The fact is, until you’re ready to break the habit, none of the arguments proffered by anti-smoking advocates will have even the slightest impact. But, since you’ve read this far, I’ll give you the benefit of my experiences.
I tried my first cigarette when I was 15. Always a scrawny kid, I thought that smoking made me look more adult and sophisticated and therefore more attractive to the opposite sex. Plus, I liked the slightly intoxicated buzz that inhaling provided. Before long, I was hooked and smoking a pack a day.
Fifty years later, I still enjoyed cigarettes. With my morning coffee. After a good meal. Relaxing in front of a video-poker machine at my favorite Las Vegas casino. I’d even joke about nonsmokers, asking what they did after having sex.
My cardiologist tried his best to persuade me to stop. He said I’d reduce the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, lower my blood pressure and improve my circulation. I felt that he was probably right–for other people. After all, my father had smoked all of his life and lived to his 90s. I would listen politely, eager for the good doctor to finish so that I could get out to my car and light up.
On numerous occasions I halfheartedly tried to quit. Not because I really wanted to, but because it seemed to be the right thing to do. Sometimes my determination lasted less than an hour before I absolutely had to have a cigarette.
Much as I didn’t want to admit it, for the last couple of years I knew that smoking was affecting my health. I’d be out of breath after climbing a short flight of stairs and had great difficulty keeping pace with my companions in the mile-high air of the Utah mountains where we went trout fishing every Father’s Day.
Things got particularly acute this past summer. I’d installed a small fish pond in my backyard, and every week I had to clean out the water filter. Just bending over to open the filter unit wore me out. I’d come back into the house gasping for breath, sit down and smoke several cigarettes until I mustered up the energy to finish the chore.
One night I was on my way home from work when I realized that I was down to three cigarettes. I could stop at a store and buy a carton, or . . . pick up a box of nicotine patches. While I read the instructions, I smoked my last cigarette.
I quickly discovered the two distinct components of the smoking habit: the nicotine addiction and the situational desires. I’ll give the patches full credit for alleviating the nervousness and irritability that cold-turkey nicotine withdrawal causes.
The situational aspects of smoking were far more difficult to overcome. When I climbed out of bed, drove off in my car or waited to be served in a restaurant, I automatically reached to my shirt pocket. The smoking habit was deeply entrenched and died very hard indeed.
The results? Within 24 hours, I was not nearly as short of breath. Within days, the morning hacking and spitting up was greatly reduced. At six weeks, I climbed all 91 steps to the top of Kukulkan Pyramid in Chichen Itza, Mexico.
But 50 years of smoking took their toll. During a routine medical exam last November, my internist determined that I had emphysema. And that wasn’t all. An X-ray revealed a spot on one of my lungs. A CAT scan showed it to be a marble-size tumor.
The cardiovascular surgeon postulated that there was a 65 percent chance the tumor was malignant and only 35 percent that it was benign. He recommended an immediate biopsy, with more radical surgery should the tumor prove to be malignant.
I was admitted to the hospital exactly four months from the day I quit smoking. The tumor turned out to be a stage-one squamous cell carcinoma–a type of lung cancer strongly related to smoking. The surgeon removed the tumor and a lobe of one lung.
He told me afterward that I was fortunate. If I had had my physical exam a few months earlier, the tumor might not have been discovered. A few months later, and the cancer might have already spread to the lymph nodes or metastasized elsewhere. The surgeon was confident that all of the cancer had been excised and that there would be no recurrence.
But I felt anything but lucky. For days after the operation I was in such horrendous pain I believed I’d never leave the hospital alive. For more than a month the excruciating pain continued. Even now, I am still very short of breath.
Yes, I genuinely enjoyed smoking. But I certainly wish that I had found my pleasure elsewhere.
