I AM QUITTING SMOKING

I started smoking when I was eight years old. Yes......8. I couldn't buy them of course so I used to steal one or two from my dad's pack of Camels. I would smoke in a small half bathroom that was next to my parent's bedroom. I would lean out the window. That way, my parent's wouldn't smell the smoke when they came home and also I could keep an eye on the driveway. I was too stupid back then to realize they could smell it on my clothes and on my breath. I never got caught....well, at least, no one ever said anything and my dad never noticed the missing cigarettes. I didn't inhale but I still got whoozy and would have to go lie down. By the time I was 12 I had a pretty good smoker's cough.
I switched to Winston's. It helped with the cough but I was smoking more often. Back then cigarettes were cheap (25 or 30 cents a pack) and you could buy them from the vending machines. A lot of these machines were in unsupervised areas like the MTA station so it was easy to get them. I was about 13 or 14 when I first started inhaling. I realized that I didn't like the taste of Winston's even though they "taste good like a cigarette should'. I started to smoke Marlboros. In high school we had about 5 minutes between classes and a few of my classes were located close together. That gave me the opportunity to grab a few puffs in the boys' room between classes. A bunch of us would share a cigarette using a wet paper towel for an ash tray. If someone came in without knocking, the cigarette went into the wet paper towel and into the trash can. If it was a teacher, he couldn't tell who had been smoking and who hadn't so he would just tell us to get to class. If it was someone else, we yelled at him for not knocking. All the kids knew they were supposed to knock between classes. We would even smoke on the school bus going home. Our bus driver smoked and never said a word. Yeah, it was against school policy but no one was going to report it.


I joined the service when I was 19. To my amazement and delight, cigarettes were only $1.10 a carton at the exchange because they were exempt from many of the taxes. I continued to smoke pretty heavily, mainly because you could smoke just about everywhere. There were no bans on smoking back then. I smoked at work, at home, in the car, on planes.......the only place you couldn't smoke it seemed was in a military formation or in church. Over the years I noticed a shortness of breath. I started smoking Marlboro lights. That helped a little but I smoked more cigarettes. It wasn't long before I switched to ultra lights and soon I was smoking 3 or more packs a day. I'd smoke in the shower, while shaving, even in the barber's chair when they let me.


In 1998, a good friend of mine got pregnant. Her boyfriend and I tried to get her to quit smoking while pregnant. She agreed to stop if I would. It worked for a few weeks but then she broke the deal. I managed to stay quit for a year and a half. I never lost the craving and I gained a lot of weight. Finally, stress at work got too much for me and I said "screw it", bummed a cigarette and I was back to smoking. They say that an alcoholic who has abstained from drinking but then falls off the wagon will go back to drinking at the same level as when he quit. This, I found, is also true for a quit smoker who goes back to it. Soon, I was buying 3 cartons every 9 or 10 days.
Cigarette prices started to go up. Companies had to pay the huge settlements that the courts had leveled against them. These were passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. I found that generic brands were way cheaper then the name brands so I started smoking them. You get what you pay for. They tasted crummy. But I had the habit and it didn't matter. The feds stepped in and levied higher taxes on tobacco products. Not long after, the state added an enormous tax. Within a year a carton of my cigarettes went from 13.41 to 33.00 a carton. Do the math, 3 cartons every 10 days = $99 X 3 times a month = almost $300 a month for cigarettes. Hooked or not........I couldn't afford that. Anyways, it was a pretty good incentive to come up with some kind of a plan.

It was too convenient for me to smoke. I always had one lit it seemed. My pack was always within reach. When my wife came back from California, I decided I would not smoke in the house any more. She came back on October 18, almost 2 weeks ago. Since then I have gone outside to smoke. Often, I will pick up the pack, remember I have to go outside, and just put it back down. Normally in that time period I would have already smoked nearly 3 cartons. I have only smoked 5 1/2 packs.......from 600 cigarettes to 110. While that is still more than I should; it's about an 80 per cent reduction. The good thing is that the craving is less. I don't seem to be missing the cigarettes I'm not smoking. The next step will be rationing. I will lay out 5 or 6 cigarettes and that will be all I am allowed for that day. In a week, I'll reduce it further. I think that eventually I will win the battle and won't smoke at all......and this time I will never, ever go back.