Sticking It to the Cancer Sticks

 

Yesterday I was surfing the web and came across a site that gave me the clearest understanding of some of the crazy things I do in relationships. I was so thankful for that wisdom shared so freely that I committed to writing a post today about how I finally stopped smoking after 20 years.

I started smoking with two of my best friends my senior year of high school. We would buy a pack of clove cigarettes, go to the local park, find a hidden patch of trees, and light 'em up. I remember sucking in the sweet woody smoke and licking the glaze of sugar the cigarettes left on my lips. It's funny to think that smoking was considered a taboo for 17-year-olds in our suburban Californian town. But it was.

Smoking with T. and K. made me feel sexy and daring. Somehow it gave us a cheeky confidence and sense of mystique. I continued smoking cloves from time to time in college and then graduated to the real cancer sticks my junior year abroad in France. I'll admit to drinking cappucinos in Lyon cafés with a scarf around my neck and even doing the French inhale (I did draw the line at a beret). Another exchange student there was incredible at it, slowly letting wisps of smokes swirl up in lazy loops from her hinged jaw into her nose.

A few years after college, my love affair with smoking ended, but I kept at it. I would quit from time to time -- once for six months, once for over a year -- tired of the morning hack and my nasty-smelling hair and clothes. Then I'd go to a party, and the fiery glow of a friend's cigarette and its trail of smoke would lure me back for just one puff. I was convinced I'd been a non-smoker for long enough that just a few puffs or even a few whole cigarettes would be fine. I always ended up buying a pack the next day.

Last year, I had quit again but still sneaked a cigarette or two from time to time. Then the relationship I was in went up in flames. I drove immediately to the gas station down the road for a pack and proceded to smoke (and drink) my way through my distress.

A couple of months later, I ran into this really great guy I knew in Nairobi -- a charming Italian who smoked like a banshee. When I saw him, he pulled me into a big hug and said "Debbie, Debbie, you won't believe it. We're having a baby, and I quit smoking!"

He told me he had used a book called Allen Carr's The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I got myself a copy and quit the day I finished it, the morning after my ex left the country. What is so incredible about the book is how Carr takes you through a logical progression of reason showing how smoking doesn't offer a single benefit, including the one all of us smokers think it does: a way to handle stress. He explained how smoking a cigarette might lower my stress for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, but then the nicotine addiction would immediately kick back in and toss me into a stressful cycle of waiting for my next hit.

I was never a chain smoker, but this logic made sense to me. I had plenty of memories of dying for a cigarette -- and memories of leaving conversations midstream to go have one. I needed to lower the stess in my life, and I wanted to quit smoking. Carr's arguments finally flipped a switch in my brain showing me that I could achieve both immediately. He also made it very clear that if I ever decide to take a single puff again I'm climbing back onto a hamster wheel and will start running like a maniac for my next pellet.

I've now been a non-smoker for exactly 11 months today, thanks to a lovely Italian and one hell of a good argument made by Carr.

Comments

[nuttycow]

Well done! Keep at it :)

[Debbie]

Thanks. Feels really great.