes I will smoke over the next sixteen hours. After lunch, I might drive around the block, listen to some music, and smoke a couple more cigarettes before going back to my seminary classes. Once back home at my apartment, it might be a welcome-home-cigarette for my wife (which I usually smoke by myself), or a welcome-to-my-home smoke with friends who stop by. And before bed, a cigarette to close the day and prepare myself for sleep. The next day, it starts again. Never mind that every time I take a drag from one of my Camel Lights, I shorten my life. Never mind that with every cigarette I smoke, I drastically increase my chances of contracting lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, mouth cancer, throat cancer, impotence, and gingivitis-just to name a few. Never mind that when my ritual is disrupted I feel displaced, which I tend to show through moodiness and general malaise. Never mind that every pack of cigarettes I buy supports an industry that spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a deliberate effort to be untruthful. Smoking is what I do. It shapes who I am. Odd as it may seem, I have always wanted to smoke cigarettes. I remember winter mornings on the school bus, watching the high school kids huddle in smoky groups at the bus stops, thinking about how warm they all must be. When I was offered my first cigarette, a Lucky Strike, I nearly jumped at the chance. I was a natural. I lit it, took a long drag, and melted into my chair. ...
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