AND we continue the letter from a veteran smoker ... Here is my complexion starting to suffer from wrinkles, my cells are fading out of hunger for water and my skin is turning into that grey color of volcano ashes. How could this face with all expressions of chronic constipation engraved on it have appetite for anything, except for inflection of harm and subjugation to the chains of slavery that never care for life or freedom? I am one of the cursed living on earth; those who are cursed with belonging to smoke kingdom where loyalty is only to the cigarette. What a miserable life.

I deserted my she-wolf lover for few days and sometimes for weeks; but regrettably I crawled back to its kingdom’s black court with its nasty smell. It is a greater pain than the Greek agony; I think that the chronic pain and suffering caused by the cigarette aptly qualifies it to proudly have its place next to the Greek mythological deity Zeus.

A cigarette is the prison from which and to which a prisoner escapes.

When I proposed to engage my beloved girl, I lied to her and said that I didn’t smoke. It was not completely a lie as I was attempting to quit. When I got married, I started finding excuses to go to an unobtrusive dark place to smoke a cigarette hiding like a beetle in any corner. I can assure you I felt like I was cheating on my wife.

I was cheating my wife with a lover that pulled me away from her arms. When one day a cigarette accidentally fell off my pocket, my wife looked desperately at the ceiling of the room hoping that it opened so that I accused my neighbor with the cigarette. I can’t describe the suffering I had with my wife and my sadistic lover, the cigarette. You may be suffering from high blood pressure or you may be emotionally sensitive.

Do not blame me; I have tried everything. I tried anti-smoking patches and I became more addicted to the cigarette with the plasters. I even tried hypnosis but I ended up haunted with daydreams of the cigarette. I tried pharmaceutical pills called “Zyban” but they almost drove me crazy and insane in a while although they served the purpose and helped me get rid of the cigarette; however, it was better for me to get back to the merciless cigarette which was like punishing me for attempting to quit.

Nothing is worse than anti-smoking drugs; nothing is worse than death.

I am approaching the end. I gathered all my will and fought with every cell in my body crying for life and threw my last cigarette.

Now, I am the happiest human living on earth.