Gregor Hens - Nicotine

It happens all the time how could it not, since the very repetitive nature of the habit calls it forth? In response to my deployment of one or other of my nicotine delivery systems, an interlocutor will ask after my dependency, and so Ill begin talking about some aspect of it but after a few seconds Ill pause, with a catch in my throat not unlike the epiglottal spasm that precedes a tobacco-induced coughing fit. At these times I can feel it all banking up inside me: a great twisted mass of tics, compulsions, culturally transmitted attitudes, complexes and neuroses; swooning, I picture the baroque faade of my forty-year relationship with La Diva Nicotina its myriad niches and grottos (each one suitable for a swift fag break), its blue-faced gargoyles and hand-rolled finials which rise up, row upon foil-wrapped row, to where an upended bellicoso cigar of a spire chars the heavens. How, I think to myself, how can I possibly convey to this person for all that they may have smoked themselves, may indeed be still smoking the all-pervading nature of my addiction to this psychoactive substance, which has tangled up my psyche in its writhing convolvulus of highs and lows, even as its toxified every cell in my body? The answer is, of course: I cant and so after a few desultory remarks about whatever smoking cessation therapy Im currently engaged in, Ill usually nudge the conversation in the direction of clearer skies.

The other evening, cycling across the small park surrounding the Imperial War Museum (formerly the lunatic asylum known as Bedlam), I was hailed by a passer-by who recognised me. Hows it going with the vape, Will? he called out, and since Id just finished smoking a cigarette and contemplating my grim new addictive dispensation, I stopped to tell him: Dreadful. My wife gave me the vape for Christmas, and rather ironically since Id just managed to pack in smoking, although I was still chewing nicotine gum I found myself more heavily addicted to nicotine than ever after 24 hours of suckling compulsively on this! I withdrew my silvery, top-of-the-range vaporiser from my pocket, Which is why I call it the witchs tit. The man was bemused hed only wanted a glancing acknowledgement, not the prologue to a lecture which then continued: I tell you, I became so fixated on this bloody thing it didnt take long before I began casting surreptitious glances at cigarettes, and wondering whether smoking might constitute an effective substitute for vaping. Now Im doing both! Im nailed up on a crucifix the upright of which is a vaporiser, while the crossbar is a Gitanes sans filtre, bien sur

Ah! Gitanes, with their elegant blue flat-pack, adorned with a Carmen-a-like silhouette of a full-skirted woman seemingly dancing the tarantella in a cloud of their own smoke. I couldve expatiated to the man at length simply on my relationship with French tobacco beginning with the origins of the state monopoly in the strong black shag issued to the Grande Arme, and dubbed le petit gris after the colour of the cubic paper packets it was wrapped in. (And still is two centuries later.) I couldve painted him a picture: the pale sable dust of a village square somewhere in the Midi shaded by planes and chestnuts; the caf-bar-cum-tabac with its zinc counter and scowling patron; the grand noir and a small balloon of Marc de Bourgogne; the just purchased packet of Boyards Mas and its reverent unwrapping: silky cellophane slipped off, cardboard lappet unlimbered and the thick cigarette in its yellowy binding of maize paper eased out. The coffee, brandy and tobacco are so inextricably bound up with one another and with those overnight drives I regularly undertook in my twenties, beginning in London and ending in Provence that I cannot catch a whiff of the French stuff without hearing the ghostly chinking of boules and the mechanical flutteration of a two-horsepower engine.

And this wouldve been merely a prologue-within-a-prologue: had the man in the madding park displayed the least inclination Id have gone on detailing ex-haustively not only my relations with French tobacco, but those Ive cultivated with the weed of many other nations as well. I shant overshare here when a few vignettes should suffice: for the past decade or so Ive often agreed to give lectures and readings in Berlin solely so I can visit the tobacconist in the Alexanderplatz Bahnhof. Here I buy hand-rolling cigarette tobaccos of a stygian darkness and Samsonian strength unattainable in England my favourite is the threatening-sounding Schwarzer Krauser No 1. Its the same with Tuscany, which I visit not for the astonishing Mannerist frescos of Modenas Palazzo del Te, but its pleasingly cheap and tasty eponymous cheroots. Cuba, alas, is to far a-finca for me, but for a number of years I had a cigar dealer whod arrive at my house with a Gladstone bag full of Havanas including so-called specials; which, as their name implied, were accorded the very best ever to be rolled, and superior to the established marques. As with all illicit dealers (he transhipped the cigars through Estonia and smuggled them from there into England, thus avoiding the hefty customs duty), I felt under an obligation to smoke enough to justify his risks. Ridiculous, I know but thats how I ended up with a 15 per day Hoyo de Monterrey Petit Robusto habit, on top of the cigarettes.

The first cigarettes I ever smoked were bone-dry Senior Service that had long lurked in one of the silver cigarette boxes scattered about my grandparents house. Certainly I was nauseated I may even have vomited, but this is all lost in the blue-grey curlicues of the past. By the time I was at secondary school, and walking a couple of miles there each morning, I was a confirmed smoker whod stop off in the park for an 8.00 a.m. fag break. As the advertising slogan of the period put it: People Like You Are Changing The agent of change being a harsh and wood-smoky Players No. 6 or its still harsher and wood-smokier, scaled-down stable mate: a No. 10. In funds I smoked Peter Stuyvesants in the soft packet, or Kensitas in a red flip-top box. I never liked Embassy much the smoke felt oddly woolly in my mouth but had a thing for old mens filterless fags: Navy Cut, Woodbines and Park Drive. Soon enough, as my smoking increased, I sought out cheaper whiffs settling on half-ounces of Old Holborn tobacco, each of which could be concocted into nearly thirty, whippet-thin roll-ups.

Even aged thirteen, I was hip to the powerful ways smoking could alter my perception. Certainly nicotine was psychoactive yet it transported me in paradoxical ways, tugging my feelings about in its choppy wake. The first few drags after a period of abstinence induced head-spin and dry mouth, while a drowsy numbness crept over my extremities. Soon enough, though, this narcotic phase was succeeded by excitation: spit balled in my mouth, my palms itched, my heartbeat accelerated in my own small and unsophisticated way, staring at the algal scurf on the duck pond, I believed I could