There has always been a hip factor associated with cigarettes. Some of it certainly comes from the commercial machinery that has been in place for many years. The suave, the sexy, the charming, the courageous, they all smoke. They do it on the silver screen, on billboards, on iPods. Whether we know it or not, we all may link the idea of smoking and cool too much and too well. It is how many of us got started. Sitting in the dark watching someone on the big screen light up was a bonding moment. We wanted to be them. How do we do that? Easy, we emulate them.

It can also happen in life. We follow in the path of others, our big brother, our favorite uncle, or our popular sister. What they do, we do. When they smoke, we smoke.

But early into the indoctrination that is cigarette addiction, that feeling wears off, and we are left with our own image and our own dependency to deal with. We are left with a monkey on our back. It is hard to admit this at first, either in silent conversation or out loud. But when that next stage occurs, that stage where it becomes important for one reason or another to talk about the addiction, another problem surfaces. It is hard to elicit sympathy for what started as a lifestyle choice. This is important to understand: This was something we all chose to do, to smoke. This was an exercise in free will. Who will feel for you, you ask?

The answer to this is simple. You chose to begin; now it is up to you to choose to stop. Exercise your free will. You have unlimited free will passes in life, you will never run out.

The choice, especially for those who begin at young ages, is very hard and they need to make an attempt to understand what cool actually is. To be cool is a choice to summon the strength, inside, to find your own voice, to form a little character along the way. If you are reading this, then you are contemplating the choice. Let go of the long list of justifications that will keep you off the truly cool list:

I want to keep weight off

I need the edge

I need to feel in

The justifications are meaningless, honestly. You can write the longest list in the world and there will be nothing on it that will serve you in life. The guilt that you carry, along with the dependency itself, is way to much psychic baggage and you should dump at the first opportunity. For the alternative is a slippery slope, it is road that leads to self-denial, self-hatred and eventually sickness.