english breakfast, and similar addictions.

when i drink tea--every morning before i shower, every afternoon after lunch, before my shift starts at work in the evening, and when i'm settling down with a book before bed--what i really want to be doing is smoking a cigarette.

when i quit two summers ago, i thought the hardest part of transitioning into a nonsmoker's lifestyle would be resisting the urge smoke with friends--and for a while, i was right. but in time, i realized that while i had learned to converse freely and unconsciously (sans cigarette) on "smoke-breaks" with my friends, removing its presence from my daily routine was by far the greater challenge.

this is how school days used to go: i would wake up, get ready for class, eat a quick (and, paradoxically, a healthy) breakfast, and then reward my speed with a cigarette on my drive to school. it would last three and a half tracks of whatever rage against the machine album i was playing in my car that morning, just long enough to usher me into the entrance of the college parking lot. after my first class, i would join a boy i liked (who smoked the same brand i did!) outside the communications tech building to smoke and talk. our discussions were always lively and invigorating. later, if i was stressed because i had forgotten to finish my philosophy homework, i would smoke to motivate myself into doing it in the hour i had left before class started. in the evenings, halfway through the lecture (during our ten-minute break), i would smoke facing west with a classmate i found remarkably intelligent, and we would discuss the world according to ayn rand as the sky turned orange to match the end of the girl's camel, and my american spirit. after class was over i would take the long way home, watching the city reduce itself to neon signs and steadfast streetlamps, listening to everyday prophets, and flicking the ashes of my final cigarette outside my open window.

when i first started trying to quit, my boyfriend suggested that i chew on straws. the length (after i snipped it to be approximately 85 millimeters long) and diameter made the straw a perfect mock-cigarette, and whenever i felt like smoking, i would hold it between my fingers and chew the end intermittently. not only did i look like a fool, but i found no satisfaction in chewing plastic--and so i gave up, bumming cigarettes from my boyfriend instead of buying a pack of my own so i wouldn't lose complete possession of my recently-acquired self-righteousness.

but then that the term ended, my boyfriend and i broke up, and i rediscovered tea. my environment and routine changed (arguably for the better), and black tea emerged as a perfect stand-in for cigarettes: caffeine replaced nicotine, and when the tea was hot enough, steam filled my throat and lungs almost as well as smoke once did. tea was cheaper than cigarettes (four dollars for twenty bags versus six dollars for the same amount of spirits), remained relatively portable, and didn't leave an aftertaste in my mouth or an odor on my hair and clothes. i was overjoyed.

fast-forward twenty-one months, and here i am, still smoke-free. i crave cigarettes constantly, no less than once a day--the perpetual cup of tea in my right hand might give this away. i have replaced one addiction with another, and i wonder if i somehow cheated my way out of smoking--but then, does it really matter? sure, i might still develop heart disease or high blood pressure from my above-average intake of caffeine, and perhaps the process of manufacturing black tea has some serious, yet-to-be-identified negative health effects on the consumer. but at least, i suppose, i can now run--and i've reduced my chances of developing lung cancer, and mouth cancer, and whatever else we blame on cigarettes (wait--do i sound defensive?).

premature wrinkles, gray skin, yellow teeth, sagging breasts, yellow fingernails, brittle hair, brittle bones, deepened voice; emphysema, bronchitis, and reduced fertility. i need to write this list down and look at it whenever i want to smoke. this is madness--after i worked so hard to quit, why would i ever want to start again?

image credits: english breakfast via stash, american spirits via flickr.