Confession of a One-time Smoker

I've got a really major confession to make. I mean, it's a big one. You could easily call it a doozy.

I smoked a cigarette.

Okay, that's a lie. I smoked a pack of cigarettes.

I know, I know. I deserve more than just a simple, "Shame on you."

Allow me to explain.

It went down like this. I've been dealing with a slew of stressful and emotional issues of late -- break ups, pending surgeries, insanely demanding job to name a few -- when, there I was, cleaning out my car during what became the most inane of torrential downpours -- according to Portland meteorological records, it was the most rain Portland, the city infamous for gloomy rain, had ever gotten in one time -- when I reached deep underneath my passenger's seat and felt a box like I had never felt before.

Pulling it out, I learned that it was a pack of Marlboro's that belonged to my boyfriend's -- ugh, my ex's -- best friend. I was ready to put the box into my trash bag already teeming with coffee cups and empty Jelly Bellies boxes when I noticed there was still one solitary cigarette hiding beneath the gold foil.

I threw the bag away and kept that solitary cigarette.

I dried off, soaked after half-standing in the rain for 30 minutes (What can I say? My car was messy!), and stared at the cigarette, sitting on my table, beckoning me like I was Alice. I could see the words written on its white, half-crumpled body: "Smoke me," like it was my key through the door to Wonderland.

And so, I did. I grabbed a pack of matches from my closet, ran outside to my apartment's fire escape and lit up.

Trust me, as a runner...yes, now a runner who chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes...I know how awful smoking is for the body. I cherish my lungs, my heart and my body -- they've all been with me and have held their own relatively well so, to completely destroy all three with the puff of one cigarette is seemingly nonsensical. I mean, studies show that smoking just one single cigarette increases the stiffness of the arteries in people my age, 18 to 30, by a whopping 25 percent. That's not good for the body.

Yet, despite these stats, an alarmingly large percentage -- 17.9 of adults in Oregon -- of the US population still smokes. It's really no wonder why the CDC named cigarette smoking as the leading preventable cause of death in our nation.

Most scientific research shows that the compulsion to smoke again after that first cigarette can lie dormant for three years. My compulsion lay low for a whopping 48 hours. As disgusting as it felt afterwards -- the smell of nicotine and smoke lingered in my nostrils while the taste of raw, burning chemicals and tobacco pierced my every taste bud -- I got the point of such pitiful and disgraceful agony and depression that I needed to turn to something.

And that's when my mouth started to get dry. And when my fingers started to itch. And when my new-found arrhythmia began to explode in my chest.

I knew I wanted -- needed -- a cigarette. So, with unsteady footsteps, I walked to the corner store and nonchalantly bought a pack. And then I went to town; huffing and puffing on one right after another until, much to my surprise, I had none left.

And that's when it hit me: Nicotine is, as every healthcare advocate and worker will tell you, the most addictive drug. It's smarmy, making you feel cool...like those ultra hip yet laid-back 20-somethings who read and write in the park. It's comforting, releasing you from experiencing the stress of real life. It's intoxicatingly indulgent...like allowing yourself to have a thick slice of sinfully rich cake.

Unlike that cake's moment on your lips that stays on your hips, the damage caused by a moment with a cigarette isn't possible to eradicate and it's much harder to say, "No thanks," to another cigarette than it is to another slice of cake. Why? As any smoker will probably tell you -- it's the withdrawal that makes the body scream for a kid like ice cream, "YES, PLEASE! I want ANOTHER!"

And so, it's a mind game: At first I'm dealing with the taste in my mouth and the stench in my nose that doesn't seem nearly as bad when there's a cigarette at reach. And the physical effects -- my shaky hands, awkward heart beat, the feeling that my tongue is growing larger and larger. Then there's the dizziness, unbalanced by that awful sense of vertigo like I'm swaying on a boat that has no exit.

It's enough hell to make me wonder, "Why'd I ever do this in the first place?"