OLYMPIA, Wash. — Local “occasional” smoker Samantha Terrett recently realized her secret pack of cigarettes reserved for emergencies was empty for the fifth time this week, coughing sources confirmed.
“I quit smoking sometime around two years ago,” Terrett said, while smoking. “But I’ll admit it, I always kept a sneaky little pack around for emergencies. What can I say, I’m only human. But recently I’ve realized that I might be having more emergencies than normal. Like sure, I had a cigarette a few weeks back when my roommate said she couldn’t pay rent this month and I thought we were going to get evicted. Then I had another one when I had to go grocery shopping while hungover. And then just found myself lighting up after a hard day working from home, but five days in a row. Now I’m replacing the pack daily because every minor inconvenience requires a cigarette.”
Terrett’s therapist June Chaey explained that she sees this behavior often when treating addictions.
“Samantha is doing exactly what any addict does–trying her best to justify her debilitating chemical need for the drug of her choice,” Chaey said from her office filled with ‘90s anti-smoking PSA posters. “She’s on the verge of realizing that her so-called ‘emergency pack’ is literally just her regular pack of cigarettes that she’s decided is somehow allowed. It’s not. She just keeps it in her bedroom drawer with her sex toys like some kind of weird secret. But once she crosses this mental threshold, she has two choices: either she’ll quit for good out of embarrassment, or she’ll accept the fact that she never quit in the first place and continue chain-smoking her 20s away like the rest of us did.”
Marty McClain, a lobbyist and representative for several companies within the “Big Tobacco” umbrella, thinks differently about the “emergency pack” conundrum.
“Don’t listen to a word of psychobabble that so-called therapist tells you,” said McClain while puffing on a comically oversized cigar. “It’s in her best interest to get more sessions with these kids who think they have some sorta mental problem. They don’t, they’re just regular working people who need to relax and unwind now and then. And frankly, we as businessmen in this particular industry rely on their consistent and unbreakable relapses. Nothing is more reliable than a smoker who doesn’t carry the shame of being called a ‘smoker,’ because in their head, they’re just having a moment of need. We need them to crank through a pack a day and still be under the impression that they’re doing well in order to maintain our profit margins.”
As of press time, Terrett was seen buying disposable vapes in bulk.