Penton — Pick a way to quit, then do it

It was a January day 15 years ago and it was about 35 below zero outside. Driving along a highway between Saskatoon and my former home in Moosomin, I had the driver’s-side window rolled down a couple of inches to let the smoke from my du Maurier cigarette escape to the outside.

Didn’t want to stain the inside of the car with the odor of the smoke, but I obviously wasn’t that concerned about staining the inside of my body — lungs, esophogous, throat, stomach — with what the scientific community says is a plethora of poisons that slowly cause a person to die.

Why? Because I was addicted. To the nicotine. To the smell. To the habit. It was me, and that’s all there was to it.

Cigarettes cause you to die slowly, if you’re lucky. Not so slowly and not so lucky if you happen to develop lung cancer, emphysema or a multitude of other ailments, as happened to a couple of friends of mine who didn’t reach 55 before their bodies gave up from too many poisons. You may never get lung cancer and you may live to a ripe old age, as my mother has done. She’s nearing 92 and has been a non-smoker for only the past four years. But you can pull the trigger on an empty chamber five times out of six in a game of Russian roulette, too.

So on that January day in 1995, I thought to myself: “This is stupid. I’ve tried to quit before. It’s 35 below and my fingers are freezing for a couple of minutes while I smoke this stupid cigarette, so why don’t I try to quit again. And succeed this time.”

It was a big task. Two or three earlier attempts in previous years had only short-term success — a couple of weeks here, two months there. This time, I decided to quit for a far shorter time period. I’d quit for an hour. “Let’s just get through this next hour without a smoke,” I thought to myself, “and then we’ll analyze things.”

That first hour was OK. Still on the road, I decided to tackle the second hour smoke-free. It wasn’t as easy. But I did it. Before the third hour had expired, I was in Melville, attending a meeting and having a bite to eat, an absolute killer situation for a person trying to stop smoking. But I promised myself that it would only be an hour, and when that hour was up, if I absolutely couldn’t stand it, I would have a smoke.

Well, short chunks of time like that seemed to work. Went to bed that night feeling a little restless, but bit off only one-hour chunks at a time the next day and it worked. Within three days, I was a non-smoker. And this time, a determined non-smoker. Haven’t taken a puff since. Thought that if an alcoholic trying to dry out took things one day at a time, a smoking addict like myself could easily handle an hour at a time.

It might not be the best way, but for me, it worked. People are succeeding in quitting smoking in a variety of fashions and the success numbers are staggering. In 1965, reports Joanne Douglas of the Manitoba Lung Association, 49.5 per cent of Canadian adults 15 and over smoked. That’s astonishing! It was 61 per cent of the men and 38 per cent of the women. Today, that number is down to 18 per cent — one out of five men; 16 per cent of women. My smoking friends tell me cigarettes cost $12.50 to $13 a package. I’m glad I quit: I wouldn’t be able to afford it. For a pack-a-day guy, that’s more than $4,500 a year!

Afraid of gaining weight? Eighteen months ago, guided by my wife, I started eating smarter and dropped 20 pounds. Weight-gain concerns vis a vis smoking are a cop-out. If you’re smart enough to quit smoking, you’re smart enough to be able to figure out how to maintain a healthy weight. Anyway, three to five more pounds is going to be far less of a health problem than smoking three to five packs of smokes in a week.

Here’s what I know and I think every smoker knows: You might tell yourself you really enjoy smoking but you can’t enjoy all the bad things that go with it. It’s an addiction, pure and simple. And addictions can be beaten.

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