(First published in Bali Advertister, March 14, 2007)
“Ciga-reets and whiskey and wild, wild women, they’ll drive you crazy, they’ll drive you insane.”
I wrote in August 2005 about smoking my last cigarette from my last pack. It was a damned lie. The last cigarette didn’t come until March 7 of 2006, and it has been a year now since I’ve ingested any nicotine from any ‘delivery device’ that I was personally smoking.
I have passed all the tests. The brothers have come for a visit. I have been out with old drinking buddies who still smoke like Sumatran forest fires. I have been in pubs where nobody knew me, where nobody knew I had quit smoking, and where I could have had a cigarette or two or a pack and nobody in my circle (or my wife) would have been the wiser. I didn’t light up.
Urges still hit me, but it’s enough to stop me just thinking of having to reset the count to day one. And, yes, I really do mark off each day without a cigarette with a big fat ‘zero’, adding the days up into weeks and months, counting down the days to the one-year mark on my calendar. Sometimes, it’s enough to redeem a day in which nothing has been accomplished just to think, “I made it through another day not smoking.”
I like not smoking. I can get on the bike for a pedal into Ubud, and come back up the rising roads to home without collapsing on arrival. My clothes do not smell like an ashtray; my wife says neither does my breath. She says I look healthier and ‘fresh’. Maybe quitting won’t make me live any longer, but I enjoy life more and it costs me less – especially since a drop in alcohol intake has come along with the no-smoking policy with no extra effort.
For the most part, I do not play the part of the righteous reformed smoker. It doesn’t bother me if smokers smoke in my presence – as long as they don’t do so while I am eating, as long as they don’t fire up in my house before I have a chance to steer them to the garden. I never smoked in non-smoker’s houses when I was a smoker and don’t mean to allow anyone to smoke in mine. I also never smoked around children, and I expect people to show my son the same courtesy.
I do recognize that some people can smoke sensibly. One of my brothers for instance has smoked one or two cigarettes daily for years, and a big night for him in a pub might mean three cigarettes. I can’t do that. The only sensible option for me was to quit, and (Glory Hallelujah!) I have now been smoke-free for 12 months. Let the non-smoking celebratory dance begin. (Look, Ma, no wheezing!)
Below are some suggestions that might help any smokers trying to quit. They are tricks I found useful.
Make up your mind that you are a non-smoker. Don’t be swayed from this idea by a relapse or two or three. I became a non-smoker in August of 2005. It just didn’t take complete hold until March 8 of 2006.
Keep a daily count of the number of cigarettes you smoke. Don’t make a big thing out of it. Don’t tell yourself that because you smoked three yesterday, you have to smoke only two today. Just keep a count of how many sticks you smoke, and how much you spend on cigarettes. If you’ve really made up your mind to quit, the numbers will go down.
Talk to people who have quit and managed to stay quit. They will encourage you.
When you do smoke, go hide in the garden like you should be ashamed. You should.
If you have kids, consider whether you want them growing up thinking that smoking is a cool thing that Mommy or Daddy does.
Don’t fool yourself that you can limit it to weekends, to pubs, to trips away from home, to one cigarette a day. Most people can’t.
Most importantly, just stop, and keep stopping, for as long as you can, after each cigarette, after each pack, until you’ve finally quit for good.
I had my first cigarette when I was in the second grade. A neighbor caught my older brother and me smoking on the roof of the house and traumatized us with the fact that “your parents may not know, but God knows.” I then had a few cigarettes in the seventh grade, and sensibly quit again until I was 25, when I took it up again ‘only’ to keep me awake while driving a truck for an oil company. I ended up smoking an average of 10 cigarettes a day for 20 years.
Now I’ve quit again and stuck with it for a year. You do the same.
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