THE FORKIE PHILOSOPHER

I find it astounding that anyone would take up smoking in this day and age. Based on the price alone it’s a foolish move. To pay extortionate prices for the privilege to inhale toxic smoke into your lungs for no clear benefit other than looking cool/grown-up/tough etc. is even stupider than paying ludicrous amounts for clothing you will replace very soon.

Or is that it? Is a cigarette habit a new signal of excessive disposable income? Maybe there’s an added thrill from buying under-the-counter goods. It’s cheaper and it’s naughty; fun to break the rules. You can impress certain people with your flaunting of the rules and others by flaunting your wealth.

Okay, cards on the table; when I was your age, I was a smoker. I have firsthand experience of ignoring the warnings about lung disease, cancer and addiction. I was young and dumb too. There was no TV sitcom style peer pressure. Nobody threatened to ostracize you for not lighting up. It just helped you feel more connected to a group; especially if you were underage or in school.

A rebellion that didn’t harm anyone. Shit, it was less offensive than vandalism. There was no such thing as second hand smoke in the 80s and people smoked almost everywhere. The grownups just didn’t want us to do it, even though most of them did. So smoking was kind of a ‘fuck you, You hypocrites” protest. Of course, they might have actually been concerned about our wellbeing. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Most of our parents smoked, so we didn’t have to go far to find a few to try and share. They would send us to the shop to buy them anyway; it wasn’t regulated like the sale of alcohol. You were supposed to be over 16 to purchase tobacco, but you were rarely hassled.

So, when it did come time to buy your own, it was hardly a mission. They were cheap too. Around $3 when I remember starting in 1988. I remember because I always laugh when I tell the story. Like most Year 10 kids, I had mucked around with durries, but it didn’t become a regular thing until I did my work experience with the police.

It was like a weeklong excursion. A few kids from my school, plus a bunch of kids from neighbouring schools riding around in a police minibus seeing all the various departments and jobs on the force. The cops taking us round had no problem with us smoking, so it became par for the course for some of us. At 15 years we were technically breaking the law on work experience with the police; my habit grew from there.

Flashback a few years earlier. I’ll say around the age of 12. Any Generation Xers from Oz will remember that commercial with that fucken sponge representing a long-term smoker’s lung! YUK!!! “You’d have to be an idiot to smoke”. Apparently, I lectured a cousin about it when I saw him smoking. Danny was 2 years my senior and I gave him heaps about this suicidal habit he was taking on.

I don’t recall that, but I do remember him telling me about it when he saw me smoking a few years later; short memories. I saw that lung tar ad at an impressionable age and had a visceral reaction to it. However, I also saw endless commercials and billboards showing me how cool, grown-up, tough etc. smokers were. Cigarette companies utilized the full persuasive power of the media marketing machine. Artists and psychological experts figuring out how to make smoking look as awesome as drinking Coco-Cola! It looked so cool on the big screen too. Characters smoking away while being heroic, bad or just badass. A battered and blood-soaked Bruce Willis puffing on a durrie was a sight to behold.

By the time I finished year 12 I was a smoker. I was also a drinker and pot smoker. My first experience with all three was disgusting. Shit! We had to push through a lot of vile encounters just to get the tolerance to the point where we didn’t have to give an oscar performance to look unbothered by it.

Cigarettes were everywhere when we were growing up, so pretty much every kid had taken their fair share of puffs to see what all the fuss was about; and it was fucking horrible! It was still horrible when I would join the stealthy smokers during recess and lunch at high school, but I had enough experience to look like I enjoyed it. What the fuck! I am pretending to be enjoying something I am not to impress other teens who are very probably doing the same!

Marijuana and booze at least delivered a buzz once you got over the initial ick. Smokes were pure ritual and image. The paradox being that the calming effects are only noticeable to people who are already addicted (my theory). Only then do you need nicotine and that sensation of inhaling that familiar smoke to feel good. If you are stressed the ritual can help soothe you.  Up until then, it is just something you do.

That was my personal experience, though and not all smokers were the same. Once the habit had set in you could see variations. I was a smoker and I smoked a lot when I was drinking, but I never needed to reach for one as soon as I woke up. When we would have a ‘smoko’ break at work I would be happy with just one, yet I would watch certain co-workers chain smoke as many as the time allowed – it made me feel dizzy watching them. Maybe they needed more, or maybe they got a ‘buzz’ I didn’t. Either way they seemed to require more than I did.

At this stage it is a steady habit, but most of us think ‘we can quit anytime’. Which brings to mind another brilliant anti-smoking commercial from my youth. A young woman holds a durrie in her hand, oblivious to the steel shank that pops out of the butt and curls into a fishing hook. Watching the hook dig into her lip as she tries to remove the cigarette still has shock value today. Another brilliant ad that most of my generation remembers today due to its gross out effectiveness; yet we still managed to distance ourselves from the message every time we lit up.

I must repeat the endless stream of advertising and social acceptance countering these campaigns. For comparison, just look at the incessant online gambling marketing we are bombarded with; big name celebrities insisting that they will provide endless fun and excitement! Also, picture the few and far between smoking areas of today. Now, imagine those spaces as ‘no smoking’ areas – getting the picture?

I remember seeing my (different) cousin off in a bar at the international airport and we were bamboozled at the concept that we could not smoke there. As we grabbed our beers to walk outside, we were informed that we could not take them with us. What kind of madness is this!

I have a clear recollection of my own rude awakening regarding that fucken hook. It was the night of State of Origin football many moons ago. The price of smokes was set to go up by something like 50c. An outrage! I decided then and there that I would stop – not quit – stop; I had no addiction to quit.

I got up for work the next morning, tossed my packet of smokes on top of my VCR and went to work. Not halfway there did the thoughts kick in. You know the old one about “don’t think of an elephant” and now that’s all you can think of? Smoking, front and centre of my consciousness the whole time until I got home, grabbed that pack and lit one up. “Oh, right, that’s what they were on about”.

I managed to quit in 1999. Wanna know how I remember? I was a fully-fledged pisshead by this stage, and my body was not coping too well with the abuse. After a big weekend away in Port Macquarie, I returned to work that seedy that I couldn’t even stomach a durrie. After a few days I thought of something I had heard about nicotine being out of your system after 48 hours (I do not know if that is true).

I figured “let’s see how we go”. I did okay during the days by avoiding joining in the smoko sessions. The evenings in the pub were much tougher, but I made it through the first week okay. I was drinking every night by this stage if you were wondering why one week seemed like a stretch.

Well, I made it through the week without a smoke. I also lost my shit in the middle of the store I was working in and stormed out hurling abuse along with my resignation. Whenever I give the summarised version of that story, I simply say “I quit smoking on Monday, and I quit my job on Friday”.

I stayed off, although as I mentioned before, I was never a heavy smoker. Booze was my drug of choice, and it would prove to be a much tougher monkey to get off my back. The cigarettes for me were a long-term habit more than an addiction; you just automatically reached for the fucking things. I had mild flu-like symptoms for a couple of weeks, but that’s hard to isolate when you are hungover all the time.

Those prices, well they kept steadily increasing. I have no idea how we got to these astronomical numbers they’re asking for today. When I smoked pot, people used to add tobacco (or spin) to bulk up the mix. Add too much and you would be labelled a tight ass. Nowadays you would be flaunting your wealth!

The prices are absurd. On top of that, you have to go down the street, under the bridge, stand on one leg and smoke with your nondominant hand. There is zero advertising giving the bullshit ‘living your best life’ with ciggies anymore. The packets have no eye-catching designs; they have hideous visual reminders of the potential consequences of puffing their contents!

Yet a generation born long after the propaganda machine was put to rest, is willing to part with obscene amounts of their hard-earned to partake of a toxic practice that offers no significant pleasant sensation. All this with the added bonus of an expensive addiction.

I have vivid memories of oldies telling me that I would regret starting while they puffed away. Of snickering with my peers at the hypocrisy of it all. We genuinely felt that we were smart for noticing that, rather than seeing it for what it was; a trapped person trying to warn a foolish newcomer.

One final commercial before I conclude. Celebrity actor Yul Brynar filmed a commercial just days before he died of lung cancer. He speaks to the camera in past tense, knowing he will be dead as we watch it. “Now that I’m gone…” he says. The key message: “Whatever you do, just don’t smoke”.

Most of us didn’t even smoke when that ad was running. We all saw it. We all felt it. We would often repeat that line mimicking his accent. I’m sure a lot of us even did that years later while we were sucking on our own cancer sticks.

There is so much I don’t understand.