Smoking Not

In 1983, I smoked a cigarette for the last time.

I was introduced by other kids to cigarettes when I was 11 years old. Like all kids, I was curious. Adults did it so we wanted to know what it was like. I had a few puffs. We hid our experiments from adults. My mother would have yelled at me if she knew. A few times after that initial cigarette, I tried smoking again. Advertising told us that cigarettes were cool and common. In those days, smoking cigarettes was something most people tried at some point.

When I became a teenager, I picked up a cigarette now and then but it was still rare. I didn't really begin to smoke more until I got a little older and I had to deal with stressful periods. I left college due to intense financial problems and awful family events. Life became far more challenging. I thought, naïvely, that cigarettes were a legitimate way to deal with the world.

I had always been conscious of my body and when I was in my very early twenties I embraced good eating and exercise habits. But smoking began to periodically play a stronger role when I could afford it. I quit a few times for long periods because I remained very much into swimming, bicycle riding and running. Smoking conflicted with those activities. But sometimes I smoked anyway. My youth was on my side and it allowed me to get away with things like actually smoking while riding a bike a few times.

In my mid-twenties I quit yet again and went for a couple of years without a cigarette. One day, I was talking at lunch with a co-worker. I was upset with my boss and with my job. On impulse I decided to go over to a vending machine and buy a pack of cigarettes. I smoked one and threw the rest of the pack away. Later that week, I repeated the process. This occurred once or twice again until I kept the pack and smoked them all. I was back.

29 years old in a rare photo with a cigarette about a year before I quit

photo taken by my girlfriend with my camera

Prospect Park, Brooklyn

In the 1970s and early 1980s, ashtrays sat on desks in offices and co-workers smoked while discussing projects or just hanging out. But I knew it was wrong and that it was not good for me. Worse, I began to notice the cost in actual dollars and cents. The price of cigarettes grew from 35 cents to 50 cents a pack, then it increased further. It became clearer to me that cigarettes had an economic price that I couldn't justify.

Fifty cents in 1980, which I thought was a really high price during a time when I was often broke, would be equivalent to roughly $1.90 today, but since then, most states have enacted taxes to discourage smoking by bringing the average price of a pack of cigarettes to around $8.00. However, depending on the state and local taxes, in some areas the price is above $10 per pack. This would have been astonishing to a 1980 smoker.

(For further perspective, a pack a day would be the equivalent of $56 to $70.00 per week, or $2,912.00 to $3,640.00 each year. The ten year cost of a pack a day would be $29,120.00 to $36,400.00. Even half the cost would still result in a cumulative expense of thousands of dollars over time.)

More time passed. In my late twenties I noticed that I seemed to climb hills on my bicycle with a bit less ease and instinctively I knew that cigarettes were the reason. I also anticipated that my career was going to undergo major changes and I wanted to honestly say to any new employer that I didn't smoke. But I didn't stop just yet. It took longer than I wanted to reach the necessary level of sheer determination.

I decided that I wanted to quit before I turned thirty years old. Yet by the time I reached that birthday, I still hadn't quit. It took a few more months before I faced what I knew was inevitable.

Finally, one afternoon I walked over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn not far from where I lived. I had been struggling with when to quit cigarettes permanently. I wasn't easy; their enticement (addiction) was powerful. I analyzed my goals repeatedly.

Then I asked myself the following: What if you quit right now? Mid-cigarette? Without even finishing it?

Once a cigarette is lit, it is almost always smoked until there's no more. Stopping immediately would be the ultimate, most difficult test of my resolve. If I could summon the strength to halt in the middle of a cigarette, I believed that could defeat it.

I looked at the burning cigarette in my hand and I realized the sheer intensity of the battle going on within me at that moment. It was absolutely necessary that I overcome the madness. It was now a war and I was about to go down if I did not manage to destroy my enemy.

Then I said to the cigarette as much as to myself: "You are incompatible with the rest of my life."

I did not finish the cigarette and I threw it on the ground. I stepped on it and crushed it. I found a garbage can and through the rest of the pack away. I had quit cold.

For almost everyone who has just stopped smoking, the first few days are usually terrible. They require non-stop vigilance to avoid a relapse. But I was not going back on my decision for anything. I was done. I was never tempted to pick up another cigarette, even when Paul, a neighbor, stopped by and lit one in front of me, forgetting for a moment that I was no longer a smoker.

In the following weeks and months, my health and finances bounced back to more positive states. Vices were still not entirely out of my life and it took a longer time before I greatly reduced or eliminated other bad habits.

Nevertheless, quitting cigarettes was the single most positive decision I ever made in my life involving my health.