‘Boomerang smokers’ thought they’d chucked the habit, only for it to come back. Photo / 123RF
It doesn’t seem that harmful – the odd cigarette at a party. Except perhaps we’re a bit too complacent...
It was the sunshine that did it. Something about the warm summer afternoon, a buzz of conversation in the air and the prospect of an evening with friends in the garden ahead sent me into the newsagents to come out with something I haven’t bought for a good 15 years or so: a packet of cigarettes.
Or rather, a packet of tobacco, some rolling papers and a lighter – because something about the prospect of a cigarette felt far less transgressive if it was a roll-your-own number. I was never a heavy smoker.
Social smoking, mostly – nights out with friends at university and in my 20s; out to dinner, in the days when people still considered it acceptable to smoke indoors and light up after the cheese course.
I stopped when I had children, didn’t smoke at all for years, even as my husband carried on with me begging him to stop. Then he quit completely and I found myself having the odd party fag – maybe one or two a year, max. Until that evening a couple of months ago and my illicit purchase.
Since then I’ve had perhaps one a day, usually completely sober, often as a means of escaping from the office for a few minutes, and to deal with the escalating stress levels of a house move that involves two new schools for my children. I’m not the only one.
As I hit my mid-40s, I’m suddenly noticing a whole plethora of similarly aged women who have taken up again a vice they thought they’d ditched years ago. “I’m 56, I’m starting a new career, I’ve chopped my hair off – and frankly sometimes I feel like a cig, so I’m going to have one,” declared one acquaintance last weekend at an evening party in a friend’s garden, where a surprising number of middle-aged women were puffing away.
“I always have Sobranies, Silk Cut or a packet of Vogue Menthol Slims to hand for whenever I fancy,” admitted another friend – who, it should be noted, sings semi-professionally.
“In fact, I’ve literally just gone to the effort of buying the Vogues online – they source them from the Baltics or somewhere – and I had to buy six packs as only bulk purchasing was allowed. You can have a pack if you like!”
I’ll probably take her up on it. There’s even a name for us midlife restarters: we are the boomerang smokers, who thought they’d chucked the habit but who’ve seen it come back to them.
And frankly, as vices go, it doesn’t seem that harmful – the odd gasper at a party is surely better than a line of coke, or popping some unknown pill after dinner.
Except perhaps we’re a bit too complacent. New modelling carried out by Cancer Research UK for the Government suggests the number of women with lung cancer will overtake the number of men for the first time this year, and that the gap is set to widen by 2040.
From 2022-24, 49.9 per cent of new lung cancer cases are projected to be in males, with 50.1 per cent in females, but by 2038-40, new male lung cancer incidences will have dropped to 47.4 per cent, with 52.6 per cent in females. And lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK – one in five – and has one of the worst cancer survival rates.
“What’s important to understand in this is that smoking rates in men have always been higher than women – even at the peak of women smoking, males have higher smoking rates,” says Alizée Froguel, the charity’s prevention policy manager.
“So it’s not that women are smoking more, but that the rate of smoking [for men] peaks earlier, which means lung cancer incidents in men [which peaked earlier] have started falling earlier than women. And there’s a lag with cancer, so these cancer cases are linked to historic smoking. But the smoking of today leads to the cancer cases of tomorrow.”
Gulp. Surely the odd fag now and again isn’t really going to kill me? On the contrary. A 17-year-long study by Columbia University suggested that the risk of lung cancer death for “social smokers” – those who smoke less than 10 cigarettes per day – is not substantially lower than those who smoke more than 20 a day.
“Each cigarette will produce a little spike of risk,” says Prof Nick Hopkinson of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College. “There’s research that suggests that for a pack of 20 cigarettes, half the risk of that is from the first cigarette.”
That stands even if you’re only smoking a couple a week. “Inhaling even a small amount of smoke sets off that inflammatory process in the lungs,” says Prof Hopkinson.
“It makes blood thicker and blood clots more likely to happen. It’s just immensely harmful.” On social smoking, “it is important to note that there are no safe levels of smoking, so even light or occasional smoking can increase the risk,” adds Froguel.
“It’s never too late to quit.” Certainly, when I start to look into the actual effects of those cheeky rollies on my health, it’s not very encouraging.
There’s lung cancer, obviously – the carcinogens in cigarettes, which include aldehydes and nitrosamines as well as heavy metals and carbon monoxide, damage the DNA in cells, making cancer more likely. Smoking also causes cardiovascular disease and damages the eyes, the lungs and the skin (I’m definitely noticing the latter). You’re also five times more likely to get colds and flu if you smoke than if you don’t.
And of course, it’s an addiction, no matter how hard I try to justify my habit as “just the odd one”. So why are we all doing it then? After all, I know that if I want a hit of dopamine, a gym session is far more effective than a cigarette, and far better for me to boot. But it’s not always practical to go to the gym, and frankly, right now I find that having a quick smoke is a fast and effective stress reliever.
“Smoking has a really good effect on me and chills me out unbelievably,” agrees one friend, who has only recently started smoking again and is now enjoying two or three rollies a week. “After a long, tough day and dealing with children, I want to sit down and relax – and these days a gin and tonic doesn’t do it but a cigarette does. It’s an instant hit, and when I’ve got loads to do it’s not going to wipe me out and stop me being able to do all that stuff like having a few drinks would do.”
We also agree that, now we’re out of the intense young child-rearing phase but our offspring are not yet quite into the independent young adult stage of life, we’re juggling heavy work and family loads, and running several different calendars in our heads simultaneously, so having a cigarette feels like much-needed “me time”.
“Just sitting in the garden in the five minutes before school pick-up, maybe watering the plants, with a cheeky cig – it makes me feel like I’m doing something for me,” says another friend.
“It’s a bit sad, I know. I think this is my midlife crisis.” I know how she feels. Hopefully we’ll all grow out of it soon. In the meantime, I’m nipping outside to roll up a cig.