Some cigarettes go completely wrong. Some are a revelation: Why I still smoke

Some cigarettes go completely wrong. This one, for example: Early in the morning, it's gray and windy. I'm standing on the balcony and forcing this filth down my throat because that's what I do in the morning. I've gained nothing, my life hasn't gotten any better in that moment. It's all humiliating.

Some cigarettes, however, are a revelation. This one, for example: One evening in a bar, the first sip of lager goes down like a treat, the cigarette is casually tapped out of the soft pack and carefully placed in the right corner of my mouth, now hanging sideways in the air. Then I tilt my head down, light it, and feel a wonderful connection with this world.

I'd love to call the waiter over and ask him to take my photo. I'm as close to life as I can get; it has to be captured. As I gaze through the smoke, sensational thoughts come to me: "Perhaps the cigarette is the last spiritual force of the present."

As a smoker, the pendulum swings wildly back and forth between pleasure and burden for me – and every day this pendulum has to be readjusted. The fact that I see cigarettes not just as an addiction stemming from a biochemical condition, but also as a way to access the world around me and myself – indeed, I want to grasp human existence through them – is part of the problem. But it's the truth.

Now I have to light a cigarette before I can continue. Inhale smoke, exhale smoke. This cigarette also tends to go astray. What am I running from here?

It all started like this: As a teenager, I hung out at the ping-pong table with the guys from the block. Colorful, overly sweet alcopops flowed into our stomachs, and the cigarette smoke from Marlboro Red hung in the air for minutes. At home, repression and confinement, too many headaches, too many arguments – here on the table, I simply blew out that filth. My German-Russian friend Alexander smoked his cigarette with a small branch in his hand so his fingers wouldn't stink. His father, also named Alexander, would have gone crazy if he'd known about his son's cigarettes.

My parents found out early on that I smoked. But I didn't try too hard to hide it. In the evenings, I would smoke a cigarette on my childhood bedroom balcony before going to bed and stubbed it out in the flowerbed. One night, it was a hot summer, and the entire flowerbed was charred overnight because the embers had eaten through the roots. My parents were furious, but I didn't care. Unfortunately.

Perhaps this memory brings me closer to the question of why I smoke in the first place. It's my rebellion: visible to all, smelly, impossible to ignore. But who am I actually rebelling against here—other than myself and my body? Against the punyness of my existence. Against the authorities and constraints of everyday life. Against everything that brings me down. "Please don't smoke near me," I hear the woman next to me in the café grumble. I'm willing to sacrifice my life for a cigarette, so why should I even consider you?

I have to laugh myself, it's so wonderfully adolescent. But isn't there some truth to it? Life is sometimes so bleak, so strange, so full of shitty conditions that you have to respond with beauty. And a burning cigarette in my mouth in the evening is the most beautiful thing in the world.

It provides comfort when everything falls apart. At this point, I unfortunately have to go into biography again. When I became seriously ill three years ago, I turned my life around, left no stone unturned, quit smoking, and pushed myself to perfect my own healing. Vegetable smoothies here, buckwheat there. Every healthy action had the function of giving me back control over my situation. It didn't help. The cigarette is the opposite of control. It tells me: "Let go, it's enough. You're allowed to make mistakes. And who cares if you get better, have fun!"

Like a warm hug from a friend, for Kaan too. He looks like a sexy gangster from the nineties with his baggy pants and durag. I've smoked with him many times; cigarettes suit him even better than they do me. The situation recently escalated again at his house. His father, also a smoker, kicked him out: "Don't ever show your face here again!" he yelled. Kaan was seething with rage and pain, almost crying.

So he climbs into his Ford Transit, stares blankly out the windshield. Then he pulls out the Marlboro Gold, which he bought cheaply in Poland, a brand-new, red Bic lighter—and fills the car with smoke. Inhale, exhale, five minutes of peace. For Kaan, he tells me, it feels as if only the cigarette can truly understand him in this moment. When I look at Kaan like that, his tender soul floating out of the gangster, it becomes clear to me in a different way why the cigarette is so hot: It's vulgar, it's gentle. It's both.

On to the next cigarette, this time with the journalist Deniz Yücel. When he smokes, he holds the cigarette with his fingers not at the bottom of the filter, but right at the top, close to the embers. As if smoking wasn't dangerous enough, as if he needed to be even closer to the fire. One day, when he was in police custody in Istanbul, having been arrested by the Erdogan regime, existential questions arose: What will become of my life now? But he didn't ask himself the question; he only thought about how he would get cigarettes in this deserted place, not a soul in sight. When Yücel was then transferred to pre-trial detention, he was almost relieved. Here he was allowed to smoke again after thirteen days of abstinence. Is he addicted? Yes. Did it help? Probably yes.

Somewhere in the garden next to a forest, the birds are chirping. My right hand twitches briefly, about to reach for a cigarette. But no, this is life too, listen carefully! I instinctively feel: My time to quit smoking is almost here. The path to enlightenment must be taken differently. I hope it won't be too boring.

Julian Theilen is a freelance author living in Berlin. Together with Imke Rabiega, he hosts the pop culture podcast "News Core" for the German newspaper "Die Welt."