1. You will look cool

Seriously, it is an undeniable fact: when you smoke cigarettes you look cool. If anyone tells you different, they are lying to themselves and are desperately trying to condition their minds into not recognizing the truth. There is just something about harnessing fire to combust rolled tobacco into the release of smoke that human beings—across cultures, generations and class—find irresistibly cool.

2. Smoking releases dopamine, which makes you happy.

Scientists playfully call dopamine “the happy hormone.” Why? Certainly not because when released in your brain it makes you feel better, lighter and more confident, while your outward appearance brightens and a skip is added to your step—like you are quite literally feeling “high.” No, it is actually because the hydroxylation-synapse that dopamine transmits, when viewed under a microscope, appears to be a quick fireworklike fusion that universally resembles a “smiley face.”– = )

3. Smoking is a social activity.

You can join groups of smokers for a quick “cig” while between classes, or on a porch at a party, or during the commercials of a sporting event or TV program. Smoking cigarettes around others is a bonding experience. Also, being a smoker, you can be on either side of asking/being asked to “bum a cig.” This act of karma sharing is a good way to start a conversation/meet people.

4. Smoking is cool.

All the cool kids do it. You don’t want to be uncool or left out, do you? You’re not a wuss, or a nerd, or a narc—are you, narc? It’s simple: if you want to be cool and fit in, you gotta smoke.

5. You can’t quit smoking.

Yeah, the habit is becoming expensive. Yes, you wake up in the mornings with phlegm in your lungs and a hacking, old-man cough, but that’s just the price of looking cool, right. No one made you start, and quitting is for quitters. Besides, you don’t really want to quit, and all those gums and patches and pills and remedies are just expensive wastes that don’t really work anyways. You’d do better to just keep at it. It’s not like you were really going to start exercising and eating healthy like some kind of… narc…where you?

6. You need smoking.

It’s part of your routine. It’s your identity now. You are a smoker – you always have been (even before you knew it), and you always will be. The coughing into your sink after you wake up is just a part of life. Deal with it. Later, savor the feeling of lighting up for your first drag of the day. Remember that Vonnegut quote as the smoke fills your lungs: “…smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.” And feel cool.

-Daniel Cooper