Why decide to try? My experience is with cigarettes. Ordinary Benson & Hedges.

I was 16 and had always been anti-smoking, but I knew that there must be something good about it or so many people wouldn’t become hooked on it. After too many drinks, in a moment of stupidity, curiosity — ordinary curiosity — got the better of me, and I asked my friend for a drag on her cigarette. I was surprised by the high from the first hit of an ordinary cigarette.

It took nine years to cure that addiction.

No, not cure. You’re never really cured — or, at least, I’m not. If someone walks past me smoking and I smell it, I immediately crave a cigarette. They say that some people, and I’m clearly one of them, have their brain permanently rewired from the first drag, like a switch has been flipped.

It’s not psychological or habitual, but a physical, chemical need. If I was out of cigarettes, I’d be rigid with tension, pacing the floor, sweating and lightheaded and unable to sleep or think of anything else.

Luckily, I was born at the right time and patches and nicotine gum were invented. A chemical cure for a chemical problem. The minute I tried the patches, the chokehold was released, and after three months the decision to not-smoke was no more difficult than the decision to not have a chocolate bar.

Still, it’s left me with a deep empathy for addiction problems. Mine was socially acceptable and easily remedied; not everyone is so fortune.