So at what age did I start smoking? Around 7 and a half. And what did I smoke? Only cigarettes. I remember the feeling. It was really beautiful. Really relaxing. But the effects on my body were negative. I started noticing a drop in my athletic performance after the first few cigarettes. Kids that I use to outrun in the playground were now running side by side with me. I feared the cigarette would make things worse; but I was hooked.
I would sneak up easily and pick up the small bits of cigarettes my dad threw away and run upstairs to smoke them. At first, I sat on the floor, with the door closed, listening for the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. But after the first ten cigarettes or so, I became much bolder, and sat on the window ledge like an expert and puffed away.
It was a divine sensation; but beware, the effects on my body were not so divine. And if I had continued in this way, I had a good feeling it would not have turned out very nice for me, in terms of my health.
I guess God had a plan of cleansing me of this habit before it got worse, and I’m eternally thankful for His divine intervention.
I would look carefully at smokers to see if I was smoking as good as they were. I noticed one of my neighbors one night as he blew smoke through his nostrils and I wondered how he did it. I kept pondering upon it, trying to figure out the art of blowing smoke through the nostrils. I would inhale the cigarette, and exhale but no smoke exited. I kept looking to try to figure out how they got they smoke to come through the nostrils.
Then one night I observed as one of my neighbors swallowed a bit and then the smoke exited through his nose, and I thought “ah, so that’s the trick: you have to swallow the smoke”.
I had gotten in the habit of procuring whole cigarettes by this time, and I wanted to amaze myself.So I stood in front of the mirror, in the closed room and took a good pull. I swallowed. What happened was nothing that I expected. I started to choke. I fell on the bed, and started to roll. A really unpleasant sensation gripped me. I prayed to God to save my life, with the vow that if He saved my life I would never smoke again. Some minutes later, I started to recover slowly.
It was officially over. I could no longer smoke again. I could never forget the vow I made to God that day. I remember the words of the bible “it is better not to vow than to vow and not keep it, for God has no pleasure in fools”.
Indeed, I am thankful for God for saving my life; for freeing me from the addition of smoking; and more than anything in the world, I vow to keep my vow of never smoking again.
Many times throughout my life I was pressured by peers to “take a pull”, but of course, I never did, and I never would.
Related: The day I almost drown.
Related: Why I can’t drink mariuaanna anymore
Related: I fell to the ground.
