I had a complete change of personality when I hit puberty - I turned into the most horrible person in the world. I spent the ages 14-19 angry at the world for no apparent reason. At 15, I took up smoking in a fit of adolecent, hormone-induced rage.
Smoking was something I took up to break my parent’s hearts, no other reason. As far as I was concerned, they were the enemy and this was my crappy spiteful way to get back at them for all my percieved injustices. I’ll show them! As non-smokers, they reacted in all the ways I wanted to see - with pain, with anger, with disbelief.
I did some terrible things when I was a rebellious teen, and my punishment is living with that. One day, when I was 19 years old, the fire of hormonal rage that had been burning in my belly went out, and I was suddenly left feeling flat, ashamed and guilty. I’ll never be able to make up for the horrible person I was as a teenager, and I feel awful about it all.
I made an immediate change in my ways. I ditched all my loser friends. Over time, I sought out my childhood friends and begged their forgiveness for hurting them. They forgave me, and welcomed me back, which I didn’t deserve but am eternally grateful for. I set about making amends with my family too, and gradually they came to realise I’d changed.
The one thing I couldn’t seem to do was quit smoking.
I really wanted to quit. I tried hard. Once, I worked on cutting myself down until I was only having two cigarettes a day. From there, I just needed to stop all together, not a huge jump… but I spent one day in the company of a smoker, and went back to all my bad habits instantly again. Weeks of work down the drain. I became despondant, thought I’d never be able to quit.
Just before I turned 20, I got sick. This affected me in many ways, but one of those ways was emotionally. I became nervous, paranoid and phobic. I relied on cigarettes to get me through the bad parts, to calm me when I started to get agitated. More than ever I became convinced that I would never be able to stop smoking. Yet I didn’t want to be a smoker either. I didn’t want to die of lung cancer. I didn’t want to get those lines around my mouth. I didn’t want to waste so much money that could better have been spent on other things. I just didn’t see how I could stop.
By the age of 22, most of my friends were non-smokers, but I still couldn’t seem to quit. Well, partly because I didn’t try, but that was because I didn’t know where to start. I did know that I didn’t want to be a smoking mother, and had set myself a rule that if I wanted to have babies, I’d have to quit smoking first. Over time I met the man I love with all my heart and started planning marriage, and the possibility of having children one day became more of a reality. I knew I’d have to quit, or go childless. I couldn’t, in good concience, allow myself to go through a pregnancy if I was smoking.
Six months ago, at 2am when I was unable to sleep one night, I strayed into a Straight Dope thread on quitting. I went there to see what they suggested, and saw that someone linked to SilkQuit, and recommended downloading the Quit Meter. Always the curious type, I downloaded it to see what it was, and entered my details when it asked. Then I pressed start, and it began clicking away. I was horrified when it rang up 1 cent after three minutes - my smoking cost me 1 cent every three minutes? That was shocking to me.
I didn’t have a cigarette before bed that night.
The next day, when I fired up the computer, the meter had been clicking over for 12 hours. I thought “Let’s see how long we can go without smoking today”. That evening, I dashed down to the shops to buy some lollypops to help me through. Over the next couples of days I went through the most awful agonies, and felt dizzy and light-headed most of the time. I didn’t give in, I just kept eating my lollypops.
After a week, the cravings eased enough so I could get through the day without curling up into a little ball. They were still constant, but not as invasive.
After a month, I knew I’d quit. I was still having trouble realising I was an “ex-smoker”.
Today, my quit meter reads:
Six months, one week, five days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 29 seconds. 3924 cigarettes not smoked, saving $1,242.79. Life saved: 1 week, 6 days, 15 hours, 0 minutes.
I feel an enormous sense of achievement! I quit! I did it on my own, with the assistance of a computer program and Chupa-Chupp Lollypops. No patches. No gum. Cold turkey. I won! I can’t believe I won! I feel so good about myself for achieving what I had thought was impossible.
During the years I smoked, I sometimes had people approach me to tell me I should give it up because it would kill me. This served only to depress me. I knew I needed to quit. I hated being a smoker. I just thought that I wasn’t strong enough to do what I needed to do. Being told to quit smoking did nothing to help me. It surely wasn’t the thought of all those well-meaning strangers that got me through the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
My point is, you don’t understand what smokers go through. Your advice, while well meant, isn’t anything they don’t already know. In many cases they want to quit but don’t know how. Why even start in the first place? Well, I took it up at an age when I was confused and angry. I made a lot of other stupid choices at the same time, but didn’t have to live with the consequences of those in the same way. Yeah, I know I should never have started, but do you think Miss Cazzle, aged 15 would have listened? Not on your life. She was a stupid, horrible little girl, and I’m glad she doesn’t exist anymore. Her legacy was cigarettes, and I’ve finally beaten them. You didn’t need to tell me smoking was bad and stupid. I knew that all too well. But I guess that was part of the cosmic punishment dished out to me - there was nothing that could break my heart more than to be told to quit.
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