There are three types of cigarette experiences, boredom, camaraderie and the regret cigarette. I’m not including post-coital (the usual cliché) simply because I’ve never really needed a cigarette after sex, just sleep. 

The boredom experience is the most common in a club, especially as of late. I generally have nothing to do in clubs anymore, one can’t have a conversation with a friend without endlessly going ‘eh’ and there weren’t any random pretty girls to hit on and grin stupidly at. The alternate for me is to smoke a cigarette, watch the glowing front recede towards the butt, feel the smoke bite into your lungs and billow in front of your face as you exhale. The main thing I remember about smoking in clubs is the glow of the cigarette, lightening as you inhale, darkening as you stop. 

The camaraderie experience is completely different, I’ve noticed I light up as someone else lights up. Sitting around a table on a quiet night having a few drinks, when someone reaches for a pack, taps it and pulls out a smoke, you can be guaranteed that at least two more people will do it. Smoking around a table while chatting and drinking the only act of smoking that I am aware of is lighting it, mostly because someone else will light it for you or if you initiated the session, you will be lighting the others smokes. There is of course that old story about the bad luck that accompanies lighting three people’s cigarettes with one match originating from I’m assuming one of the World Wars. With the flare of the match an enemy sniper would only have time to adjust and pop the last person whose cigarette is lit, a good thing to keep in mind if lighting up in a war zone.

The last most intense smoke is the regret smoke, a smoke that one does to try and clear your mind, let the nicotine rush deaden the pain of chances missed and friends and family lost. Your self-destructive focus is entirely on the cigarette, the lit match close to the brown and white tip, which rapidly turns black as you inhale deeply. You can almost hear a crackle as the flame races up the cigarette, feel the smoke entering the deepest parts of your lungs, you close your eyes as the ‘high’ takes effect and lean your head back, rest it against the wall behind you. You hold it in, savouring the deadly flavour, before exhaling it in a languorous, slow swirl, the smoke whirling before your now open eyes. Yes it is deadly, but during that microsecond, all you are aware of is the smoke, the heat and the taste, nothing else matters. That I guess is the deadly beauty of an addiction, that pure moment where it’s just you and what could, if you let it, destroy you but is yet so pleasurable.

NB: Before people start emailing me either hate mail, for promoting smoking or concerned mails demanding me to stop, I neither condone the habit and am making a concerted effort to quit, it’s a slow process but I will get there.