Nicotine Nightmare in the USA: A Smoker’s Expensive Dilemma
When it came to spending greenbacks, I was an Uncle Scrooge. After all, a dollar translated to 45 rupees. I had diligently brought enough cigarette packs to last me three weeks on my business trip, but those calculations only work in a perfect world. Alone in my hotel room most of the time, I smoked way more than usual and burned through all my packs within two weeks. With a week left before returning to India, I found myself in a bit of a pickle.
Cigarettes are ridiculously expensive in the US—ten times more than in India, and to make matter worse, they are sold in packs of twenty, unlike in India where you could buy them loose.
So, I came up with a brilliant plan—as brilliant as my previous ones. Basically, I decided to put a hold on smoking until I returned to India.
Yes, you heard that right. A die-hard nicotine addict chose to hit the pause button on smoking. Can you guess how well that went?
Let’s just say, I ended up thoroughly disillusioned.
The night I ran out of cigarettes, I decided to sleep early to avoid cravings. The plan was working fine until my phone rang in the middle of the night. It was a colleague from India, urgently needing help with a client issue. By the time the call wrapped up, I was wide awake…and then it hit me—a massive nicotine craving! If you’re someone who’s used to puffing through at least half a pack a day, you’ll feel my pain.
I decided to take a walk in the corridor, hoping to find a smoker to borrow a cigarette from.
Not a single soul.
It’s a universal law that when you crave something you don’t have, the urgency of the need skyrockets. I was miserable. Desperate. Like a fish out of water—no, seriously, it was that dramatic! But I didn’t have the guts to go to a gas station at 2 am for a pack, partly because I’d heard about someone getting shot for an iPod shuffle recently, and partly because I didn’t want to spend a fortune on overpriced cigarettes. Plus, I had already blown my budget for the day after reluctantly shelling out 12 dollars for a burger in an IHOP restaurant, which my taste buds hated. I was still mourning that tragic waste of cash.
A classic catch-22 situation, right?
My Indian jugaad brain kicked into high gear, racing at the speed of light to find a solution. Then it struck me: my neighbor in the next room kept his ashtray right outside his door. I crept up to his ashtray, and scrutinized it hoping to find a partially extinguished cigarette. But all I found were butts, smoked down to the ring marked just before the butt.
“This guy is a fuckin’ cheapskate!” I cussed.
I still managed to find a couple of butts that seemed to have a puff or two left in them.
“Cough cough” I hacked violently for a full minute before catching my breath. I must have inhaled more cotton than tobacco; there was hardly any tobacco left.
“This is disgusting!” I grumbled, but smoked them anyway to get through the night. Did I have a choice?
It was the most disgusting thing I had ever done, and I vowed never to repeat it. I did buy a pack of cigarettes the very next day, albeit with a lot of guilt.
Disclaimer: This story is a personal experience and does not promote or endorse smoking. Cigarette smoking is injurious to health and may cause cancer.
