A veteran smoker wrote:

I have to terminate this violent relationship that is coupled with attachment, pain, hatred, detestation... and death; I have to end all pain campaigns.

Smoking my dear friends is the stupidest thing man can do to his/her humble body, the stupidest at all. You are throwing your body from a boat that is fighting against an angry sea and leaving it to meet its destiny with terrifying waves.

Smoking does not only yellow your fingers and cast rusty dusty look on your teeth, it further turns your lungs into that dark color of black; you read the right word "lungs". I felt like I extinguish the burning stump of my cigarette in my lungs which used to look like a rosy silky tissue... Used to!

I used to daily torment my body better than professional torturers using the smoke that never stopped; it was like running firebrands that tore my flesh. After years of smoke ironing, my lungs have become like two mangled paper bags contracting in laxity and hanging like two dry completely squeezed fruits. They are that close from turning, as the case was with one or maybe some of my friends, into two rotten pies stuffed with tumors and asphalt.

I must have stopped, to pick up my body which was tossed about by the waves and to restore the extinct color of my creased lungs. In other words, I must have restored vitality to my life as I have become more like a festering corpse walking on two feet.

However, I failed, I have wasted years attempting to quit but they are gone like the dust blown off an old carpet and gone with the wind. Whenever I ran away, it followed me like a she-wolf hungry for my flesh and blood and the delicate tissue of my lungs. It seemed that I loved to be devoured by the she-wolf that thrust its claws in my body and enjoyed my yummy flesh.

I have failed my dear friends. It is that killer love relationship between the wolf lover that not only sucks the blood of its lover to the last drop but rather dies for more and more blood. I wonder what sort of happiness does man find in his first cigarette as I shed my tears of sorry and regret for him. I feel pity for these lively lips rosy with blood that are about to meet this burning she-wolf that will take him through a journey of suffering and pains; a journey of humiliation and crushing. And what is that all about? It is about nothing! It is just the call of that ember of different cancers, bitumen and tar that is as black as the future of its smoker. A black tragedy which I am quite sure of its conclusion since the very first blows. Should I interfere?? Should I try to prevent him?? No, I don't have the required endurance to struggle with him; I have exhausted all powers with myself, but in vain.

(To be continued next Saturday...)