Member-only story
I’ve been addicted to nicotine for six years now.
The addiction started almost immediately after I started using.
It was not long before I didn’t want to use it anymore. Still, I couldn’t stop, still haven’t stopped. It is an incredible synapse enhancer, to use Stephen King’s words. I am literally smarter when I use it. The effect is subtle, not something that you notice unless you have a keen sense of your own state of mind.
As a teenager, I tried nicotine. It was a cigarette I swiped from a friend’s dad. After a few tries, I figured out how to smoke. No one had taught me, I figured it out on my own. After that first inhalation, my whole body was overtaken by a heaviness and comfort. It was unbelievable. I hadn’t thought it would do much because I had seen people do this while driving or talking amongst friends. After that first inhalation, I stumbled over to an open area in the yard and lay spread eagle on the ground for a solid twenty minutes.
It was too powerful for me, and not to my liking anyhow. A body high. I cared not for those. I didn’t touch it again for a few years.
Then, I started “going out with” a girl who smoked. Marlboro Green 100s. The iconic menthol cigarette. When we hung out at my house, we would go out back (in the dead of winter) and smoked them out of sight from my…
