Becoming a smoker was easy. Giving cigarettes up was anything but. It was the longest and hardest breakup of my life.
It only took one puff of my first cigarette. When I took that initial drag, I sealed my need to keep inhaling those lethal sticks. Looking back, I'm certain I had become addicted long before then.
I grew up in a house of smoke. Both my parents sucked on their unfiltered Chesterfields, and if it wasn’t a cigarette, my dad enjoyed his pipe. I preferred the scented aroma of pipe tobacco, but I never smoked a pipe.
Despite chronic bronchitis between the ages of 7 and 9, my parents never thought to stop blowing out their smoke around me. The only time I was free of their smoke was when I was at school, playing outside with friends, or cloistered in our den with a humidifier that emitted stinky vapors because they’d passed through a cotton ball filled with some dark brown liquid. The vapors and liquid were to help clear my lungs and end my honking coughs.
I never considered my lungs when I sucked on my first cigarette. Everyone I knew smoked, and I wanted to fit in. Despite the foul taste, I couldn't resist picking up one cigarette after another for the next 18 years.
One day my friends and I sat in the balcony of the Culver City movie theatre (now renamed in honor of Kirk Douglas). In 1965, theatres permitted smoking in their balcony. We had one cigarette left to share between the five of us. The moment I lit the cigarette, the unpleasant stink told me I had lit the filter, the wrong end. My friends groaned. I wanted to hide. But at 16, fun mattered more than any mistake. The music to Help! wafted through the theater and when The Beatles appeared on the screen, we forgot everything else.
By the time I was in my 20s, I stayed thin by a diet of coffee, salads, and cigarettes. Each morning, my first thought was to grab a cigarette from the bedside table. First thing after sex, a cigarette.
Even one boyfriend telling me that kissing me was “like licking the bottom of an ashtray” didn’t deter me from my apparent quest to destroy my lungs.
In my latter 20s, I began many attempts to quit. None lasted long. I even attended the Schick Center in Beverly Hills where they shocked us and I watched films showing the damage cigarettes can do. The sight of a man with a hole in his throat diving into a pool was horrifying. They told us to buy cinnamon sticks and suck on those when we had the urge to smoke. I did as told. Each night I had nightmares of being tortured, shocked, and falling down a pit that startled me awake.
Despite sucking on cinnamon sticks, the seductive lure and love of that first inhale of smoke remained strong. I visited my assigned counselor and confessed I didn’t think I had the strength. Instead of offering encouragement and helping me win this struggle, he served up a plate of shameful words about how it was up to me and if I smoked, it was my problem, not his.
Humiliated and feeling like a failure, I never returned. Instead, I consoled myself with a new pack of cigarettes. The deep inhale of my first puff calmed my anxiety. I was in a committed relationship.
I continued trying to stop smoking over the years, even seeing a hypnotist in his rundown, shoddy apartment with dim beige walls, worn carpet, and a couch that sank like it had given up after being sat on by too many sumo wrestlers.
My toaster oven came in handy when I changed my mind after I’d soaked a pack of cigarettes in water so they’d be unusable, then thrown them in the trash. When I lost the struggle to keep them in the trash, I rummaged through the damp coffee grounds and other garbage, pulled the package out, and removed a few limp sticks. I wasn’t proud of myself as I crossed the kitchen and put them into the toaster oven to dry so I could smoke them. I must admit toasted cigarettes aren’t pleasant, but that did not deter me. I smoked them. Although far from enjoyable, they sated my addiction. I’m sure I made faces of disgust, not just at the smell, but at myself.
I continued my love-hate relationship with smoke, often breaking up only to give in again. Each time I started smoking again, my self-worth plummeted. I convinced myself I had no willpower. And I believed willpower was the key to quitting.
It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I tried a new mindset. Two conversations made a difference.
Talking to my best friend, I shared my struggles to quit. “What do cigarettes mean to you?” she asked.
I heard myself say, “They’re my friend, always with me, especially when I want and need them.” The realization of what I’d said made me nauseous, horrified, and ashamed. I’d never thought of cigarettes as an important relationship. It was like staying with the boyfriend who beats and threatens to kill you.
Another conversation, this time with my oldest friend triggered a new idea. Phil and I grew up next door to each other and he’s like my younger brother. A car accident paralyzed him from the chest down when he was 19. During a conversation, he mentioned going to the gym and lifting weights. I asked about his discipline.
“I look in the mirror and decide how I want to look,” he said.
The proverbial light over my head turned on as I realized willpower was not what I needed to quit smoking. I needed to decide. I needed to choose not to smoke. That realization led to the plan that enabled me to try again to quit, but this time with no chance of defeat.
I wanted to stop because I was certain I would die if I didn’t. Every morning I woke up feeling as though a herd of buffalos had been stomping across my chest. I knew I was playing Russian Roulette with my life.
I picked the day I’d quit. Decades later, listening to doctors from the Anderson Cancer Center, I learned all it takes is one puff from one cigarette to start the change in a cell that will lead to cancer. I also learned that lung cancer isn’t the only cancer caused by smoking. Name any organ in our body, and smoking makes it vulnerable.
Not able to stop thinking about what Phil had said, I devised a strategy. I told myself, If I chose not to smoke on that day, then I won’t. I also left open the possibility that I might choose to keep smoking.
For the next month, I considered the same option every day. ”If I choose not to smoke on December 16th, then I won’t.”
When the morning of the 16th arrived, I chose not to light a cigarette. The first day, the choice was constant. As the days went on, it became one minute at a time, then one week, then one month. Because I had chosen not to smoke, I can’t say quitting took strength, emotional maturity, or discipline. I continued to choose until my life no longer included thoughts of smoking.
A funny thing happens when we quit smoking. We lose some of our abilities. When I read Russell Baker’s memoir Growing Up, I learned I wasn’t the only one this happens to.
I was a university student at the time and had quit during my winter break. When I returned to class, I no longer knew how to study. I couldn’t recall what I used to do. Smoking had been a cue. Without that cue, I was lost. Forced to innovate, I created a new strategy and continued getting straight A’s.
That was forty years ago. I haven’t dared even one puff on a cigarette. I have great respect for the strength of my addiction. It still scares me. I'm certain that if I took even one drag, I would become addicted again.
So, I never have.
Now it’s your turn—do you have a story of addiction and how you quit? What prompted you to quit? Please share what you learned and any tips for readers who may still struggle.
We learn from each other.
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I gave up Booze, Seconal, Xanax, Valium, Percocet, Cocaine, etc. etc., in 1985. I quit my two-pack-a-day love affair a few years later. It was hard, but I'd made a deal to quit smoking and was too afraid to back out. I rarely think about drinking or drugging, but I sometimes daydream about smoking while driving and listening to Led Zeppelin. The thing is, drugs and booze kicked my ass and kept kicking until I couldn't take it any longer, but the very smooth Mr. Marlboro never kicked, never even tapped.
I smokes for 35 years. At least 1 pack a day. That is 20 cigarettes a day, 140 cigarettes a week, 560 cigarettes a month, 6,720 cigarettes a year, and 35 years of smoking, that was 235,200 cigarettes.
Now isn't that enough to make you gag?
My father smoked for years as well. It wasn't until I was visiting him at an independent living facility, after his meal, we walked back to his room when he could not catch his breath, and passed out in my arms.
We got him into his room and I performed CPR on him, he had pulse but was not breathing, I gave him mouth to mouth until medi-vac arrived then they took over. He lived for another 5 years and passed at 86 years old. My dad had lung issues, so at that time I made up my mind that I was done with smoking.
I used the patch, large, medium, and then the small one to wean myself off smoking.
I had gone into work one day forgetting to apply a patch in the morning, and at that point i knew that it was mind over matter. I had kicked the habit.