The Beginning

One of the first clear arguments Allen Carr puts forward in his book is to do with the reasons we start smoking in the first place. His description of this - and it may be more a symptom of the books datedness than anything else - simply does not fit with my experience of starting smoking.

I never started because of the "brainwashing" of figure from films: "The Humphrey Bogart / Clint Eastwood" image, or the idea that smoking would make me a "sophisticated, modern young lady" (p. 11). For much of my life, cigarette advertising passed me by. (I do recall the appealing tropical beach of the "Fresh is Alpine" billboards though, the white linen of its happy, carefree couple and remember remarking to my horrified mother how I wanted to be them.)

Likewise, I never had to "work hard" to become a smoker. I never actually wanted to be a smoker. My aunt was a smoker. I saw her as this hideous Kath and Kim (though it was pre-Kath and Kim, obviously) figure, who bought paraphernalia like beachtowels emblazoned with the name of her favourite brand. She borrowed a shirt of mine once when I was about thirteen, and it smelled like cigarettes for weeks afterwards. I hated it.

No, the romanticised images I've built up about smoking over the years were all fed by my own addiction.

My first cigarette was at a party at a boy called Mark's house. His last name rhymed with "Buttock", which we found amusing. I was fifteen years old.

In fact, it wasn't even a cigarette that I smoked, it was a Beedie. Beedies look like this. You get them - well, you used to get them - from those Indian imports stores that sell pillowcases with embroidered elephants on them, and cheesecloth dresses and things like that. It's actually a rolled up tobacco leaf, tied with a little piece of pink cotton.

I remember hesitating when my friend asked me if I wanted one. From memory I'd been resisting for some time. I recall quite strongly the moment I said I would: my justification that it "wasn't a cigarette", something I held onto for a number of months.

And I don't think it was the fear of not being accepted that made me say yes. Possibly that was the root cause, but if so, it certainly wasn't something that I was aware of. No. what lured me in was the promise of a headspin. A literal headspin. "It will give you a headspin," was what she said.

This was long before any of us discovered recreational drug-taking. We had to get our kicks where we could.

We'd been spending our time, in fact, trying to make ourselves pass out by crouching on the floor against a wall and making ourselves hyperventilate, then standing up very quickly, and having a friend press on our chests.

So yes, the beedie. Do you know, I never coughed. Never spluttered. Never embarrassed myself. I inhaled like the best of them from the word go. My lungs were made for smoking, apparently.

But I did get a headspin.

So smoking was always easy for me. I never had to tell myself I wouldn't get hooked becasue I hated it so much. Because I didn't. I liked it. Just loved the feeling of my brain cells telling me to please give them more oxygen instead of that poisony nicotine stuff. And from the word go, it was a special treat - something to do after I'd listened all the way through the ten-minute live version of The Doors' The End. Or at 3am, when I'd wake up, and secretly climb out my bedroom window and sit on the roof.

I was such a good girl in so many other ways. I was grateful to have this secret.

I just never expected it to stay with me for seventeen years.