Smoking

A recent thread on the TIRC email list about smoking at bars made me reflect on my life as a smoker. It’s something I haven’t really thought about in several years. But looking back, it’s easy to see how quitting has really been beneficial to my health and well being (duh!). I’ll try not to make this post too preachy as I don’t really want to alienate any of my smokin’ readers, because I honestly don’t have anything against smokers, just their smoke.

I gave up smoking at the age of 34 on December 31, 1999. Prior to quitting, I was smoking an average of two to three packs per week and normally I wouldn’t even have my first cigarette until right after lunch. I could never understand people that would light one up immediately after they woke up… blech! That definitely wasn’t for me. So, yeah, I guess one could argue that I wasn’t much of a smoker. So I was smoking roughly six to eight smokes a day. Occasionally I might go through as much as one pack in one day if the day ended at a show or party, but that was rare. If I smoked half a pack in one day, it was a lot. And in ‘99, cigarettes cost right around $3 a pack, maybe a little less. So let’s say I went through two and a half packs per week. Over the course of a year, that’s $390. If I don’t even figure increases in cigarette taxes and inflation, that’s roughly $3,500 I have saved since then (and counting).

That’s a lot of money. That basically covers the price I paid for my ‘65 Barracuda, in fact.

Now, aside from the MONEY, obviously, is the increase in my overall health since then. I no longer cough up “lung cookies” in the shower every morning. My house, clothes, and car don’t stink of cigarettes. And, even though I’m still not getting the exercise I should, I still feel better overall. Plus, I have Mitral Valve Prolapse. Lots of things aren’t good when you have this condition, such as a lot of caffeine, excess alcohol, lack of sleep/excercise and, naturally, smoking.

How did I go about quitting? It was actually easier than I thought it’d be… although I had tried to quit once before, unsuccessfully. Or, rather, I had quit for almost a year, right after the 4th of July, 1995. We were celebrating Independence Day at a friend’s place out in the country and I suddenly decided right then and there that I was done. I quit. And I went completely without cigarettes until June of ‘96, when, out on a camping trip with friends, I made the mistake of lighting up a Cuban cigar a friend’s brother had brought along to share with our group. After I smoked that cigar, I was right back to craving the nicotine (it’s crazy just how easily something as innocent as that can trigger that old craving again), so I followed it up with first “just one” cigarette, which led to two, and so on. That’s how quickly and easily I fell off the wagon. And it took me another three and a half years to get up the courage to try to quit again.

But by the fall of ‘99, I was seriously ready to quit. I was tired of it. Tired of the smell, the ill feelings, the hacking, and the cost. I had always promised myself that I would quit before I turned 35, and that was right around the corner. Then there was the promise of the new millennium. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first (never mind the fact that that technically didn’t happen until 2001… YOU know what I mean). So I made up my mind that I would quit by the end of the year, before “two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time.” But to prepare myself for it, I didn’t smoke more, or even keep smoking the same amount. Sometime in October, I started cutting back, slowly but surely so that by the time mid-December rolled around, I was down to just three cigarettes a day.

Another thing that was a huge help was I started eating sunflower seeds… the kind in the shell that you always see ballplayers eating and spitting out on TV (it’s important to get the shelled kind because the time and effort it takes for your teeth to crack the seed open and then extract the nugget with your tongue is what keeps your mouth busy and your mind off of reaching for that pack of cigarettes, which you should keep in another room, way out of sight). I’d buy bags of the David Jalapeño Hot Salsa seeds and eat them whenever I’d get that craving for a smoke, or just when I was hanging out at home watching TV or going on the Internet. This was very important as it gave my mouth something to do instead of suckin’ on a cancer stick. I highly recommend getting into the sunflower seed habit in order to alleviate your nicotine habit. Just make sure you have a little cup handy to spit the shells into. Now, this is what worked for me. You may find that gum (maybe even nicotine gum) or something else can serve the same purpose. I never gave anything like that a shot, I just found that I really liked those spicy seeds and they served the purpose well. I still eat them, in fact.

So if you’re thinking about quitting, here’s how to do it: Plan early. Tell everyone you know you’re going to quit, and when. Tell them your plan—how you plan on doing it. Then convince YOURSELF that you’re going to do it. This may be the hardest part, but if you can convince yourself, then it’s basically a done deal. All you need to do is follow through with the plan. But allow yourself at least three months to start cutting back. Then do it slowly. Cut out smoking on Mondays entirely. Then cut down on the number of cigarettes per day gradually over time so that by the end of the third month, you’re down to next-to-nothing. And make that deadline an important date. New Year’s Eve, your birthday, an anniversary… some date that’s meaningful. And so that later you can look back and be able to recall how long it’s been since you quit. I seriously believe the hardest part of quitting is the psychology involved with it. If you don’t accept the fact that you’re going to quit (and when), then it won’t happen. All the sunflower seeds, nicotine gum and patches in the world won’t make up for that.

This is what worked for me. Obviously, it may not work for everyone, and you may or may not have the same success I did, but it’s worth a try. But if you’re thinking about quitting, you’ve already made a big step towards this objective, so it’s just a matter of sticking to your guns and not giving in. Good luck!