Chase's Story, Part 2

Chase's Story

Part 2

But the day finally came.  After two years of waiting, Chase was
ready.  The night before Sammy told her what to expect and how to do
it.  She said to ignore the websites that said to just puff the first
few drags out.  "The sooner you get the smoke in your lungs, the
faster they will adjust to it. You will cough and it will hurt your
chest and throat, but keep taking drags and breathing in deep.  When
you take a drag, count 'one Mississippi' and then quickly and in one
motion pull the cigarette away and inhale.  After you've coughed six
times, put the cigarette out and wait five minutes.  When you smoke
your next cigarette you should be able to breathe in without coughing.
 And when that happens, you are a smoker."

Although she was the oldest of four kids, Chase wasn't big on having
birthday parties.  She was kind of anti-social and only had one or two
friends - she really was a loner.  She wasn't close with her parents
or any of her siblings except Joan, the second oldest at sixteen, so
there would be no birthday party.  She would get presents, of course,
but really she didn't care about that.  This day was going to be all
about starting to smoke. Her parents were wealthy and she could pretty
much get anything she wanted at anytime, but she wasn't spoiled - she
was always content with what she had.  Still, her mom had accidently
broke the news a few days earlier, albeit unintentionally.  They had
found Chase her own house.  She would get to go see it today, but not
until 4 pm.  It was 8 am when Chase woke.  She was surprised she could
sleep at all.  She thought of sneaking out at midnight to get her
first pack and starting to smoke then, but realized there was no
return strategy for that.  Her intention was to smoke without anyone
finding out until she was on her own and fully addicted to the point
of no return.  When she returned after starting, she was going to
smell like smoke.  She had to come in contact with as few people as
possible when she returned home.

Chase quickly dressed and told her mom she was going to meet her only
real friend, Kelly, who happened to be leaving the next day on a four
month trip to Europe.  This was true, but she was only going to visit
briefly and not until much later in the day.  Instead, Chase drove to
a convenience store with money on her.  She entered and walked
straight up to the counter.  She pulled out her ID and told the
cashier, "I would like two soft packs of Marlboro Lights, please."

Chase had gone over her brand options with Sammy, who recommended a
light but flavorful cigarette to start, and said the Marlboro Lights
would break her lungs in and ready them for a stronger cigarette.  The
cashier checked her ID.  She was an older lady in her mid '40s.  She
smelled like smoke, so Chase was a lot less nervous.  She was minutes
away from joining her ranks after all.

"Well, Happy Birthday.  I guess these aren't your first cigarettes,"
the cashier said with a wink.  This was another Sammy idea.  By buying
two packs, the cashier would assume Chase had been a regular smoker
long before it was legal for her to be one, and would not give her an
anti-smoking lecture.  Not that it would have changed her mind.

"No, I've been smoking for years," she lied, "but these are my first
legal packs."  The cashier looked happy for her.

"Well, it's my pleasure to sell them to you."  That really made it
easier on her.

"I've never gotten to pick out my own lighter, so I'm going to do that
too." Lighter and cigarettes secured, Chase left the store.

Finding a good location to start smoking was not easy.  Sammy didn't
have any good suggestions, but said maybe to find a wooded area if she
didn't want anyone to see her.  After driving for twenty miles, Chase
was out of town on the highway.  Having never been big on giving her
sisters rides, she knew nobody would be in her car but her, so she was
going to smoke in it until she moved into her own place.  She pulled
into a rest stop.  It was totally empty.  This was it.

Chase grabbed one of the packs and quickly opened it.  The smell of
cigarettes flooded the car as she pulled one out.  She was nervous but
excited.  She wasn't scared that she wouldn't like it, she knew she
would. She told herself in the weeks leading up to this that she would
savor the moment.  But instead after practicing with the lighter a bit
to get a feel for it, she decided to wait no longer.  She took her
last breath as a non-smoker, and then placed the cigarette in her
mouth.  She flicked the lighter, brought the flame to the tip of the
cigarette, and sucked on it.  Smoke came flooding in her mouth.  She
was warned she would not like the taste, but in fact it wasn't as bad
as Sammy said it would be.  With the cigarette lit and smoke in her
mouth, she pulled the cigarette out using her fingers.  She then
quickly and deeply breathed in.

The smoke slammed into her lungs, and she quickly coughed it all out.
She almost gagged but stopped herself from doing it.  Sammy had
advised her that if she gagged, she would have to wait maybe ten
minutes before trying to inhale again.  Chase had a bottle of water
handy, another Sammy recommendation.  Chase hated coughing but knew
that it was part of the process.  Her lungs had to change the way they
worked so they could accept smoke into her and send the chemicals into
her body.

She braced herself for another drag.  She sucked hard on the filter
for one full second like Sammy recommended, then quickly and deeply
inhaled.  Again, the smoke flooded her lungs and caused a coughing
reflex.  It was no easier then the first time, and she coughed all the
smoke out.  Throwing her head back against the seat, Chase was
discouraged.  She looked at herself in the mirror and let out a sigh.
To her surprise, a few wisps of smoke came out of her mouth.  It was
working.  After seeing that, she quickly took another drag, another
deep inhale, and again she coughed it all out.  Sammy told Chase that
after she had coughed six times, she should put out that cigarette and
wait five minutes before having what she promised would be Chase's
REAL first cigarette.  Chase wanted to get there fast, so she
continued to drag, inhale, and cough until the sixth and final drag.
This would be the one that would complete her transition into a
smoker.  She wanted to make sure it would work, so she took a larger
drag then Sammy recommended.  Chase sucked until she couldn't anymore,
then pulled the cigarette out and breathed in as deep as she could.
It burned her throat on the way down and the sensation in her chest
was the worst one yet.  It hurt her physically and she quickly coughed
out a huge cloud of smoke.  Chase put out the cigarette, confident she
had breathed in enough so that her lungs would accept smoke from that
point forward.

But then she got worried.  Was the last drag too much?  The pain in
her chest took about a minute to let up, and she started to wonder if
all the work of the first six drags had somehow been undone.  She
started to watch the clock. Five minutes, she thought, not very long.
But like torture, the minutes didn't seem like they were ticking away
at all.  However, she had defied Sammy's instruction earlier and now
she was worried that she would have to start all over again.  She
would not make the same mistake again.

Finally, five minutes was up.  Chase quickly grabbed another cigarette
and lit it up.  She had decided that she didn't want her first
non-coughing inhale to be on a light up, so instead she just expelled
the smoke from her mouth.  It was the first (and last) time she
disliked the taste of smoke. She braced herself for the worst and took
a second drag.  She pulled the cigarette away, held the smoke in her
mouth for a second, and looked at the mirror.  She then opened her
mouth and breathed in deep.  The smoke entered her lungs, and she felt
no urge to cough.  Chase was now a smoker.  The sensation was as
amazing as Sammy described.  After only one second in her lungs, Chase
simply breathed the smoke out of her lungs without trying to control
the flow of it.  It came out in a large cloud and looked bad, but the
taste was incredible.  "Oh my god!" was all Chase could say as she
quickly decided to take another drag.

As she inhaled the smoke, she was amazed at how easy it went down,
with little feeling in her throat.  Sammy said after a while you won't
even feel it go down.  Once the smoke was in her lungs, the sensation
was easily the best thing she had ever felt.  As she exhaled her
second drag, she looked in the mirror and marveled out how she looked.
 "That smoke is coming out of me!" she thought as she made her first
attempt to exhale in a stream.  It went bad of course, but she would
have plenty of time to get good of it.  "I'm never going to quit
this," she announced to nobody, and took another drag. The taste
surprised Chase.  It was delicious.  Anyone who said smoke tastes
gross was wrong.  It was the best tasting thing she had ever tasted.
Unlike anything she had ever eaten, smoking had the added pleasure of
the incredible sensation of having the smoke inside her lungs.  She
continued to try to control the stream of smoke coming out of her, but
it seemed to go everywhere.

Chase was not discouraged.  Unlike most people who start smoking,
Chase didn't do it because she wanted to look cool blowing it out.
Like Sammy had said, it's all about having the smoke in your lungs.
Chase had fallen in love with this sensation as she dragged on her
cigarette until it was nearly down to the filter.  She took one final
drag, which burned the Marlboro logo right off the cigarette, then
deeply inhaled.  She looked up and managed to blow the smoke in a
picture-perfect upward stream.  I did it... I'm a smoker, she thought
as she crushed out her first real cigarette.  Sammy warned Chase that
shortly after being able to breathe in without coughing, she would
feel the swirls and get a little sick to her stomach.  Indeed, this is
exactly what happened.  Chase knew it was necessary, mostly because
Sammy laid it out for her so perfectly.

"After your lungs get changed, the rest of the body has to as well.
All the chemicals you breathed in make their way into all the other
organs and basically re-wire them.  When you get sick, it's the rest
of your body becoming a smoker's body."  Chase was told it would only
be this bad once. It would happen a second time twenty minutes later
when Chase would have to smoke another cigarette as soon as she felt
okay to make sure all the changes made would stick, but the second
time would not be anywhere nearly as bad.

Chase laid back and relaxed in her car for twenty minutes.  Unlike
after the coughing cigarette, she had no desire to have another
cigarette right away. She felt awful, and her head was swirling.  She
opened up her car door twice expecting to throw up, but it never
happened.  After about twenty minutes, just as Sammy predicted, Chase
was no longer sick.  She didn't want to smoke again so soon, partly
out of fear that she would get the swirls again, but she knew she had
to, or else it would take longer for her to complete the changes to
her body chemistry that had already begun.

The third cigarette would be different then the first two.  Sammy told
Chase to cough her way through the first one and to exhale after one
second on the second one.  With this cigarette, Chase was told to
inhale the smoke and hold it in her lungs as long as she could before
exhaling.  Chase was actually scared of this cigarette.

If blowing it out after one second got me that sick, what will happen
when I have to hold it in way longer? she thought, but she grabbed the
pack anyway. Any fear about what would happen after her third
cigarette quickly disappeared when she lit up and inhaled.  The
sensation was still incredible. However, instead of breathing it out,
she held it in.  To her surprise, her body didn't try to get her to
expel the smoke, or at least do so as quickly as she thought it would.
 After five seconds or so, she exhaled and was surprised to see hardly
any smoke appear.  The sensation in her lungs was still marvelous,
though, and that's all she really cared about.  She continued to smoke
this cigarette with deep drags and long holds.  She took a lot of
smoke into her body and hardly any left it.  As she finished the
cigarette, she braced herself for another attack of the swirls.
Instead, she got a little light headed and nothing more.  It cleared
up after five minutes.  The transformation was complete; Chase was now
a full fledged smoker.  The whole process took about forty-five
minutes.  Including the time she used buying cigarettes and looking
for a place to start smoking, she had only burned a small amount of
time off the clock.  It was only 10:45 am.  Her plan had been to sneak
home at 3 pm while her parents and sisters would be busy setting up
her new house.  She would take the tour, and then meet up with Kelly
for a few minutes to say her goodbyes, and then she would be off to
smoke for the rest of the night.

Previous part | Next part