Smokey Joe

One thing about this cancer business that I've kind of avoided, until now:

What caused it.

Now, I'm a cause-and-effect skeptic. So many times things really don't cause things, or aren't the sole cause, or the principal cause, or even what we in the bar sometimes refer to as the legal cause. So many explanations are facile. Slavery caused the civil war; the clash of Islam and the West caused 9/11; man caused global warming. All have truth and a lot of untruth as well.

So, appropriately hedged, I have asked a passel of questions and read a lot, and now finger three causes of my head and neck cancer. In this post I light up the first: smoking.

My first cigarette was when I was 11 or 12, and I was smoking openly and regularly at 15. Unfiltered Camels. Compensating for something?

Whatever the underlying motivation, I sure loved cigarettes. Smoked about a pack a day. Opening the pack, striking a match, lighting the cigarette (and if she were there, my lady friend's) with a cupped hand. Playing with fire with slight of hand. Indoors or out, from breakfast until bed, and in bed until the lights went out. Surrounded by ashtrays and everything smelled like smoke, which means that to me everything smelled great.

The brand mattered. When my wife and I went on a drive south, I persuaded her to stop in Winston-Salem, so we could make a pilgrimage to the Camels plant. It was fine, redolent of smoke and machinery. And as you exited there was Old Joe, a Camel made of tobacco. The ancestor, I guess, of Joe Camel, the cartoonish mascot who came on about as I quit. Not sorry we missed each other; I always thought he trivialized a great product and institution. I took the stuff seriously.

I knew it was dangerous. We all did, and it was no problem at all. It was probably part of the allure.

Plus there is decent research indicating that smoking other substances was also unhealthy, and I sure did. Loved it. All the paraphernalia, the papers, the hookahs (later bongs), the roach clips. Pot was a pretty happy, peaceful world in the late 60's and early '70's. If you'd told me then it would still be illegal in 2010 I'd have called you crazy.

So things went until I was 33, when I stopped cold turkey.

So, some 25 years later, is it a credible cause of my cancer? The docs say yes. In fact I have a feeling they don't really know. But smoking today is so universally viewed as evil - well, it's a really safe answer.

If it was a cause of the cancer, was it worth it? You might as well ask if it was worth it being me, back in those days. If I'd had to identify who I was - you know, like lawyer/father/piano player/etc. - I certainly would have put smoker near the top of the list. Serious. Dangerous. Cool. Smoker.