Good on ya, gnu!

It can be done. I started smoking when I was seventeen and smoked like a chimney for thirty years. I tried to quit several times and found that Day 3 was the hard one to get past. That was the day my mind generally disconnected, by body turned into a robot, I bought a pack of cigarettes, and lit up. Along about the third marvelous drag, I suddenly became furious at myself, muttered a lot, and then kept on smoking.

I tried all sorts of over-the-counter drugstore products, chewed great wads of chewing gum until I endangered my teeth, and all that, but to little effect.

I read a very good book on quitting smoking (can't remember the title—something brilliant like, "How to Quit Smoking," I think— and I don't have it anymore—gave it to someone in need) that suggested several methods, but one data point that stuck with me was the comment that in hospitals and clinics, when trying to get addicts off hard drugs such as heroin, blood tests showed that after three weeks—twenty-one days—all traces of the drug were out of the person's body and essentially the body was clean, so any return to taking the drug was a matter of choice!

So if you could hold out for twenty-one days, you're off the stuff.

And although nicotine is powerfully addictive, it is not as powerful as heroin.

With that twenty-one day goal to shoot at, I started my own program, NOT following the usual advice ("The ONLY way it can be done is cold turkey!").

I tapered off.

But I have to admit, I had a lot of help. My wife does not smoke (never had) and second hand smoke really bothers her, so I decided not to smoke in our apartment. If I really felt like I needed a smoke, I went out on the porch or the balcony. And where I was working at the time (phone company operator—"One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies"), you couldn't smoke at the switchboard, so I could smoke only on breaks.

So I didn't smoke much at home, I smoked only on breaks at work, and my first cigarette in the morning was as I was driving to work, and unless I went out on the porch or we were at a party somewhere, my last cigarette for the day was when I was driving home from work.

I was actually down from about thirty butts a day to about six or seven.

One Sunday evening, John Dwyer hosted a Song Circle at his waterfront home west of Marysville, WA. About a dozen people gathered that afternoon for some serious loafing and to scarf down vast quantities of John's delicious barbequed ribs. Several of us were sitting out on his deck, enjoying the view of Puget Sound, the ssunshine, and the light breeze. Coincidentally, that happened to be my birthday.

John didn't smoke, and the rule was "No Smoking" in the house. If you wanted to smoke, go out on the deck. So as we sat there, a couple of people were smoking. I pulled out my pack to light up and noticed that I had only three left. I made a mental note to buy another pack from the machine when I got to work Monday morning.

Then, I said, "Hey, wait a minute!" My birthday. As auspicious an occasion as any. Since I had been planning on quitting, and since I was down to a half-dozen butts a day, I figured, "Do it, dammit! Just DO it!!"

So—I sat there that afternoon on John's deck and leisurely smoked my last three cigarettes. Then I gave my Bic butane lighter to a woman there who smoked, went inside, pigged out on barbequed ribs, and sang up a storm with a batch of other people until late in the evening.

When I got to work the following morning, I hung up my coat, went to the break room and had a cup of coffee, then went out and plugged in.

For the next week or so, I would find myself reaching into my—now empty—shirt pocket, just out of habit. From time to time there would be a slight twinge of a craving, but as long as I didn't dwell on it, it went away in a matter of a moment or two.

Twenty-one days pretty easy days later, no more twinges, and it never occurred to me to want to smoke again. I was OFF the damned things!

Two lovely side-effects:   in a few weeks, my singing voice sounded much clearer, and singing was actually easier;   and I no longer had to spend fifteen minutes every morning sitting on the edge of my bed coughing up a quart of phlegm!

That was thirty-three years ago.

IT CAN BE DONE. It's not exactly a picnic, but it's not that bad either. And the benefits are well worth any temporary discomfort.

Hang in there!

Don Firth

P. S. Here's a good question to contemplate:   If I played an expensive and irreplaceable clarinet, would it make sense to blow hot, tar-filled smoke through it about thirty times a day?