The wonderwall

Is it a summer’s noon that’s drowning me in my own sweat or is it a winter’s night that’s chilling my bones? The sun is still up or it has sailed away in the ocean of stars? Is my heart still beating or it’s just my lungs who are pumping harder, looking for smoke in this air full of useless oxygen?

Unlike the general opinion, I did not started smoking for style. So until last week I never regretted it and never tried to quit. So I never had the taste of that thirst. But last week when I went to visit my parents, I had to live without it for 7 long days. The days were somehow fine but the nights were haunting. I started trying to sleep around 12, I was sitting on my bed till 1 all alone, useless, starring at the wall, practically blank. By 1.30 I was lying on the bare floor, my eyes begging for sleep but my brain refusing to forget about that elixir of life. When I saw the watch it was 2.15 and the only two things I could listen were the clock ticking and my heart beating. I am starring at my hand for as long as I can remember, I was thinking that the day will never dawn. This was just a small part of a the whole night and the whole night was just a part of that whole week and the whole week was a very tiny part of the unending pain of the worthless life of a chain smoker.

(It is not the feeling and experience of the subtle “nicotine high” which is addictive. The high itself is vaguely pleasant, but other major psychological effects happen in the background which don’t cause any noticeable “high” sensation. The primitive, and unconscious, brain receives a false “reward” from the effects of the nicotine. The brain responds to this “reward” by developing a very strong primitive response which is nicotine addiction. In terms of neurology of the brain, noticeable physical changes occur. Uptake receptor growth causes a chemical imbalance in the brain which make the user feel depressed and anxious when nicotine levels are low. This is caused by the brain attempting to compensate for the release of so many “reward” chemicals.) This results a patience less night, waiting for the morning and waiting for someone; anyone to talk to you, to take your mind away form that stick which has the lover at one end and the killer on the other.

No anti-smoking TV advertisement, no posters, no sms nothing could have explained me or could have made me realize it.

Few hard days, a puff offered, a couple of them in a gathering… converts to 3 a day then 7 and before you realize, you have a packet in your left and a lighter in your right pocket… BANG you have got yourself a chain smoker. And then even the thought of quitting makes you anxious. Smoking makes nothing easier, nothing simpler, nothing better. You keep on looking for reasons to quit but nothing seems to be worthy enough. The pleasure soon becomes a need, the high soon becomes a habit, the peace soon becomes just an illusion that last only a few minute with every cigarrette with every one of them the illusion time decreases and you keep on increasing the number. But now you have to live with it.