Nicotine Doohickeys by Bill Howard

There once was a man who was trying to quit smoking. After a couple of months had gone by, however, his nonsmoking wife found out that he had smoked on a few occasions.

“Why,” she said, “would you do that?”

“Well,” he replied, “I had gone several weeks without smoking.”

“Yes,” said his wife.

“And I was very proud of myself.”

“Of course, I understand.”

“So I rewarded myself with a cigarette.”

His wife didn’t understand.

If you understand, then you are ready for this book.

I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day for some years. Later, I worked in tobacco reduction for a health department for many years. One might say, I’ve seen tobacco from both sides, now.

Unlike many never-smokers, I recognize the appeal of smoking to many intelligent, thoughtful and surprisingly sane people. (Of course, not all smokers are intelligent, thoughtful or sane, but neither are all nonsmokers.) I believe that, in context, smoking can be an enjoyable, sociable, and even perhaps meaningful activity. If this were not the case, it would be much easier for smokers to quit.

This book is written from the smoker’s perspective, to enlighten, to amuse, and if possible to help. But while the book is addressed mainly to smokers, you don’t need to be a smoker to read it. In fact, if you love a smoker you may get a better understanding of his or her attachment to tobacco by reading on.

It is possible to love smoking and still give it up. I know because I always loved smoking. I can remember sitting by myself in my favourite chair with a book by my favourite author, smoking cigarette after cigarette as I turned the pages late into the evening. When I was young, there were long night drives with my friends, smoking and talking till the air in the car was dense with cigarette smoke. I recollect rolling my own smokes when money got low and, on one or two occasions, searching through the ashtrays after a party looking for the longest butt.

Many’s the evening I could be found doing a quick calculation of how many cigarettes I could smoke before bed and leave myself enough to get out of the house in the morning. Breakfast was two or three cigarettes, two or three cups of coffee, and the morning paper. If I didn’t have those two or three cigarettes in the house, I’d have to leave early to get to a store.

Whether I was alone or with other people, I always had cigarettes. They were with me more than anyone or anything else. I was a raging addict, true, but I like to think I was more than just an addict; I was a genuine lover of cigarettes. Smoking was a major part of my life, as it may be of yours right now.

That’s why you’ll find these pages preach free. You’ll find some laughter, I hope. And you will find some understanding of why it is that you smoke, along with some ideas of how you can go about quitting, when you are ready to quit. For you will quit only when you are ready, on your own schedule, not anyone else’s.

Also remember this. Quitting smoking is a highly personal activity. My suggestions are just that: my personal suggestions, based on my experience and understanding of smoking and quitting. In most ways they adhere to basic principles; in other ways, they may be a bit heretical. But that’s okay, as long you understand that there are many ways to quit smoking and that no method works for everyone. If you don’t succeed with one, you may with another.

To put it briefly, different strokes for different folks, one person’s meat is another person’s poison, etcetera. I would be very upset if I thought that you thought that if my methods didn’t work for you, you were finished, a hopeless addict unto the (early) end of your days.

Smoking is a very complex behaviour. It is drug-taking, to be sure. But, oh, the versatility of the drug nicotine and the act of smoking. People smoke to wake themselves up in the morning, and they smoke to wind down at night. They smoke when they are bored and depressed, they smoke when they are afraid and nervous, and they smoke when they are excited and happy. People smoke to relieve loneliness, and they smoke to enjoy friendship. Smoking appears to soothe, complement, enhance, as necessary. It seems to provide immediate bodily and emotional rewards in a whole spectrum of situations. Little wonder that most youth who have more than one or two cigarettes become regular daily smokers.

Tobacco is formidable. But do not make the mistake of holding tobacco in too much respect. IF YOU ARE GENUINELY DETERMINED TO QUIT, YOU CAN AND WILL QUIT. The only questions are when and how.

I don’t what your story is, or why you started smoking, but I suspect all smokers, whether currently practicing or not, have some things in common. Thus, I briefly present my own story, for your interest and edification. After all, you really should know who I am before you even consider taking my advice. For all you know, I could be a paid tobacco industry agent intent on keeping you hooked and making you pay for the privilege.

I had my first puff of a cigarette when I was about 10, on my way to school one fine autumn day with my friend Mickey (not his real nickname). Prone to outrageous fabrications and colourful language, Mickey was one of these precocious kids who was smoking before his age got into double figures. Hardly out of diapers, he sauntered along the street puffing, swearing and lying like a pint-sized gangster.

Having moved in from the country only the year before, I was easy prey to all these fresh and interesting town trends. I could soon curse, if not with the best of them, at least respectably.
However, despite Mickey’s superb and even phenomenal example, I never became a top-drawer liar. You can check with my wife.

Smoking was a different matter. Remember, this was the late Fifties. This was when smoking was respectable and when lots of people smoked. This was when the cigarette companies’ claim that nobody knew for sure if smoking caused disease drew snorts only from a few knowledgeable researchers and doctors.

* * *

By high school, however, a number of my friends smoked and, more and more, smoking appeared as a marker for growing up and as something to which I could reasonably aspire. So I decided that it was time to get serious. I did not get my first cigarettes from my friends, which is the usual route young people follow to tobacco addition, but instead pottered on down to McKarris’ corner grocery and bought two cigarettes for five-yes, five-cents.

Shortly, thereafter, I was surprised by my mother as I sat on the windowsill of my room trying to blow the smoke out into the open air three stores above the street. I was so startled it was a miracle I didn‘t pitch out. I almost entered the Guinness Book of Records - posthumously- as the fastest smoking related death in history.

My mother, however, was conciliatory; I was 16 and old enough to make my own decisions about smoking. You have to remember that this was 1964. This was the year that the Surgeon-General’s first report on smoking came out. Both it and the British Royal College of Physicians report of two years earlier clearly linked smoking to lung caner, but both of them passed over the heads of my family and friends, and they had not yet made it into the educational system.

* * *

Thus it was that I progressed into regular smoking. It is, I think, a story common enough among people now in their forties and fifties. There were five of us, all friends, who all started around the same time. Though it hardly seems possible, that was 35 years ago now, and as far as I know the other four are still smoking.

* * *

It is very hard for many smokers to quit smoking. My own current nonsmoking status I owe, as much as anything, to bad health. Believe it or not, I was lucky in having health problems- reversible health problems-early.

A few years ago, I listened as a health professional presenting at an anti-tobacco conference drew gasps from the audience when she said, “you know, I wish I still smoke…” Then she went on, “because then I would still have the very best thing I could ever do for my health still ahead of me.” That is, quitting.

If you have gotten this far, you are interested in quitting (either that or you like rambling, digressive writing) and you still have what is probably the best thing you can ever do for your health ahead of you. I have inserted, “probably” because one never knows what people are up to. If you are an ordinary person, like me, and not a daredevil-in-training, or something equally exciting, then take a black marker and blot the “probably” out.

* * *

Remember this, there are many ways to quite smoking. What works for one person may not work for another. My way is only one way. It is not the way, (If I thought I knew the way, I would buy a nice powder-blue suit, have my hair styled in a large way, and get my own television show.) However, I sincerely believe my approach can work for many smokers. If it does not work for you, do not give up. Try it again soon. Or try something else soon. Seek help, if necessary. Your best change of becoming a permanent nonsmoker lies in never giving up giving up. (No, that is not a typo.)

* * *

Of all the people in Canada who have ever smoked regularly and who are still alive, more have managed to quit than continue to smoke. Millions and millions of people, Jerks and dorks among them, truth be told. (Don’t expect me to name any. I don’t know them all, and I can’t afford the litigation.) Look around you, for goodness sake, of all the people who have managed to quite smoking. Look among your friends and acquaintances. Look at public figures. The former Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, managed to quit while under the stress of assuming the leadership of his country. Jacques Parizeau, at the time Premier of Quebec, quit while under the stress of trying to break up the same country. I quit. All sorts of folks have quit.
You can quit, too.