The Journey of Becoming an Ex-Smoker

It happened at least once a year.  I would make the resolution to quit smoking but by January 3rd I was lighting up again.  So I tried to quit at least thirty times in my life; that is, if I only count the New Year's Day attempts.  There were some years I would try to quit five or six times.  I never thought that two things could ever happen to me:  1.)  Becoming addicted to nicotine; 2.) becoming an ex-smoker. . . 

I tried to smoke a few times as a teenager.  In junior high I stole two Chesterfield's and a book of matches from my father and I smoked them with two of my friends after school.  My "seasoned" friends were perfectly fine but I spent the rest of the afternoon so deathly ill that I prayed to die.  Another time was in high school and believe it or not we actually had a designated smoking area directly across the street from our school.  (I cannot imagine a designated smoking area in any high school now, can you?)  I ventured across the street to the designated smoking area with a couple of friends who both had huge crushes on some "bad" boys who naturally smoked to keep up the image.  My friends were as clueless about smoking as I was but I was the only non-Mormon one in the group so I had access to stuff like cigarettes and matches at home.  It was a very windy day.  "Be cool," I was reminded in unison by the other two.  I successfully lit the cigarette with one match and I looked like a seasoned pro.  Yeah, I felt really cool.  So did my friends who lit their cigarettes up from mine.  We stood together nonchalantly exhaling smoke that we didn't inhale to begin with. 

"I think the guys are looking at us," one whispered excitedly. 

And then it happened.  A huge gust of wind came out of nowhere and naturally it blew the tip of my cigarette off and it landed directly into the eye of "Dorene".  She screamed.  If we weren't sure the boys had been looking at us before we knew with certainty that they were now, along with everyone else in the cloud of smoke! "BE COOL!" we pleaded, unsuccessfully, to Dorene who placed a frantic hand over her injured eye.  It was useless. 

"God Deb, you are SUCH a klutz!  I can't believe you poked Dorene's eye out!" 

We helped Dorene across the street amidst her highly vocal outbursts of pain and this went on and on as we meandered our way toward the school nurse's office.  This was not one of our most "cool" moments.  (Or should I say "Kool"?!?)  Dorene had to wear one of those metallic eye patches over her eye for a week and she never spoke to me again, well, at least not until our 20th high school reunion while we laughed hysterically holding onto our drinks and our cigarettes.  "God Deb, you were such a klutz!"

I swore I would never smoke.  My parents did, just like most everyone did who were a part of the "Greatest Generation".  My father never smoked until he was in the Navy during WWII and there was always plenty of cigarettes available when there wasn't much going on food-wise.  My mother never smoked until she met my dad in college and she started smoking because she was trying to lose her "goody-two-shoes" reputation.  She never could drink so smoking had to do the trick.  She smoked while pregnant with all four of us.  Our parents took us to the drive-in movies every Friday night and we'd be stuck in the back seat and our parents both smoked inside the car.  None of my siblings smoked and I neither did I until I was in college.  Like my mother who did her best to shed her innocent image, so did I.  I never enjoyed smoking pot but everyone did in the 70's.  I didn't want to seem like a "narc".  I could have a cigarette lit which was a good excuse not to take a hit off a joint and then I could just pass it to the next person.  But I wasn't addicted because, like Bill Clinton, I really didn't inhale cigarettes!  My cousin lived with my mom and she and my mom would spend hours playing Scrabble and they'd chain smoke.  I'd drop by to visit and one day they decided to teach me how to really smoke.  It was awful at first but after a while I began looking forward to smoking.  I didn't know it at the time but I was becoming addicted.  And there was nothing better than the rush of a good cup of coffee and having a cigarette. 

When I landed my first "real" job at the United States Geological Survey I was given a government-issued desk that even came with a government-issued ashtray along with my name plate.  I smoked at work at my desk.  Staff meetings had ashtrays placed on the conference tables and we smoked at meetings too.  It didn't seem odd at all, it was the norm everywhere.  There was an ill-conceived perception that non-smokers seemed odd and that non-smokers were never as friendly and "fun" as smokers were.  With smokers a friendship was forged just for sharing a match.   

Life went by, year after year, and my constant companion was a cigarette.  I didn't smoke while I was pregnant but it wasn't out of concern for the living being within me, I was so deathly ill the entire nine months that I had absolutely no desire to smoke.  The mere thought of lighting up or just being around smoke was my cue to start running toward the nearest bathroom.   I spent the last two months in and out of the hospital, there was one week where I was in critical condition with pre-eclampsia, my kidneys shut down completely and I was also going into acute liver failure.  My blood pressure was off the charts.  I didn't know too much about medicine and disease then and that was truly a blessing, I had no idea the real danger I was in of dying.  I do know now that smoking increases the risk of developing pre-eclampsia, a complication in pregnancy that literally baffles the experts of its cause.   About the only thing experts do agree on is that smoking presents an increased risk.  I gave birth to a healthy baby boy, was advised to never have more children after even more complications arose, and when I was placed in a ward with three other women who had just given birth a nurse came in and asked who needed ashtrays.  We all raised our hand.  This was only 26 years ago, can you imagine that happening now?  I'm not blaming that nurse for smoking again.  Being a new mom is very, very stressful.  Nicotine is an anti-depressant.  Literature states that 45-55% of people who smoke have an underlying depression issue we are unaware of and we're self-medicating by lighting up.  I lit up a lot after my son was born but I guess I had flashbacks of the drive-in with my parents.  I made an effort to smoke outside.  Hurrah for me, right?  It never occurred to me to keep him away from other smokers, including my husband.  My son had severe asthma throughout his entire childhood but I never put two and two together. 

I ended up in health care and eventually began working with primarily the pulmonary service in the eighteen years I worked at the hospital as an active smoker.  Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and newly diagnosed lung cancer probably make up about 80% of this area so you would think that would be a reality check.  It wasn't.  Instead I'd be paged with a group of nurses I am friends with at 10:00 every morning and we would meet and have our cigarette break in the courtyard.  Eventually the medical campus went smoke-free, inside and out.  I could have gone outside across the street but how tacky is that being seen in a white lab coat smoking?  So I began working my ten hour shifts not smoking, some days were worse than others, as my co-workers would eagerly describe; my nickname during my daily nicotine withdrawals was "Bitcherella".  I started many, many quit attempts, thinking that if I could go without for ten hours then perhaps I could just quit cold turkey.  The more failures I had, the worse I felt about ever quitting and my resolve to quit began to wane.  As a clinical nutritionist I equate quitting smoking cold turkey with putting some poor soul on a 500 calorie diet and expecting that person to stay on it.  But as a smoker I didn't know any better, we all have an Uncle Bud or an Aunt Betty who say, "Oh yes, one day I woke up and decided not to smoke anymore and that was that!"  Well bully for you Uncle Bud!  For most people it doesn't work that way.   

I decided I wanted to quit for good.  Not so much to quit but more importantly, to maintain cessation, relapse was my true enemy.  I was sick of being the odd man out in social situations, I am very gregarious and I enjoy being around others.  Instead I'd be the one outside of the house alone in 12 degree weather sucking a cigarette down when everyone else at the party was inside having fun.  Smoking was no longer cool.  Had it really ever been?  I spent three months forming my resolve to quit for good.  I took my last vacation as a smoker and probably smoked more heavily than I ever had in my life.  We see this a lot with people who will be undergoing gastric bypass surgery but instead of food I was smoking two packs a day.  I knew it was bad when I stood in Midtown Manhattan in one of the largest cities in the world and I could not find a place to smoke.  I finally veered off of Broadway and walked a block down W. 43rd street and I finally lit up where I was not shoulder-to-shoulder with other pedestrians.  We visited my brother and sister-in-law in Chapel Hill, NC and I had no problem not smoking in their beautiful home, I'd simply skip out to my car and light up.  But then they told me about the copperheads who enjoyed the gravel driveway at night and the 35 feet to my car from their entryway seemed like the Atlantic.  As I began to seriously withdrawal from nicotine I made my husband get the pack of cigarettes from the car and a lighter and I didn't care about his safety, I just wanted my fix.  This was a low point.  Another low point was when I returned home, my best friend and I went to see my favorite band of all time and she treated us to the best seats in the house.  At intermission I was dying for a smoke.  She waited patiently for me as I walked around to a certain entrance way at the Palace of Auburn Hills that led to the designated smoking area outside.  We split up in the crowd and when I returned she was gone.  I looked all over for her so I went back to our seats thinking she might of gone back and she wasn't there.  The band came back and played two songs into their set but my friend was MIA.  She finally returned and she was visibly hurt.  This was truly a low point if not rock bottom for me.  My appointment for the smoke cessation program was the very next day. 

It took 7 weeks.  I used an anti-depressant, nicotine replacement therapy, and counseling.  The counseling was vital.  I realized I fell into the group of 45-55% of smokers who suffered depression and didn't know it.  When the anti-depressant kicked in it was as though someone had opened the window on the first warm day of spring.  I quit successfully one year and seven months ago with one slip, I smoked half a cigarette.  I feel great but there are times I'd pay someone a hundred dollars for a cigarette.  But that moment is fleeting and I found out I was offically a non-smoker once when I realized it had been a few weeks since I even thought about smoking, let alone wanting the feel of nicotine back in my life.  If I had only known how easy it could be I would have quit a long time ago.  But addiction doesn't work that way.  You have to have a really good look at how horrible an addiction can be toward others and to yourself.  That's why denial plays such a vital role: 

"I've smoked for 30 years and my doctor says I'm really healthy!" 

"My personal rights and freedom dwindles down every day!  How dare the government!  We have rights too!" 

"I haven't had so much as a cold in the past five years!" 

Those three statements were my mantra for years. 

I am really glad I quit.  I never thought it could happen so no one is more surprised than I am.  If I can quit anyone can.  I wanted to share my journey but not to be congratulated, that is not the purpose of this article.  If my journey caused a single spark of interest to one reader here on Gather who wants to quit. . .  then that is all that matters.  There are some excellent support sites here on Gather to help people quit smoking, just plug in a group search under that topic.  

It's never too late to quit.