How To Quit Smoking

A step by step guide

I was born with a cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth. 

What I mean is… I understood I hadn’t lived, like really lived, until that first cigarette first touched my lips. I finally saw who I wanted to be and who I would become. It was aspirational.

My two best friends and I lined up in front of a big mirror at Danielle’s with her mom’s unlit Benson & Hedges between our fingers, practicing, seeing who could do it the sexiest. I narrowed my eyes, tossed my long brown hair, and pretend-sexy-smoked with all my might.

Janie said, “Holly wins. She’s going to be the first to lose her virginity too.”

The idea of sex scared the shit out of me at twelve years old. (I was the last to lose my virginity.) But smoking, I was ready for. I just felt so cool and sophisticated with that long white stick drawing attention to my fingers and mouth.

Soon after, when I inhaled my first lit cigarette — a Marlboro light, in the woods behind Jack T.’s house — I knew this was something I wanted.

Riddled wi…