I was only seven when I started smoking. My friends who took part in this mischief, and I, started by rolling ordinary dry leaves in paper and smoking the "cigarettes", then we started stealing real cigarettes. What prompted me to start smoking was my fascination with the idea of smoke entering my body and coming out through my nose. At the time it looked like magic to me and however much anyone might have tried to dissuade me from the harmful practice I would never have yielded. We were so secretive about our new-found source of pleasure that no one would have suspected anything. At that tender age I believed it was a really heroic feat for such young people to do what only adults did, and what some adults even feared to do, those senseless adults who did not know that life was for enjoying. That was immense pride!
For two years I continued with this habit undetected, then stopped when my family moved and I had no contact with my adventurous friends. At age seventeen I picked up the habit again, having met a new set of "adventurous" friends. This time I was to get hooked to the habit until much later in life. Now I am fifty, and at last I have resolved to break free from the claws of an ugly habit that has left me impoverished and robbed me of my good health. I have not yet succeeded in giving up completely, but I have made major strides towards my own emancipation…all this because at last I have decided to be honest with myself. I made up my mind to face the truth dead-on and acknowledge it. You see, when you deny something that is crystal clear that affects your life you are only deceiving yourself: you are like an ostrich that buries its head in sand when faced by difficulties. For years I denied the truths below. I had heard them over and over again, but they rang false and hollow, because I made them look that way. I decided to be honest with myself and stop making excuses, then bang! Enlightenment came flooding in. Just that and I am a changed man. These are the truths that changed my life:
The Human Body Was Not Designed for Smoking
When I started smoking I choked on smoke and coughed uncontrollably. My body was rejecting the habit and telling me that that practice was incompatible with the way it was made, but what did I do? I persisted and told my body that it had to do what I wanted. In the end my body succumbed and even became addicted, so that I believed I needed tobacco to lead a normal life, having forgotten that I had trained my body to accept tobacco in the first place. I remember having an argument with somebody about smoking, and he suggested that if the body was meant to be used for smoking it would have a separate system, complete with lungs and a chimney, that did not cause convulsive coughing when one was smoking for the first time. How right he was!
Smoking Harms the Ozone Layer
I do quite a lot of reading, and I remember reading numerous articles about activities that some writers said should be discontinued because they are bad for the ozone layer. One of the suggestions was that we should all become vegetarians because rearing sheep, cattle and chickens affects the ozone layer through the carbon dioxide released into the air by the flatulence of these animals. While it is true that such a step would have a positive effect on the ozone layer, it should be borne in mind that many studies have shown that meat constitutes a vital part of our diet. That means the rearing of animals serves a good purpose. I am aware that some people have different views about eating meat, but I'm sure the point I'm trying to make is clear enough. Smoking is a practice that negatively affects the ozone layer without giving anything good in return. I used to argue that smoking relieved me of stress. Secretly I knew that it actually caused worse problems such as lung cancer, high blood pressure and so on. It is like using cyanide as a fumigant to kill one rodent and staying in the same room yourself, where the harm done far outweighs the benefits. Environmentally-conscious people choose ozone-friendly perfumes, air fresheners and other products, but there is no such thing as an ozone-friendly cigarette, and the negative effect of smoking on the ozone layer is never even mentioned.
Smoking is Hazardous to Health
With the information age we are living in I would be very surprised if there is anyone who does not have a fairly good idea of the dangers of smoking, for relentless attempts to articulate the message have been mounted for decades and, of late, using sophisticated methods. A cigarette has about 4000 chemicals, many of them hazardous to health and causing all sorts of diseases from lung cancer to emphysema, bronchitis and pneumonia. A smoker's lungs are black in stead of a healthy pink. Imagine lungs that are the color of the bottom of a pot used on an open fire over a long period. When this happens the cilia that line your lungs are paralyzed. Cilia are small hair like things that move to and fro sweeping dirt out of your lungs. Smoking stops the cilia moving and harmful chemicals accumulate. Smoking also stains your teeth, and gives you bad breath.
