Cigarette smoking is a huge concern for many who have found themselves deeply engrossed in it and wish to pull out. They say that it has substances, such as nicotine and tar deliberately added to keep users hooked but, for me, I pulled out with ease –I never felt any riveting influence it is said to have.
While in secondary
school, there were boys who were deeply into cigarette smoking. They were so
involved they often absconded from class to stay in the hills, where they smoked
without someone bordering them. Suddenly, it seemed there was something in it
that I was missing.
I left that school for another, driven by a strong desire for academic excellence –I was more
predisposed to books than anything else. There again, I met a guy who often had
thick dirty lips, bloodshot eyes and left a strong tobacco stench in his
trails. He would leave school to stay in the city, nightclubbing, girls
hunting, puffing all the time and sleeping wherever night caught up with him. Though
he was born and raised in the city, he never went home, giving his parents the
impression he was in school.
My friend got a little
serious, as final examinations neared –he wasn’t crazy after all. That was how
we got closer with me taking up that habit.
After graduation, I was
waiting for admission to a university and stayed with my elder brother in the
city (though my parents were also in the city). It was during that period that my
smoking habit flourished. Inwardly, I got the feeling that my brother knew about
it, but pretended he didn’t know, especially since he never saw me with a stick
of cigarette –I smoked only when I was out, sometimes with that friend and,
sometimes, alone. I recall one day when I tried to smoke in a taxi. The
driver stopped and requested that I get out. While I was getting out, I was conscious
that I was drifting away from society’s acceptable standards.
Eventually, I found my
admission and moved to the university. While attending the pre-degree bridging
programme, there were girls from influential family backgrounds with whom we
had struck a much-valued camaraderie. On the day we completed that phase of schooling,
it called for feasting. While walking towards the gate, I bought a stick of
cigarette and was smoking it when some of these girls were driving past. I
tried to hide my cigar but they still noticed it. It was how my esteem in the
eyes of those girls vanished –they concluded I wasn’t a good boy, after all.
I moved into the mainstream
of the university programme. In my class, I found a guy with whom our lives
rhymed –we both loved music and followed the trends. He was already into
smoking. So, we blended with ease. But in addition to cigarette, he also was
into weed. I tried to get him to usher me in, but he kept playing games until I
gave up. Now, with hindsight, I understand he felt weed-smoking wasn’t for my
type.
In our second year, we stopped
smoking. It wasn’t planned. It just happened naturally. One day, we just
realized we had not been smoking for some time. I learned something from this:
smoking for us and for many others was a stage in the staircase of adolescence.
But it didn’t really end
abruptly. There were times, I found myself in a party or an adventurous mood. I
consummated such moods with a stick of cigar. While at the orientation camp of
the National Youth Service, I had money that I couldn’t spend since we were fed
three times a day. So, I sometimes spent the evenings at the mami market, drinking. In the end, there
was always a stick of cigarette to go with it.
After national youth
service, I returned from Benin, Edo State, where I had served. I eventually got
a job as a mine manager. The job took me to a remote village, somewhere around
the limit between Plateau and Taraba States. In that village, there wasn’t decent
food, no clean water, no electricity, the people were antisocial, the housing was
practically a tent, and there weren’t people in my social circle... The funk in
the village was so deep I often felt I was in prison. When, eventually, I had
time to travel to the city, it felt like party time and called for celebration.
At such moments, cigarette often came handy. That was probably the last time I recall
smoking cigarette. It was in 1997.
