smoking is doing, it just means you’ve gone out of your way to avoid looking.
“If someone handed you a glass of poison and said, drink it, you’d say, ‘Are you crazy?’ But cumulatively, that’s what cigarettes are — a glass of poison, drop by drop by drop,” says Kruh, the I Love Lucy fan. “As a smoker, you have a whole raft of positive cues to minimize the effect of the poison you’re ingesting: I just made deadline; I’m going to reward myself. I’m so stressed out; I need this. You just don’t reflect on the long-term, cumulative effects. Your best interest loses out miserably.”
Yes, some smokers puff away for 50 years and avoid chronic, life-threatening disease. But far more smokers lose ten or twenty years of life to tobacco. Do you really want to gamble with which category you’ll land in?
“But everyone’s got to die of something, so I might as well live it up.” You hear of marathon runners who drop dead at 40. You read about how the environment is killing us all, slowly. Yes, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow!
Malcolm Montgomery of Palouse, Washington, sold himself on these arguments, despite watching relatives suffer and die of lung disease and emphysema. What he didn’t consider was how smoking affects life, rather than death. “I thought about the unpleasant end,” Montgomery says, “but not the time in between.”
These days, Montgomery, the office coordinator, is spending that time in between managing the effects of 41 years of smoking. He quit at age 57 but was later diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Today, at 63, he uses three inhalers daily and takes a half-dozen medications; if he travels to elevations higher than 4,000 feet, his breathing is labored — “like a fish out of water,” he says. Hot, steamy showers are out; so are saunas and hot tubs, and places that are hot and dry or cold and dry. “Waking up every day knowing that you screwed yourself is not a good way to start a day,” Montgomery says.
Yet he remains grateful he quit smoking. “I’m certain that if I were still smoking, my COPD would have progressed much faster,” he says. “I might even be on oxygen 24/7 by now. I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”
Assessing Your Top Reasons for Smoking
Think about your own top three reasons for continuing to smoke — what your little devil has been whispering in your ear. Now write them down.
How compelling do you find these statements? In the space below, respond to each of your reasons with a persuasive counter-argument. For example, This is just rationalization or I’m sure I can find other ways to cope with stress or take a break.
Quitting for Yourself, Not for Your Family or Doctor
The first time Burke quit smoking, she did it to appease her daughter, Ellen, who was ten at the time. “For five years she was relentless, telling me, ‘I don’t want to be an orphan because you smoke cigarettes.’ But the guilt trip infuriated me,” says Burke, a single mom. “I felt like, So, you’re not going to pay attention to all the good I do? I’m a good person. I’m a good mom. Nagging just makes a smoker mad.”
Burke’s first quit lasted three days. “I felt so guilty when I went back to smoking, and guilt is toxic. It makes you feel so bad that you just smoke more.” In retrospect, Burke says, she failed because she hadn’t found reasons to quit that genuinely resonated with her. It wasn’t until the airport incident, nearly two years later, that Burke found her own motives for quitting. “That experience challenged me in a way that no human being could,” recalls Burke. “I felt embarrassed that I couldn’t even obey the law.”
Burke had reached the all-important tipping point: the moment when you want to quit smoking more than you want to continue. A couple months later, after more reflection and some preparation, she smoked for the last time, on a morning break at work. “When I crushed out that cigarette, I said to myself, This is going to be my last one. I felt so great.”
Chances are, you’ve been battered by shoulds—you really should quit. You know you should quit, right?—from your kids, your physician, your employer, your own head. But should is not a helpful word. It’s not a source of inspiration. All smokers know smoking is harmful and they should quit. But who likes being told what to do? You may attempt to quit because you’re tired of being badgered. But as Burke discovered, a quit made under duress isn’t likely to last.
What if you haven’t experienced an epiphany, like Burke did at the airport and Cheryl Procter-Rogers did when her girlfriend answered the phone in a gravelly voice? Don’t wait for one! Plenty of smokers arrive at the decision to quit without the drama of a desperate moment. You have compelling reasons to quit; it’s just a matter of uncovering them.
Your motives may not mesh with what others are telling you, and that’s fine. We’re talking about you, not anyone else. If you’re feeling healthy, the promise of more stamina or avoiding serious illness may not resonate. So let’s find out what does. Maybe it’s the prospect of saving $250 a month and upgrading to a better apartment. Maybe you’d love to sit through a basketball game without having to dash out during halftime in the freezing cold for a smoke. Maybe smoking has stolen your singing voice, and you want it back. Maybe you want to go with your friends when they walk to a new restaurant that is uphill from work. Whatever reasons you come up with for quitting, make sure they are your own. What you need to knock that little devil off your shoulder is your own vision of success.
Exploring the Values You Hold Dearest
If you can’t yet pinpoint a compelling reason to quit, take a few minutes to consider your core values, the ideals that mean the most to you. Here are some common core values:
• health
• living in a clean home
• caring for your a family
• being a good role model to your children
• honoring your spiritual beliefs
• caring for the environment
• performing well in your occupation
• saving money
Which of these are among your own deeply held values? Does using tobacco conflict with these values? Does quitting support them?
Answering these questions may spur you to action. “Internal” reasons—those that come from the heart—tend to be more powerful than “external” reasons—orders from your doctor, a new smoke-free policy at the office, an ultimatum from your boyfriend. As inspiration, “I want to know my grandchildren” tends to work better than “My brother won’t get off my case.”
For Benjamin Johns of Seattle, the conflict between his addiction to smoking and his passion for yoga proved impossible to live with. “If there’s anything unique to yoga, it’s breathing — the idea of the breath as conduit between mind, body, and spirit. To attack my breathing apparatus was against who I am. It required blocking out the truth, telling myself, For today, it doesn’t matter. But, of course, it does matter, because all that really matters is today.” Johns, who smoked half a pack a day for fourteen years, quit smoking at 34.
Zakiya Shaw, a pack-a-day smoker for ten years, quit at age 28 when she rededicated her life
