“I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset. Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette. And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get.” – The Beatles

I’ve smoked cigarettes for more than half my life. I love smoking, I love everything about smoking. I do it every chance I get. (As a matter of fact, I’m chain smoking while I’m writing this column.) Cigarettes are my friends. And tobacco is a vegetable, so it’s healthy, right? Plus I’ve got a collection of really cool limited edition Zippo lighters (which I never use because they’re really cool limited editions – I light up using whatever is cheapest at 7-11).

And then again, I watched both my father and his brother die from emphysema. And any physical exertion at all leaves me short of breath. Any. Even thingie. (Oblique Monty Python reference.)

Actually, I started smoking by accident. I had this friend back in my college days, Micky Jackson. Micky probably stood about six foot five, weighed at least 250 pounds, had dreadlocks and was black. (If he is still alive, I would guess that he is still black.) He had a huge black Great Dane named Shaft. (His name was really Michael, but no one ever called him Michael Jackson twice.) To most, Micky was a scary guy. But we’d spent time hanging out with David Peel in New York’s East Village – David used to bring his guitar to play at Washington Square Park and liked the photos I’d taken of him. Micky and I found each other again after we each moved to Boston. He liked partying at my dorm and frequently crashed on the floor of my dorm room.

Micky used to go up to people to ask for a cigarette and, since he was big, black and scary, people tended to go, “Uh, uh, uh, here, k-k-keep the whole p-p-pack, please don’t hit me!” He’d smoke one, decide he didn’t like that particular brand, and leave the rest of the pack in my room. Soon I had enough cigarettes there to start a shop. And I’d be alone in my room, studying for exams, stressed out and, for a variety of reasons, trying to stop smoking that other kind of cigarette. So I’d reach for one of Micky’s leftovers – something to do, something to calm me down, to distract me, whatever. Smoking one or two a day, I would tell myself that I wasn’t hooked and that I could stop any time. Of course that eventually grew into full-blown addiction.

As time went by, I actually credited cigarettes for my rapid advancement up the corporate ladder. In the early ’90s, I was working as a programmer in the New York office of a British bank. While my healthy co-workers toiled away in their cubicles non-stop, I’d get up every hour and walk over to the smoking room – that’s how I got to know every manager and vice president there. When the time came to pick someone to manage a new, cutting-edge development project, I was the only one the VP’s knew, so I got the job (and, shortly thereafter, the nickname Spike).

I tried to quit smoking back in the ’80s. I went for hypnosis and didn’t smoke for six months, but I was miserable every day. So I started again and since then, I’ve been a chimney. I tell myself that medical science is pretty far from infallible. Every month they change their mind on how much water we need to drink. One day coffee is good for you, the next it’s bad. And every day there’s some story in the newspaper about some old guy who has smoked two packs of cigarettes a day since the American Civil War. Isn’t it vaguely within the realm of possibility that someday the scientists will announce they were wrong about cigarettes? Well, probably not.

I do get a complete physical examination every year. And every year, including 2008, everything checks out okay. The doctor tells me I really need to quit smoking and then I ask, “If my x-ray was okay, my heart is okay, my blood pressure okay, why do I need to quit?” I’m such a wise guy. I remind myself of the words of American comedian Denis Leary, who once said, roughly, that they say if you stop smoking you’ll add 10 years to your life, but those are the wheelchair and adult diaper years and I don’t want them.

If I sit back and take stock, I’m shocked by how much I arrange my life around smoking. These days I mostly eat my meals in bars so I can smoke. I’m sometimes late for meetings while I try to sneak in one more puff. I prefer to go see movies that are under 90 minutes. And when I have to fly somewhere? If it is the one-hour flight to Taipei, I can almost deal with it, but don’t sit next to me on a flight to Los Angeles; I’ll chew your arm off.

And what do I plan to do in July 2009, when you can’t even legally smoke in a Hong Kong bar anymore? Am I going to keep moving around the world, living in whatever hellhole is left that allows you to smoke when and where you want? Okay, actually, it’s an option I’ve considered.

But seriously, when I think about how much smoking rules my life and how short of breath I get after almost any physical exertion, I realize that it’s time for me to quit. It bothers me that I’ve managed to avoid almost every other addiction out there – I never got hooked on recreational drugs or booze – why this one? The answer is because nicotine is recognized as one of the most addictive substances on the planet. Well, okay, I do have some other addictions – shopping, sugar and, er, um, thingie.

So can I do it? I’m ready to give it another try. But if I do, will I substitute something else in its place? Chewing gum isn’t appealing to me and my girlfriend already thinks I’m round enough so I hope it’s not food. But then again, perhaps I don’t really need anything else – except whole lot more shopping, sugar and… you know, thingie.