In idle conversation, I’d say I was thinking about quitting and how it would be nice to count on their moral support. I especially did this with my non-smoking friends. After all, they would be more than happy to usher me into their healthy ranks, surely?
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Instead of helpful tips on how to quit, or assurances they’d be there when I needed a bit of cheering up, I got this:
‘Oh, you’ll never quit.’
‘I bet you can’t quit for long.’
Oh thanks, that’s very helpful isn’t it?
That really motivates me to make the grand leap into the world of patches and chewing gum.
It was the smokers around me who gave me the support I craved - pun intended. They were the ones to nod understandingly and offer words of encouragement.
Isn’t that totally arse about face?
The ones you think you can count on for help put you down, and the ones you’d think would be unhelpful turn out to be your saviours.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve never come across before.
In no other situation does it apply.
Let’s use something as an analogy for it, shall we? Something that’ll exemplify my point nicely:
Politics.
You are a Tory.
You’ve voted Tory all your adult life. You liked the way Thatcher ran things and didn’t mind the fact she took away the milk break at schools. The privatisation of the country’s infrastructure didn’t affect you in the slightest and you even like the colour blue.
Now, over the past few months you’ve been thinking about not voting Tory anymore. You’ve been thinking about quitting the party. Giving it up.
Nothing’s really been the same since Maggie left and you’ve just started realising how much tax you paid in the eighties.
You only have one alternative: Labour.
Sure, there are the Liberal Democrats, but if we stick to our smoking analogy, that’d be like giving up proper cigarettes to smoke those cheap herbal ones that smell like dog shit.
…no, you’re right, I’d never make much of a political commentator.
Now you’ve made your decision, you’d like to chat to your friends to sound them out.
Applying the same attitude when discussing smoking, this is the response you’d get:
All the Labour voters would tell you not to bother trying because you’ll be back voting Tory in a few months. All the Conservatives would recommend you swap allegiances immediately, because voting Labour is far better for you and puts more money in your pocket.
You see?
Crackers.
Totally gonzo, in my opinion.
Incidentally, the last passage represents the sum total of Spalding’s contribution to politics within the pages of this book. I don’t vote and never will, until such time as I’m presented with a political choice that is exactly that: a choice.
All politicians in this country bleed into one as far as I’m concerned, with any real policies buried under a mountain of spin, sound-bites and sleaze allegations. Anything funny I could say about them doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of hi-jinks they seem to get into all by themselves.
Anyway, back to the point:
I’d like to say something out to all the anti-smoking organisations out there that spend millions of pounds each year trying to make us stop:
There’s no point trying to educate us anymore. We know it all.
Every smoker is now fully aware of how bad it is, how many chemicals there are killing us slowly and how it makes us smelly and unpopular at social occasions.
You don’t need to spend any more cash on heart-felt advertisements, featuring wan ex-smokers hooked up to life support machines.
The fact is, we know it’s a terrible habit and if we could stop, we would!
All you’re accomplishing with your efforts is to annoy us incessantly:
‘Smokers! Look how awful smoking is! Why do you do it? It’s bad for you!’
We bloody know!
We may be smokers, but we’re also free-thinking individuals who can arrive at a conclusion without you ramming it down our throats at every opportunity!
There’s no point in covering our cigarette packets with terrifying warnings about lung cancer and how smoking can harm pregnancy, because we’re still going to buy the bloody things anyway.
They’re a drug. We’re addicted. Enough said.
Why not spend the money you waste every year patronising us trying to invent a cigarette that contains no lung-killing chemicals?
Even if they did invent a miracle cigarette like that, you’d have problems convincing the government it’d be a good idea. After all, I can’t see them being too pleased about all that tax they’d be missing out on.
If the ones in charge really wanted us to quit smoking, they’d ban it.
They have the power to do so and would, if the continued reliance we have on cigarettes didn’t fill their coffers each and every year to the tune of millions of pounds.
There are ways that A.S.H and the rest of the cleaning living brigade can stop young people smoking in the first place. This is a far easier thing to do, provided you sell it in the right way:
Kids start smoking because it’s cool. Fact.
It’s cool because all the best celebrities do it and it shows just how rebellious and angsty you are - while you hang around outside the local One Stop, worrying old people and vandalising the bus shelter.
The trick is to take that image away.
Why not feature full page ads in the national papers of really uncool people having a smoke?
Gordon Brown sitting in his pants at home with a Silk Cut parked between his lips, perhaps. Or Simon Cowell lighting up a Marlboro as he tries on high waist jeans in Gap.
Or, you could start putting slogans on the cigarette packets like:
WARNING! Your parents love to smoke and will be delighted you’ve started too, as they will be able to nick yours when you’re asleep.
Or how about:
WARNING! Smoking cigarettes will make you look like your woodwork teacher.
Trust me, these ideas will work far better than vilifying smoking to the extent that every thirteen year old in the country rushes out to buy a pack, just to show how much they’re not like you.
For the sake of balance and to show that Spalding does have the capacity to be unbiased when the mood takes him, I also have something to say to the cigarette manufacturers:
Stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes, you greedy bastards.
You know as well as we do smoking is a hugely profitable business and will continue to be so until it’s outlawed.
You know smoking is bad for us, no matter how much you try to make out it isn’t.
You can stop producing low tar cigarettes, trying to claim they’re better for us and are part of your effort to help smokers quit the habit. If that were true, you’d be selling them at a cheaper price, wouldn’t you?
At least remove the high tar ones from the shelves, so we don’t buy them.
But you don’t do this - claiming you're trying to give people a choice.
Those little holes you’re punching in the filters aren’t fooling any of us you know. It just means it’s harder to draw on the cigarette and more difficult to suck the nicotine out, making us more likely to spark another one up straight away to get the same hit we’d get from one regular smoke.
I’ve smoked since the age of eighteen, which puts me in the long term category, I guess. For nearly twenty years I’ve been puffing away on about ten to fifteen cigarettes a day.
I’ve sat there and added up all the money I’ve spent, and thought about all the lovely things I could have bought instead. This is always depressing and I recommend to any smokers they do not attempt it under any circumstances.
There are certain smokers out there who need a good, hard smack.
I’m filled with a disbelief and impotent fury whenever I talk to a
social smoker.
I hate this lot more than the non-smokers who complain about passive smoking, or the ex-smokers who like to regale you with how easy it was for them to quit and how their sense of smell has miraculously returned.
Social smokers say things like:
‘Oh, I only seem to want a cigarette when I’m out and about. Other than that, I just don’t bother.’
You complete and utter bastards.
How do you do it? How do you sit there on a Saturday night, merrily chaining your way through a pack of twenty and then not have another one for two weeks? How? How!?
I’m not an alcoholic - rare for a writer - but I can sympathise with someone who suffers from it, when they see a half drunk glass of wine on the table at the end of the dinner party and think how can anyone leave that? It’s such a waste!
I feel much the same way when a social smoker throws a packet of cigarettes away that still has two tabs left in it, just because it’s chucking out time at the Dog and Bucket.
Comparing the two most popular drugs of choice, I loathe the double standard that exists for smokers and drinkers. Even though heavy alcohol intake seems to inevitably lead to violence and anti-social behaviour, it’s still the smokers who get all the grief.
I don’t understand this, I really don’t.
When you weigh the two up against one another, it’s plain to see that drinking is a far worse social phenomenon than smoking.
Ever hear of any small, innocent children being run over and killed because the driver was smoking a cigarette? No.
Ever hear of thousands of pounds of damage to property being done because a hoard of people - all smoking heavily - took to the streets in a riot? No.
No-one has ever got pregnant because they were smoking too heavily to remember the condom.
As far as I’m concerned, drinking is far more anti-social and destructive than smoking has ever been, so how about laying off us poor smokers for a bit, eh?
I said I loved to smoke at the top of this section, didn’t I?
Lies!
All horrible, self-deluding lies!
I don’t love it and if someone could wave a magic wand, making me a non-smoker instantly, I’d be happier than a pig in a very large pile of manure.
Here are a few much needed home truths to the smoking community:
Cigarettes do not relieve stress. They cause it.
Nicotine is a massive stimulant and only raises your level of tension in the long term. That calming hit you get as the nicotine pumps its way through your blood is a temporary measure, meaning you’ve got to spark up another cigarette, raising your blood pressure even more. It’s a vicious cycle. You never relieve stress, you only relieve the craving for nicotine.
Yes, it's true you might get run over by a bus tomorrow, but the chances of it are very small, unless you’re an idiot who can’t obey road signs properly. The chances of getting cancer are 3 in 1.
Smoking does indeed knock five years off your life - and you may console yourselves with the fact these will be the ones at the end, but let’s not forget about the pain-racked, emphysema-filled ten years that precede them.
Smoking does not make you lose weight. All it does is temporarily suppress your hunger. You’ll just be twice as hungry once the cigarette’s effect has gone and will binge eat before lighting up again - thus making you a fat bastard and a candidate for inoperable lung cancer.
There are a thousand and one books out there for those wishing to quit - all of which are about as useful as a chocolate tea pot.
There’s only one thing that will help you quit the habit and that’s will-power.
You need to resist the nicotine cravings, no matter how bad they get, and a stout door to lock yourself behind so you don’t murder your loved ones in a fit of pique.
Nicotine has a half-life of two hours, which means its levels drop by half every 120 minutes. In two weeks you will have no nicotine in your body. Then it’s just a psychological problem.
Spalding intends to give kicking the habit a proper go in the next few months, as he’s started waking up with the kind of phlegm in the back of his throat you could hang wall-paper with, and has the lung capacity of a newborn goldfish.
What I will not do is mention that I'm quitting to anyone.
Neither will I buy any self-help books, nicotine patches, or ring the NHS helpline. I will however use the period of withdrawal to pretend I’m ill and skive a few days of work.
There’s a silver lining in any situation if you look hard enough.
While I’m a prisoner of the evil tobacco monster, I can console myself with the fact it is my one and only addiction.
Not much consolation, I’ll grant you, but anything’s better than nothing.
Addictions come in all shapes and sizes and they don’t necessarily have to be drug related.
Nymphomania may sound like a great idea we can all get behind, but as any sufferer will tell you, it’s an addiction that causes more problems than it’s worth. Addiction to sex isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to help you maintain a long-term relationship. It is the kind of addiction that can give you a reputation and very itchy genitals.
Robert Palmer may have waxed lyrical about how great it is to be Addicted To Love, but you try convincing the poor cow caught dogging in Sainsbury’s car park at two in the morning of that.
Science-fiction.
There are people so addicted to sci-fi and fantasy they makes heroin addicts look like people with a mild interest in recreational drugs.
They have the DVDs, the books, the vast collection of action figures posed in improbable ways on every shelf in the house.
Tell them that you think Twilight is a bit childish and you’re likely to get your eyes gouged out with the nearest replica pointy stake.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing that bad about dressing up as Spock or knowing every single line of dialogue in The Empire Strikes Back, but it’s an addiction nonetheless - and like any addiction, it can start to have an effect on your day to day life in ways it shouldn’t.
I swear to God I once knew a lad who wore a Star Trek Starfleet costume to a funeral.
I understand how passionate people can be about their favourite TV show, but there’s a time and place for everything. The burial of your great aunt Joan probably isn't it.
Mind you, I can see the priest ending his eulogy with the words beam her up, Scotty, as the coffin disappears in a halo of white light…
Cool.
People often develop these addictions - chemical, biological or psychological - because it lifts them beyond the drudgery of day to day life to a more exciting plateau of existence.
This is entirely understandable.
Whether you’re nicely drunk in a night-club for a few hours, or curled up in front of Stargate SG1 - Series 3 Box Set, with free action figure! - for a whole weekend, you’re escaping the everyday world and all its vagaries and disappointments.
Addictions can therefore be beneficial. In moderation.
The trick is to strike a happy medium.
If you’re wearing gaudily coloured costumes to funerals or drunk at eight thirty in the morning - chances are you’re not doing a very good job of it.
8.04 am
27602 Words
Hey!
I think I’ve got my second wind.
I was definitely starting to flag a bit back there, but as the sun has come up and we’ve marched past the fourteen hour mark, I feel a renewed sense of vigour and purpose.
I put this down to the strength of the coffee and frequency of cigarettes - doing their job as the stimulant we all know and love.
Seeing the sun come up is a wonderful thing, even if it is through a study window that hasn’t been cleaned for months.
It makes you feel glad you’re alive and wipes away all those strange and disturbing thoughts that roam around your head during the dark hours.
Nothing ever feels so scary in the harsh light of day and
I can happily look a needle or sponge in the face with hardly any anxiety whatsoever.
Yes, yes, alright, let’s deal with the sponge thing here and now, shall we?
I’m scared of them, alright?
I don’t know why.
It isn’t funny you know, when someone strikes up a conversation about phobias and the only thing you can contribute is that you’re afraid of possibly the most harmless object on Earth.
To understand this irrational phobia more I read a very good book, which I’m going to rip-off here to fill up a paragraph or two:
Apparently, most phobias are caused by traumatic incidents in our childhood that we may forget consciously, but stay with us subconsciously for many years. These traumas manifest themselves as a phobia.
There are perfectly understandable and reasonable phobias, such as a fear of spiders, fear of heights or fear of needles.
These can be potentially threatening to life and limb and forming a phobia is partially a defence mechanism against injury or death.
I have a witty friend who as far as I know is afraid of nothing.
He likes to say the only thing he has a phobia of is thermo-global nuclear weapons, electing to go for something really big and nasty that would cause anyone to squeal in terror should they come up against the business end of one.
Of the sensible phobias, I’m only affected by needles. I hate the bloody things.
I don’t care if you are administering life-saving antibiotics, you’re still intent on sticking a large pointy metal object into my body, which in my book is a distinct no-no.
I’m not scared of spiders, but can understand why other people are. Black little monstrosities that skitter around the house and pop up in random places are enough to give anyone the willies.
Not liking heights is quite sensible too, seeing as the human body is ill-equipped for falling two hundred feet onto concrete.
At the other end of the phobia scale are those caused by the aforementioned childhood trauma.
The silly ones.
Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) Page 9
