Prison of Smoke

Those of you who know me well know that I’m a lifelong allergy sufferer.

I’m not talking about your seasonal hayfever or getting sneezy around cats. I’ve been gifted—whether through nature or nurture is unclear—with full-on potentially fatal reactions to food additives, OTC pain relievers, particulates, and more. Stuff that other people’s immune systems encounter every day and laugh at.

I am jealous of those people. I am jealous of YOU.

I had hundreds, if not thousands, of allergy shots before I was ten, and repeated desensitization more than once as an adult. It might have helped a little. That’s also unclear.

Unfortunately, allergy shots only help true allergies. The most dangerous reactions I have are not allergic–meaning, stemming from exposure to organic materials like pollen, food, or dander.

They’re non-allergic, coming from chemicals and compounds that are inorganic, and ubiquitous.

Car exhaust, aftershave, paint fumes, sulfur dioxide in dried fruit and wine, incense, hair products, hand lotions.…you name it, if airborne particles, aroma compounds, or funky molecules come off it, I’ve probably reacted badly to it.

Non-allergic reactions can’t be mitigated by desensitization. They can’t really be treated at all.

Being an “adverse reactor” also means my body is resistant to many of the treatment protocols that help people deal with symptoms, pain, or infections. For example, if I get fed up with having a stuffy nose and use a decongestant, I’ll suffer rebound after two or three doses–meaning that, instead of getting better, my symptoms get much, much worse, making the inflammation and infection I’m trying to avoid more likely. My immune system treats most drugs, even mild ones, as poisons, and it will strongly resist them after the slightest provocation.

So what do you do? You suffer in silence.

Or, if you’re me, you complain a lot–sadz 4U 🙁 🙁 🙁 !!!

But today I’m whining in detail with the hope of fostering a better understanding of why we adverse reactors behave as we do.

Most people cannot grok how debilitating non-allergic reactions are. Despite being asked nicely, the public continues to douse itself with cologne and aftershave and slather up its hair with smelly gels and mousses before sharing space with me in elevators, classrooms, or cashier lines. As a result, I struggle constantly to find breathable air during even the most mundane activities, and then find myself respiratorily hobbled for hours, sometimes days, after even a short encounter.

As a sufferer, you are forced to build your life around avoiding contact with your triggers (and this often boils down to simply avoiding people entirely). Consciously or unconsciously, you learn to shun situations where you might be exposed to air you can’t control. You don’t ride bikes on the street or roll down a car window because of exhaust fumes. You don’t go to salons for haircuts or manicures because nail polish remover and hair spray make you croak and wheeze. You are forced to leave parties or theaters mid-event because someone several yards away is wearing a weaponized level of eau de toilette. You limit your work engagement to two or three people at a time to lower the risk of encountering hostile chemicals (as I did with my wedding work, even before the pandemic). And so on.

You end up living in an invisible prison of your own devising. And if your avoidance strategies succeed in reducing your exposure most of the time, keeping your adverse reactions to a minimum, you could forget you had a problem at all.

Until your life situation changes—say, you move to a different city or country. Then you have a whole new gauntlet to run, and you might not be able to evade harm as you had before.

That’s what is happening to me right now in MTL.

Perhaps the worst and most insidious of the chemicals that cause me grief is cigarette smoke. If you want to know what it’s like–and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody–put some Drano in a small spray bottle, dilute about 50/50, point the bottle at your face and spray. Inhale deeply, so the Drano goes up your nostrils and down your throat.

Feel those caustics burning inside your nose, your sinuses, your gorge? Sense the sting as your membranes seep mucus or blood? That’s my experience every time I am exposed to even the tiniest bit of cigarette smoke.

Sadly for me, Montréal is saturated with the stuff. It’s everywhere.

In L.A., I took clean air for granted—well, air untainted by cigarette smoke, anyway. Over many decades, California has successfully reduced smoking with ad campaigns and heavy taxes. In L.A., additional laws eliminated a lot of indoor smoking and smoking near entry doors. It’s unusual for someone to wander the streets with a cigarette. I could hang out in my own front or back yard and breathe freely the vast majority of the time.

But I forgot, like ya do when your exposure situation stabilizes, about the invisible prison cell I must inhabit. I forgot that other places don’t regulate, or even mildly discourage, heavy smoking.** Montréal certainly doesn’t. Instead of being free to enjoy the city’s many delights, I’m back in lockdown, probably for the duration.

We were excited by the idea of Montréal being a “walkable city.” But the city is also walked by legions trailing tobacco smoke without shame or second thoughts–especially in The Village, which is full of tourists, sans abris, clubs, and bars that chug out clouds of toxic fumes all summer. I’m under constant assault when I walk in my neighborhood, even in the fancy mask Sylvain bought me. When we walk together, we use a code word to signal the need to cross the street to avoid oncoming smokers, who don’t seem the least bit perturbed that their happy little cancer stick might be strangling someone else. “Walkable city” my asthmatic ass.

There’s no respite at home either. We have three sets of neighbors who chain-smoke on their balconies all day. If I open our patio door for fresh air in the morning, I have to close it before 8 am when the first fumeur starts puffing away. My bloodhound nose picks up the scent even when a fumeur is long gone down the street and around the corner; they are like ghosts taunting me by wafting their noxious miasmas down the empty ruelle. The long gossamer trails of doom find me, even in my own apartment.

Quoth the Raven: COULD YOU JUST FREAKIN NOT

Anyway, this is my situation right now and, yeah, it’s depressing. Despite air filters, fans, closed doors, and industrial masks, my supply of breathable air is, as they say here in MTL, fucké. Every part of my life here so far, whether inside or outside, has been dictated by the need to cope with the uninterrupted stream of second-hand smoke. I am no longer protected by my previous prison. I’m out in the open and under fire.

So how do I deal? I stay shut up inside most of the time, all doors and windows closed. I cook occasionally, read a little, and write blog posts. I pester Sylvain when he’s working. I wear an N-95 when I’m cycling, which takes most of the fun out of it, and I cycle only rarely and early in the day. I run errands when they are absolutely necessary; it wears me out mentally and physically, like zig-zagging through a minefield.

Then I have to mitigate whatever headache or snorting or swelling or infection results from the smoke exposure that happened despite all my avoidance efforts.

I’m not asking you for sympathy; I’m trying to explain after all these years why I sometimes avoid you, your invitations, your infuriating ability to suck in any kind of air and be perfectly fine with it. Being here in MTL makes me miss all of you, yes, but also the effectiveness of my respiratory strategies back home. This is the first time I’ve really analyzed how much avoidance it takes to be able to breathe without a pain penalty. I know this seems daft, but I’m looking forward to breathing again in L.A.

In conclusion, friends: if you can take a deep breath wherever you are and not keel over, you are incredibly lucky. Enjoy it. It’s a privilege.

For me right now, getting a gulp of fresh air is a special occasion–one I have little hope of celebrating anytime soon.

P.S. Don’t even get me started on the pot smoke here. Dope’s legal in QC and it’s summer/party time in MTL, so the purple haze is thick and gummy. Even Hendrix would get dizzy kissing this sky.

**It’s not entirely true that Canada doesn’t try to quell smoking. It does, but it hasn’t been nearly as effective as California. Though the overall Canadian smoking rate is declining, about 15% of the adult population still smokes (it’s 10% and dropping in California, and there are more restrictions on where people can smoke, particularly in cities like L.A.)