I've quit smoking more than 20 times — and still miss it

The day I turned 16 I picked up two things — my driver's license and a $1.98 pack of Kool 100 Milds from a gas station I knew would sell to me. It was 1995, and I still remember the freedom and rebellion as my hair blew in the wind; after a decade as a pack-a-day smoker, I began to feel I had let smoking become a costume, a suit of melancholic glamour that gave an emotional shorthand for feeling tragic.

Smoking was also social; some of my most meaningful conversations were shared over an ashtray, and the embodied ritual of lighting up felt like a way to bond. As public attitudes shifted in the early 2000s — with product placement barred on TV and in movies and smoking bans in public venues — the world was giving me reasons to quit.

At 27, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes prompted a sudden reevaluation: I flushed the seven cigarettes in my pack and quit instantly. Still, I kept coming back.

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