Smoking was the Therapy of the ’90s

Smoking is popular again, which is inconvenient for those of us who’ve already quit 30 times in the last 30 years. I was 16 in 1995 when cigarettes represented a grunge fantasy and therapy was something rich people did between divorces.

I’d adopted the flannel shirt, greasy hair vibe because my parents forbade me to dress like Britney Spears in the Baby One More Time video. My teenage angst was born out of not knowing how to exist in the space between innocence and oncoming adult life. The zippo lighter I got from my boyfriend was monogrammed with my initials, emotionally marking smoking as the only coping device I needed.

Everyone was lighting up back then — in the teachers' lounge and below the stadium bleachers. Ashtrays were standard in the armrests of airplanes and cars. People smoked in hospital waiting rooms, and the cigarette rack was eye-level for us kids at the grocery store checkout.

If my parents told me smoking was bad, I would point to my heroes: Courtney Love, Kate Moss and the Marlboro Man, who was still on highway billboards displaying his chiseled physique.

Parents in the ’90s never asked kids about their feelings — mine included. The world was full of existential dread from the Gulf War to overzealous D.A.R.E. assemblies in the school gym, and of course the anxiety over how Marlena was handling her demonic possession, and whether Stefano was behind it. Every night around the dinner table, my brothers and I passed the bowl of mashed potatoes (that came from a box) and avoided deep conversation with our parents.

I would sneak upstairs to my bedroom with one of my mom’s long menthol treats, crank the vertical window open and puff puff puff. It was the closest thing to emotional processing besides watching The Sally Jessy Raphael Show.

Now, I have stepchildren who are roughly the age I was when I first bummed a Newport Light off someone outside the county fair. I watch them the way my parents never watched me, wondering if they smoke and if there’s a product I don’t know about that eradicates the smell from their hair and breath. Are they following influencers who romanticize vaping? Are other kids on Twitch secretly talking about nicotine with them?

Thankfully kids these days are actually in therapy or have come across the billions of posts with #mentalhealth on TikTok, which hopefully dissuades them from starting the habit I picked up decades ago. I pray they don’t catch me out back when I’ve succumbed to allowing myself “just one, not the whole pack,” which I shamefully whisper to myself before I flick a match and cower by the bushes.