I think I’m addicted to nicotine—
that high feeling it gives you,
that bliss,
that feeling where you’re floating—
your soul floating outside your body,
looking down at you,
watching you try to cope with slowly losing yourself,
as it floats farther away—
all by just making that loss more severe,
or, we may say, more desperately needed.

You think nic provides you with comfort,
since, as the smoke fills your lungs,
it feels like a warm hug—
by the lungs, straight to the heart.
It feels like that hug you eagerly craved as a child but never got the chance to receive.

So, you try your hardest now
to make up for all the hugs to the heart you never got to have,
to make up for the loneliness you felt as a child,
to make up for everything you used to try to do to yourself
in the middle of the night,
all alone in your room.

As the smoke fills your lungs
and the nic starts to hit—
affecting your consciousness and logic—
you feel detached.
At peace.
At least for a little while.
And as you watch your soul swim away from you slowly,
outside your body,
swimming farther and farther,
swimming faster and faster,
the more you smoke—
the higher you feel and get.

All you want is to see that soul gone.
Disappeared.
Dead.
In reality, that’s all you’ve longed for,
yearned for,
since you turned nine.
And through not being able to kill yourself—
kill your soul—
you enjoy losing yourself,
losing your soul,
for at least a few cigs a day.

Call this addiction.
Call this drug obsession.
Call this anything you want.
But I’d like to call it survival.
Because without nic,
death would’ve had its hands engraved in my soul,
refusing to let go,
clutching my body,
and reaching for my soul,
a long time ago.

I wouldn’t be here now.
I would’ve been dead—
unalived by the same hands—my own—
the same ones that used to cut and burn my body every single night,
thinking it was the only way I could feel something, other than numb.

So is it better to smoke or to die?
Is it better to smoke your life away,
trying to survive it,
or to kill yourself,
having given up on it without even a trial?

My question is:
Do we call this Addiction or Survival?
Do we call this person addicted to drugs or desperate to survive?
And who are we to judge someone,
for only ever trying to hang on,
to the loose pins of their soul
to their body?
Who are we to judge?
Addiction is survival
Survival is addiction
As unbelievable as that sounds, one can’t exist without the other.
And again who are we to judge?