Sunday, January 13, 2013

Dreams of Smoking


I still have dreams of smoking cigarettes.

It's been maybe five years since I quit.  I was 20 or so then, and I'm 25 now, so maybe five years.  Cold turkey; went to bed having smoked a whole pack that day, woke up and haven't touched 'em since.  It was during finals week, my first semester at my Alma Mater.  It was really stressful and I have never hated anything more in my entire life.

Of course, I haven't "entirely" quit smoking.  I still smoke a pipe, sometimes, when I'm in certain moods.  Some friends of mine smoke cigars and I've joined them more than a few times.

But I have not touched a cigarette since.  Except in my dreams.

When I first quit and was furious with withdrawal it was understandable.  And those stopped after a while, too.  But I guess they didn't quit entirely, either.  I would still wake up and recall the feel of smooth smoke trickle down my throat and fill up my lungs with the calm and succor, remember the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the fluid motion of tapping out the ash.

Today, just now, randomly, I remembered several dreams I've had in the past month or so about smoking.  Usually, I was waiting somewhere, and there'd be a cigarette in my hand.  I'd smoke, then feel guilty about it since I've quit.  But, I'd console myself, it's just one, and no one's around to watch, and I'm not going to do it again after this.  A one-time lapse is allowable.

So I would.

That was my thinking in my dreams.  It's not much different than my thinking in the waking world.  Thankfully I haven't actually relapsed, and thankfully my conscious mind apparently misses cigarettes much, much less than my dream-self.

Funnily enough, in my dream, I would remember the other times in dreams that I'd also smoked a cigarette under similar conditions, and think, "See, we can do it now and it's not going to take over your life; it's fine; it's our thing."

I don't know if I'll always have these dreams.  I'd prefer not to.  At the least I should stop trying to recount them while awake, as just remembering the smoking-sensation of my dreams with my full mind makes me really long for them again in reality.

Anyway, I don't know what any of that means, or if dreams ever do mean anything, but it was on my mind and it's my blog, so I shared it.

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