I feel like it’s almost a universal experience in everyone’s life to become either a nicotine fiend or be stronger than the rest. It’s one of the most important decisions you can make that will affect you for the rest of your life, and it comes earlier than the rest of the life-altering choices. Things like college, career and home come after you have some more life experience. Vaping? That’s one of the first.

For many people, the choice materializes during their high school years. For others, it first presents even earlier during middle school. For me? It came when I was 16 at my first job.

Chipotle Mexican Grill. When people warn you about working in food service—the sweat, the vapes and carts passed around, the searing-hot oil and the testosterone leaking out of angry grill cooks’ clogged pores—they are explicitly talking about fast-casual restaurants like the Chipotle in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

None of this is to say that I regret working there. It funded my high school escapades. I made a couple of pretty solid friends, learned how to cook a bit better a got a nicotine addiction. It’s the one part of the black shirt uniform that followed me.

I can’t necessarily blame anyone for giving me a nicotine addiction. It’s my cross to bear; it was my choice to start destressing from a bad rush hour using my favorite coworker’s banana icy turbo, which he would always give me, no questions asked. It wasn’t his place to try to save me from the fruit-flavored grasp of a vape. 

It’s been a battle; I’ve tried to quit. After two years of dedicated “fienery,” the mystery metals and carcinogens that I nearly constantly inhaled started to put me in an indefinite state of breathlessness. I wanted to be able to use my pneumonia-scarred lungs to breathe in as much fresh air as I wanted, but I couldn’t kick the habit. So, how would I get my fix? Why, Tucker Carlson’s second favorite item on the planet (the first one being bad toupees): ZYN. 

I think I might have a “ZYN-ddiction.” ZYNs are made to be stealthy. Unless you are really looking, you can’t tell when someone has one in. It’s made so that we, the fiends, can get our fix whenever, wherever. You can’t blow a cloud in the middle of Panera Bread, but you can pack a lip pouch. That’s the problem-it’s become too easy. 

We are an always-online generation; we need instant gratification and don’t care about the consequences. When was the last time that you considered the ethical and environmental effects of two-day shipping? Would I be correct in assuming never? Because I certainly hadn’t until I wrote this sentence. 

Immediate satisfaction is almost in our DNA now. 

To those who look down on us fiends, the ones that say “Just Quit! Throw away the nic stick and go cold turkey. It can’t be that hard,” you would think so. You would think that if you just had the willpower, you would be able to quit.

As the class representative for the rest of us addicts, my brain has been rewired in a way that anytime I go through a tough time, nicotine is the first destresser I think of. Hell, even if it is just one long night at work or a poorly graded project, I become a Disney character floating towards a fresh pie on the windowsill. Except instead of the pie, it’s cancer.

I’m not here to preach to you that nicotine is terrible and that you shouldn’t get addicted. Of course, I can’t in good conscience say that you should get addicted, that it’s the best substance ever, or that you’re missing out. That would be immoral and a bald-faced lie. It’s a waste of money and tissue cells. 

We should think about the consequences: consequences like gum disease, lung cancer or if you need something more immediate, the $25-plus-tax removed from your debit account after walking out of Prince Hooka Lounge.

Was it really worth it? Honestly, I don’t have an answer to that question. But maybe, just maybe, next time I start fiending for a fix, I’ll consider that question first. And maybe you should, too.