encouragement to stop smoking

My smoking history is very unusual. I hate cigarettes and have no interest in them, will take a cigar only in rare outrageous party situations, and possibly have never tried a normal pipe (not sure).

Apple shisha is something else, however, and is a pleasant but bad habit I picked up almost immediately upon moving to Egypt.

Strangely enough, whenever I leave Egypt I do not find myself craving nicotine, even though it feels like a great deal of it is delivered by the water pipe. It’s more of a Cairo “lifestyle” addiction for me, and whenever I’m not in Cairo I don’t feel the lack of it. Providence has an easily available hookah bar right in the middle of things, and I don’t feel at all interested in going. (Paris is a strange exception. I do feel tempted to go out for shisha in Paris, and must always fight the urge, and sometimes fail to fight it.)

But I do feel a lot better not smoking those things. A certain jitteriness is missing. If you smoke several of them in one day, you can even start becoming a touch paranoid; it’s a very unpleasant sensation.