THE NARRATIVE ARC

Quitting Cigarettes

You only have to succeed once

We’re all right as long as our gettings-back-up equal our fallings-down. This, of course, assumes that we’re upstanding to start with. But given that, if we match every fall with a brushing ourselves off and rising again, we’re still good, and most likely, or quite definitely, tenacious.

I can think of only one excuse to stay horizontally put as it were; that is when Death comes a-hollerin’. Don’t antagonize him. Stay down, it’ll soon be over.

That said, we admire those who refuse to stay down, no matter what, though that can, as all things can, be taken to ridiculous extremes, as in when you’re supposed to stay down — as for example, as I said, when Death finally comes a-calling. A hilarious example of this is Peter Sellers’ stick-to-it-ness in the opening sequence of “The Party.” If you haven’t seen it, check the YouTube link below, it’s well worth watching. Click here.

But Sellers’ antics aside, I have always thought highly of those who, no matter the odds, no matter how steep the incline or height of the mountainside before them still keep going, if for no other reason than that they decided to do it — being true to themselves held to be sacrosanct.

Heroes in my book.

On the slightly less heroic:

I started smoking cigarettes at sixteen. I had just turned twenty the first time I decided to quit the things.

Of course, by now I had a nicotine dependency and even though I had yet to hear that nicotine was as hard, if not harder, to quit than heroin, I got to experience this insidious nicotine grip firsthand. Not that I’ve ever tried heroin, so I cannot personally compare, but I’ve run across that assertion more than once since.

I had promised not only myself but a colleague that sure, I could and would stop smoking cold turkey. Nothing to it. Watch me. At the time I smoked about a pack a day.

After two days I just could not take it anymore. I felt like a benumbed wooden post, nothing was quite real and all I could think about, all I could dream of was cigarettes. Over the next day, I had a lengthy, ongoing discussion with myself and “the craver” way outdebated “the ceaser.”

Day four saw me lighting up again, to tremendous relief and to a very disappointed colleague who really had thought my word was enough — he had believed me, no longer though. He actually never quite forgave me.

But lesson learned. Cigarettes are not easily quittable. Not even vaguely. Accordingly, I knew better than to attempt another cold turkey stunt like that.

Even so, at twenty-three I tried again. Having by now forgotten the pains of the futile cold-turkey approach I went down the same road again. For three days. For the count. Same thing, wooden, numbed, craving, craving, craving. I simply could not do it. Not for anything.

Yes, I had promised myself again, and sincerely this time. Really, really, this time for sure.

Not.

Impossible.

Mark Twain, of course, begs to disagree: “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”

Twain aside, over the next few years, and I’m into my thirties now, I made feeble gestures in the quitting direction now and then, each time surrendering within days, sometimes within hours, and each time having to convince myself that I was not useless, that trying to quit in the first place was just plain ol’ stupid, and so on, and so on, to make me feel better about having been bested, again, and again, and again by tobacco.

In 1984, we bought our first house, a house that, even though only ten years old, needed some internal repairs and a repaint. By now, we were to take possession the coming Monday. I had taken a week off work to do the repair and paint job myself and here comes intuition charging to catch my attention.

If, said intuition, if I were to quit smoking now during a week where I would be busy day and night with physical work, hands always occupied, perhaps this was the perfect time to do it, to actually, yes, actually do it. New house and all. Good road marker. It had my attention. I listened and agreed.

Yes, I would do it this time. This perfect time.

I clearly remember the Sunday night before. I was smoking Winstons then and had for years. About a pack a day. I was sitting in the living room of our rented house looking out the den window, keeping an eye on my watch. It was now eleven thirty at night. I had decided to quit smoking at midnight, sharp.

I lit another Winston.

And a little later, about ten till midnight, another — the last — which I smoked slowly, thoroughly, all the way down to the filter and up to a minute before midnight, at which time I took my final drag and stumped the butt out in the large blue glass ashtray.

Went to bed.

The following morning, around ten o’clock, I was knee-deep in painting a bedroom wall when the need to smoke not only snuck up on me but staged a full-scale assault. I almost reeled off the ladder. I was in trouble.

But here returned intuition to the rescue: I asked my wife for a sandwich and a beer which I sat down and consumed on the spot, trying to out-crowd the tobacco craving by satisfying another. Then another beer and then back to the painting.

Chew, rinse, repeat — many times.

Bottom line: by the end of that week I had drunk a lot of beer and eaten a lot of food, mostly of the garbage variety, but I had not smoked another cigarette.

Over the next month, I still deployed beer in the evenings to chase tobacco away, and at the end of that first month, I was still, yes, tobacco-free.

Two months. Still tobacco-free.

Three months. Ditto.

From a scientific standpoint, nicotine is just as hard, or harder, to quit than heroin, but people don’t recognize that.

HOW-ever, I dreamed about smoking. Almost nightly. Dreaming that I had given in and actually lit up, cursing myself in the dream for giving up, and then: waking up, jubilant: Wow! Just a dream, it was just a dream. I was still tobacco-free.

Over the next year, I dreamed that same dream often. Giving in, lighting up, cursing myself, and then, gloriously waking up to a hero’s welcome.

That was going on forty years ago now. I still have not smoked tobacco, and these days I never — well, perhaps once a year, if that — dream about smoking.

I can finally say that I beat tobacco. And yes, by now I really believe that nicotine might well be as hard to quit as heroin. And Google agrees.

This from American Heart Association News:

“The science behind why it’s so difficult to quit smoking is crystal clear: Nicotine is addictive — reportedly as addictive as cocaine or heroin. Yet any adult can stroll into a drug store and buy a pack of cigarettes, no questions asked.”

And this from a Nicotine Researcher:

“From a scientific standpoint, nicotine is just as hard, or harder, to quit than heroin, but people don’t recognize that.” Dr. Neil Benowitz, Nicotine Researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

Well, let me second that and rest my case.

In the end, my gettings-back-up did indeed match my fallings-down.

Now, to apply the same math to ignoring the clamoring of witless tastebuds.

© Wolfstuff