October 24, 2016
This book is part memoir and part meditation on the power of memory as shaped by addiction; it is not a self-help manual in the vein of “How I quit smoking and how you can too!” Hens’s short book is an idiosyncratic and thought-provoking essay on the grip of nicotine, how it shaped his life, and how it still factors into his life despite having quit smoking decades ago. Born in 1965 Germany, Hens grew up with cigarettes as an integral part of his childhood. His early memories include taking family trips in cars filled with smoke and watching his aunt share her monthly allowance from the cigarette company where she worked. Cigarettes continued as a constant companion throughout his life, never more so than when he tried to quit. Smokers, former smokers, and even those who have never smoked will appreciate the desperate humor in Hens’s description of a smoker’s nicotine deprivation when crammed into a plane, and the physical meltdown upon finally being released onto the sidewalk outside an airport. Hens gives readers an understanding of what it is like to have an addiction, albeit a legal one, and how the end of an addiction can be felt as a loss.