Nicotine Page 4
The physical symptoms of withdrawal have now passed, and I should begin to mentally adjust to the smoke-free life lying before me. Instead I’m writing this book and thinking of nothing all day but cigarettes. Perhaps this is the moment of inner reflection that must precede my mental conversion. Or it’s a self-deception, a continuation of my addiction via other means.
I could write about something else, about sport for example, a related subject that I know just as much about as I do smoking. In both cases it’s all about breathing, a fact that occurs to me every time I shop at Laufen Lunge; a running shop owned, apparently, by the Lunge family in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Smoking and sport belong together in my life to the extent that they are in complementary distribution.
I’ve always either smoked or done intensive endurance sport. Three years ago I completed my first triathlon in a reasonable time. I trained in Austria, in the mountains overlooking Innsbruck. I’d get up early in the morning and ride my racing bike from Tulfes to a clear mountain lake at around 2,400 metres altitude, where I’d do lengths for an hour. Seldom in my life have I felt so relaxed and at peace as I did then. When the cool, smooth fish swept past my legs I didn’t flinch once, I didn’t mind at all. Three women would watch me while doing their yoga exercises on a weathered jetty and would occasionally look over and smile. After swimming I would meet my friend Paul for breakfast, read and sleep a little. In the afternoon I would jog for an hour or two across the long-distance walking trail, sometimes alone, sometimes with Paul, whom I met on a forum for endurance sport. My strongest discipline is cycling. A few months after the triathlon I rode into the side of a delivery van at forty kilometres an hour. I came to as the paramedic was cutting off my tight cycling leggings with a pair of bandage scissors. A second paramedic was pulling glass splinters out of a wound above my right eye with a pair of tweezers. A police officer was standing behind them and he asked if he could take down my particulars. He said I wouldn’t have survived without a helmet.
Survived what? I asked.
I was pushed down a long corridor and dropped off in front of a radiation protection door. I raised my head as well as I could and looked around. The corridor ended with one of the countless double doors battered by wheelie beds and had the word REANIMATION in mirror image scratched into its frosted glass windows. My phone had been in a bag mounted under the saddle of my bike during the accident, and I angled for the plastic bag on the rack under my wheelie bed to get it out and take a photo.
Reanimation isn’t the kind of word you want to see from behind, I thought to myself, and called M. I’m in the realm of the dead, I said. I was x-rayed and stitched up, a psychologist asked me for the day of the week and the name of the Chancellor, then asked me to complete the sequence 21-19-17…
There are a few possible answers, I replied.
M. finally arrived. She stood beside me and stroked my head while I signed a statement clearing the hospital and its friendly staff of any responsibility should a blood clot form in my brain against expectations in the days to follow. The ward sister gave me a pair of operation trousers for the journey home, pressed the plastic bag and my bloody t-shirt into my hands and discharged me. My right knee was stiff and swollen, my forehead and chin were bandaged. My right hip stung from a twenty-centimetre road burn. M. and my neighbour, the father of numerous children, helped me in the night to get to my apartment on the fifth floor and laid me on the bed. After three days the headache let up. After a further eight days, in great pain, I put on a tracksuit and dragged myself down to the street in my slippers. I bought a pack of Marlboros in the Mai-Thai bar, a seedy establishment in the neighbouring building. The girl at the bar watched me, bewildered, while I tore off the film and, trembling, awkwardly yanked at the silver paper. She lit the cigarette for me, a dozen golden bangles jangled on her thin, brown arms. I hadn’t smoked in eight years. I staggered, held on tightly to the rickety balustrade running around the bar and cried with happiness. My legs were shaking. I was back. I had seen the gateway to death, from the other side in fact. But I was back. To be alive, honey. Alive, honey.
It wasn’t my first bike accident in Berlin. A few years previously, I was on my way to a whiskey and tobacco shop in Mitte rumoured to belong to the wife or girlfriend of the poet Durs Grünbein. I didn’t give a damn about that. What I was interested in was the filterless Senior Service that couldn’t be bought anywhere else in the city and that were reserved for another patron, presumably a poet. The situation seemed vaguely familiar to me even before I’d got a hold of the first pack; the film Smoke by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster, in which a similar scenario plays out, had just come out at my favourite arthouse cinema. I had to coax these cigarettes from the friendly lady every time, pack by pack. On the way there, maybe already lost in thought about the delicate task lying before me, I landed on the bonnet of a red Toyota Landcruiser. A short time later I was sitting strapped in on a backwards-mounted seat in the ambulance driving in the direction of Charité hospital. The paramedic was sitting next to me and seemed to have nodded off when the ambulance came to an abrupt stop, the partitioning window to the driver’s cabin slid open and the driver said: Herbert, I think I’ve just hit an old lady. The paramedic gave me a weary look, excused himself, and calmly climbed out. After a few minutes, with Herbert’s support, an old woman climbed inside. Welcome aboard, I called out to her nonchalantly and smirked. But instead of reciprocating my amicably-intended salutation, she was overcome with a bout of hysteria, a violently abusive screaming fit that was still going when we were unloaded at the hospital. Even in the waiting room in A&E she kept hissing at me like I was a metamorphosed Gregor Samsa, poking her crutch at me like she wanted to shoo me into a corner. Only later did I see that my whole face was caked with blood, a four centimetre-long laceration gaping on my right temple. With my slashed shirt and my hair wet with sweat standing up in all directions I offered a frightening, you could say, undead sight. I think even I sprung backwards when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror.
I can still hear the old woman caterwauling in my ears as I turn back to my experiment with the bummed Benson & Hedges. I disassemble the cigarette into its individual parts, I dissect and consider them and ask myself what I’m trying to achieve with this experiment. What are you doing? I hear M. say. She hasn’t smoked for a very long time. She also no longer eats meat. She runs twice a week and does yoga. Her skin is radiant, her eyes are light and clear. She smells good. She meditates now and then. But she thinks like a smoker. She was always the one that would remind me to buy cigarettes when we were walking home from dinner. She kept an eye on how many were still in my pack. She always had a lighter on her. She planned smoking breaks if we were out. She always looked for the ashtray the moment we got into a rental car. She knew when I would reach for a cigarette even before I knew myself. Sometimes she would become restless if I hadn’t smoked for a while. My addiction was her addiction.
I will dismantle this cigarette and my whole past smoking behaviour along with it, I think to myself. By dissecting the cigarette into its individual parts I will expose it, I will make a trusted object into an alien one, perhaps even an alienating one. That is what I resolved to do. But instead of creating as vast an inner distance as possible, instead of considering what crumbles so pathetically before my eyes and at my fingertips with calmness and a clear head, I sense how agitated I am, I feel my heart rate rising like it does on a steep climb. By going into the street and obtaining this cigarette, I have taken a first, decisive step back into addiction. I always found it hard to ask strangers for cigarettes, and this time took no less effort. My inner restraint has a motivation against it that’s clearly stronger, stronger than I want to admit. I knew how great the temptation would be and I did it anyway. The next step, I think, beholding the sliced-open cigarette, is a fresh relapse.
But I continue, making it clear to myself that I no longer smoke. That I’m doing well because of it. I have my pulse back under control. I am now, like M., only a vi
carious smoker, I like it when others smoke. Sometimes I walk through the city and imagine that others are smoking for me. I silently thank the smokers in front of the cafés and office buildings and in smoking areas, imagining that they do it for me, for my inner contentment. I have people smoke for me.
How addicted do you actually have to be to entertain ideas like these? I took the Fagerström Test – used in the field of psychiatry to establish nicotine dependency – many times and at different points in my life, and achieved a perfect score every time.
1. How long after you’ve woken up do you smoke your first cigarette?
within the first 5 mins 3 points
within the first 6-30 mins 2 points
within the first 31-60 mins 1 point
after 60 mins 0 points
2. Do you find it difficult not to smoke in places where smoking is not allowed?
yes 1 point
no 0 points
3. Which cigarette would you not want to miss?
the first cigarette of the morning 1 point
other cigarettes 0 points
4. How many cigarettes do you smoke in a day on average?
up to 10 0 point
11-20 1 points
21-30 2 points
more than 30 3 points
5. Do you smoke more in the first hour after waking up than you do during the rest of the day?
yes 1 point
no 0 points
6. Do you ever smoke when you’re ill and need to stay in bed?
yes 1 point
no 0 points
Of note in this questionnaire is that the time that passes between getting up and the first cigarette is a very good indicator of how strong the addiction is. Someone who smokes forty or more cigarettes a day, but only after having brushed their teeth (4 mins), showering (8 mins), getting dressed (5 mins) and having breakfast (20 mins) etc., can only achieve a maximum of 8 points according to Fagerström and would be classified as highly, but not so highly dependent. I have to confess that my perfect score was momentarily jeopardized because I stumbled at question 3. If I were prepared to relinquish the first cigarette of the day (which would knock off a point), the next cigarette would then be my first cigarette and I could enjoy it just as much as the real first one that I so nobly gave up. I would just postpone the second cigarette of the day by ten or fifteen minutes; I would, the way I see it, lose nothing. In the end, in spite of these considerations, I still gave myself a point. I wanted the perfect result, like a friend of mine who drank himself to the edge of delirium the morning of checking himself into an alcohol addiction clinic in order to impress the on-duty doctor, or maybe himself. He most likely wanted to establish himself as an expert in withdrawal by making himself the greatest pisshead of all time, like a child on a swing who makes themselves soar with all their might so as to be able to make an especially impressive jump.
I consider the crumbling tobacco of my Benson & Hedges. At one end, the end you light up, it’s a little compacted so that it doesn’t come apart as easily. This is the so-called reinforced end that prevents the tobacco from crumbling out of the front of the cigarette. (I’ve read that filterless cigarettes are compacted at both ends, so it doesn’t actually matter which end is lit.) The reinforced head is to blame when a lit cigarette goes out if you don’t take a drag on it. If the embers were to consume the reinforced head from the start, the cigarette would burn all by itself. I think about all the film scenes where prostitutes light up a cigarette and lay it in an ashtray after one or two drags. As soon as the cigarette’s gone out, the date’s over. It still surprises me how long it takes for a left cigarette to burn itself out, and yet it seems like cigarettes used to be more tightly packed than they are today. How long’s a quickie? Listen, Mister, it’s your time, the young Jodie Foster says in Taxi Driver; fifteen minutes ain’t long… when that cigarette burns out your time is up.
I fetch the electronic weighing scales from the kitchen, lay another piece of paper on it and hold down the button until zero appears on the display. Then I shake the crumbs of tobacco onto it. Still zero, the scales don’t react. How much tobacco is in a cigarette? I usually turn to the internet when I need advice, and this time’s no different. According to the manufacturer’s website the CMB-120 – a laboratory device used in the production of cigarette prototypes produced by the Burkhart Company in Wedel, Hamburg – can measure a weight of between 300 and 1400 milligrams. Most cigarettes, I read, have a tobacco content of less than a gram. My kitchen scales can’t register a weight under a gram.
There are large and small strands of tobacco, some very thin, some like fine wood shavings exhibiting a distinctive lighter colouring. I most likely have an American Blend comprised of around sixty percent light Virginia tobacco as well as a lower quantity of Burley and oriental tobacco dosed with processed tobacco remnants, the so-called blended leaf sheet, here in front of me. The fact that hundreds of chemicals are then added to this miracle blend, some of which are carcinogenic, provides the most significant topos of the cigarette deterrent industry and has been publicized without measurable success. Instead of worrying about this or consulting the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection’s published list, I chose one of the newer, additive-free brands and was always very happy with my selection.
Today, right at this moment actually, is the first time I’ve taken the trouble to look at the ominous list and realize to my disappointment that there’s only 688.34372 milligrams of tobacco in a Peer Export. The Ministry clearly has a better set of kitchen scales than I do. It wouldn’t surprise me if the second piece of information that jumped out while I perused the list, namely that an ample amount of ethylene vinyl acetate co-polymer is used to seal my long-beloved Muratti cigarettes, remained in my unresolved thoughts for the day and influenced my dreams. What form would they take?
It should be noted that the enormous quantity of additives constantly being shared and circulated quickly shrinks under closer inspection. Most cigarettes are manufactured using only a few of the hundreds of the possible additives, amongst which are completely harmless natural flavourings such as sugar, cocoa and liquorice. Even a dangerous-sounding candidate like sorbitol turns out to be a naturally occurring sugar alcohol found in pears, apples and roses.
I put the scales back in the cupboard and turn my attention to the filter that’s still partially stuck to the cigarette paper. I carefully pluck apart the cottony material reminiscent of artichoke hair. The fibres of my Benson & Hedges are finer than I remember. I later read that they’re 30 to 50 micrometres, a number I can barely fathom. The paper’s comprised of two parts: the thin, white cigarette paper and the strong filter tip, whose colour and texture is apparently supposed to resemble cork, which I suddenly find completely ridiculous; in fact it’s totally absurd, cork is obviously prized for being impermeable. I hold the paper against the window and discover a row of tiny holes in the mouthpiece designed to thin out the tobacco smoke and let through the oxygen-rich air. The around 900-degree hot embers convert the sucked-in oxygen into carbon dioxide and through smouldering partial combustion (around 500 degrees) into toxic carbon monoxide. The smoker receives enough air through the laser perforations to be able to breathe and smoke simultaneously when taking a drag.
Even if I’ve already known it for a while, I’m still amazed that there’s a shade more tobacco in the cigarette than the length of the mouthpiece suggests. I think it’s worth noting in the wider context of our consumer world that most products are packaged and processed in such a way that the consumer feels they’re getting more for their money, like they’ve got something for nothing. Which marketing specialist came up with the idea to conceal part of their product? Evidently the amount of tobacco we consume is only incidental when it comes to smoking. It’s about the effect, the sense of well-being, the right balance.
I remember the ludicrously thin cigarettes that my friends and I used to roll when I was a teenager because we wanted to make the tobacco pouches
we bought in Holland last longer, and because we thought they made us look cool. It wasn’t about having more back then. Perhaps this is where the occasionally difficult to distinguish difference between a drug and a harmless treat like crisps or chocolate can be clarified: while we can’t get enough of treats, with drugs one is looking for the right dosage, which only increases gradually in the course of a lifetime.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule: I once visited Gugging, the so-called House of Artists, a psychiatric hospital near Vienna where some of the famous Art Brut artists live. The poet Ernst Herbeck, who died in 1991, had lived and worked in this house and was the reason for my visit. I already knew that nicotine addiction was a significant indicator for schizophrenia; the smoker rate among schizophrenics is three times as high as in the rest of the population. But I was still astonished when I entered the house and met the first residents on the stairs. It was as if they were having a competition, smoking with a greedy naturalness that I’d never witnessed anywhere else before. They sat on the steps and the windowsills, in the brightly painted corridors, they painted, talked to themselves, drilled wheels of liquorice into their ears, rubbed themselves between their toes or rocked in solipsistic displacement, and all of them, without exception, smoked relentlessly. Every drag they took was sucked in as if it were their last and every one of these patients held their pack in their free hand so tightly and securely with a habitual attentiveness, as if it could go missing at the first distraction. I had no doubt that they would have smoked even more if it was physically possible, especially as many of them were indeed successful artists and didn’t know what to do with all their money in the confines of the psychiatric ward.