In a little piece I wrote for "Vim" health e-zine about my smoking and acupuncture, I mentioned the dreams I still have of smoking, though I quit twenty seven years ago. Well, two nights ago I had another, but this one was different than all the others. Normally, they're about one cigarette or cigar. THIS dream was about my being an official, day-in/day-out smoker. I was sort of shocked to find myself in this position. "It" crept up on me, and now here I was, burning a pack or two a day, and faced with the possibility (not certainty) I would again have to face quitting. I was sort of pissed off at myself, but also knew if done right, it wouldn't be so terrible (i.e., acupuncture again)...IF I could find a good doctor.

Once an addict, always an addict. The decades pass, and I continue to dream about it. That doesn't matter. If I get dream lung cancer, I'll get dream treatments. The only real issue is my choice of attitudes and actions when I'm awake.

"Hello. My name is Ronn."
"Hello Ronn."
"I am an addict."
"Join us, Ronn."
"Thank you."

No, I don't think so.

No groups, no patches of drugs, no hypnosis, no diets, no pills, no cutting back, no raving lunatic withdrawal guy, none of that b.s..

Acupuncture. Done. Walk away.

---

Just what or who was it that made me start smoking?

I dabbled like most any silly kid at age eleven-twelve. It was "forbidden", and it was fun to have a secret with my buddies. Dabbling was absolutely harmless, but my body did tell me it was not a substance for healthy growth. I could have cared less about "Smoking". We'd sneak a cigarette every few weeks. Kenny, Ray and I got a pack of "Alpine" menthols from a gas station machine, and kept them in a bag buried under a bush down by the river about three miles from home. We'd bike all that way, dig them up, share one, re-bury them, then suck on a hundred mints before getting near our parents again. Ooh, we were sneaky... and exotic...~

My family left the safety of the northern Indiana, Huck Finn Midwest. I lost my life-long friends. We moved to Colorado in the summer. I'd not only learned my folks destroyed most of my possessions before we moved, but I now saw a couple months of knowing NO ONE. I was not yet, but would soon become an official Smoker - at age thirteen, about the same time our President was shot through the head.

By the first day of school - 8th grade at Rishel Junior High in what was essentially a lower class, urban neighborhood of Denver - I'd met a couple guys, and they invited me to walk with them. I was one of the very few white kids, I'd been raised in a very different environment, I dressed differently, I spoke differently, I didn't have the urban swagger, I didn't speak the slang, and I had no insights as to how these differences could play themselves out. At that point, I was truly a stranger in a strange land. I'd lost all my points of reference.

I went along with them, though it seemed too early. Once at a strip mall, I saw why they'd made this choice. They were part of what seemed to be a loose knit gang, and this was their gathering zone. We then went to a watering hole - a soda shop - a true soda shop - the last of a kind - but it was filled with fifty to one hundred of the toughest looking guys and girls I'd ever seen. There were no "two-straws for one malted drink tete-a-tete puppy love teens" there. All I saw was a sea of black clothing and greasy or ratted black hair. Some were in high school....their primer gray hot rods out in the parking lot having sex with the asphalt. "Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs was on the juke box. This was the black and white "Blackboard Jungle" in full color and 3-D. And, everyone smoked. Everyone. It was the key. The connector. The social delivery device.

This was only the first morning before the first day of class... and in that hour, they tore up the soda shop. Those kids destroyed it. The shop went out of business. The gang was banned (locked out/refused entry) to all the other mall businesses for the 7:00-9:00 a.m. hours, and the 3:00-5:00 p.m. (pre/post school) hours. For a month or so, all our loitering was OUT of doors on the strip's sidewalks and in hidden spaces. We didn't care. Not one of us pondered how we earned our banishment. The gang was feral. It was during this time I went from accepting an occasional smoke to buying my own, and smoking all the time. Had you met me then, you might have concluded I had no brain of my own.

My teen aged need to belong is what did it. Had I been introduced to a gang of healthy minded, studious, clean, fun kids, I would've joined them just as easily. In fact, it would've been easier, because that's what I'd known in Indiana. Circumstance tossed a two-headed coin. Whoever was in front of me would become my herd. I saw one herd. That was that. Herd was joined. Done deal. No thought required.

Months passed. I met kids who WEREN'T criminals, sociopaths, and punks, but even adding an "outsider" to my personal community was eyed with suspicion by those who first brought me in.

"You sayin' we ain't good enuff for you?"

Pressure was applied. It was a delicate process NOT to abandon anyone and to ADD someone - without the official stamp of approval. Hey, it was tough just to wear clothing other than black!

"Hey, Pachuco. What's with YOU, man? GRAY slacks?!" "Man, you ain't got much slick on your hair. You goin' pussy on us?"

The trick was to be enough of a poser, a bad ass, and leader that your decisions were respected and left unquestioned. That took time, and it was very stressful. I was a mess.

Emotionally, I related very well to the James Dean character in "Rebel without a Cause". He had a good heart - he was just confused and lonely. Things went from bad to worse for him. My situations were different. I FELT like HIM, but I belonged to the gang who could have made his every move hell. Every so often, some one in the gang would turn on another member, but, for the most part, it was safer on the inside than the outside.

Those were, terrible, horrific, crazy, frightening, confusing, dark, deadly times. I've NEVER wanted to re-live ANY of it. It was awful... but I found the place for it in my life. It taught me many things. Perhaps most important was that the need to belong is a haphazard and potentially deadly energy if not overseen by options and maturity.

My folks had to work. That's why we moved to Colorado in the first place. But this left me (and my brother) un-supervised, and they did not know how to handle this violent tornado of new (mainly invisible) influences around me. They tried an occasional, desperate, "firm" tactic, but I was already "hardened". I fought twice as willfully against them as they did me.

I wasn't putting many 2 + 2 = 4's together for myself. A sledge hammer was needed to get something uninvited into MY head, and few people uttered sledge hammer words or performed sledge hammer actions. If viewing a friend in the morgue drawer - dead from a stolen car chase - wasn't sufficient to tell me to stop stealing and stripping cars, I was unreachable.

My friends were doing it, I was doing it, we were doing it, we hung out together - at least until one of us was dead or locked up - and that was that.

Grand theft, alcohol, unprotected sex, weapons, fights, vandalism, shoplifting, harassment... you name it, we did it. Some died, some went to prison, some dropped out of school and vanished. Somewhere behind the slick, style-conscious, mean exterior remained a decent boy who missed his good friends and his first love... and KNEW he'd NEVER get them back. And, THAT boy had to be shut up. He was of no use here.

"Man, you gotta coffin nail?"