My Story | What Helped | About Cravings | The First Week | The Bad Day in May | Milestones | Get Help | The Quitters' Board

Twenty-two years, a pack and a half a day. If you'd told me a year ago I'd have a web page about quitting, I'd have laughed and gone outside for a smoke. But here we are, and since I'm a competitive man and since my wife says I've got to talk about this to somebody besides her, I'm putting it on the Internet. If you're trying to quit, pull up a chair. If you're still smoking, read it anyway. I'm not going to preach. I smoked longer than some of you have been alive.

My Story

I'm 38. I'm a maintenance mechanic at an auto parts plant here in Bowling Green, which means when a machine goes down at two in the morning, I'm the one under it. I've been married to Sherri for fifteen years, and we've got a daughter, Ashley, who is twelve and smarter than both of us.

I started smoking at sixteen, behind my granddaddy's tobacco barn, like half the boys in this part of Kentucky. My dad smoked. Everybody's dad smoked. By the time I was twenty I was at a pack a day, and by thirty it was a pack and a half. I tried to quit three times in my twenties. My record was eleven days.

Two things happened in the fall of 1998. My dad's emphysema got bad. He's 64, and he went on oxygen that October. He has to carry a tank with him to church now. He's the one who taught me to fish, and now he can't walk to the end of the dock without stopping.

Then Ashley came home from health class and taped a picture of a smoker's lungs to our refrigerator, right at my eye level, next to the milk. She didn't say a word about it. She didn't have to. It stayed up there till Thanksgiving, and every time I went for a glass of tea, there it was.

The first week of December I told Sherri, Ashley and my buddy Donnie at work: New Year's Day. Then I couldn't back out, because Ashley would never have let me live it down.

What Helped

Nobody quits the same way, and nothing here is a doctor talking. This is just what worked for me.

• A quit date, out loud. I picked it a month ahead and told everybody. Tell the people who'll give you grief if you slip.

• Seeing my doctor. I went in early in December. He prescribed Zyban, which is a pill you start a week or two before you quit, and he talked to me about the nicotine patch too. I used both, and he kept an eye on me. The Zyban gave me some dry mouth and a couple of weeks of rough sleep, and that was about it. I stepped down to smaller patches over a couple of months and was done with them by spring. Talk to your own doctor about what's right for you. That's not me being polite. I mean it.

• Laps instead of smoke breaks. At work, smoke break was the whole social life. So when the smokers went out back, I walked laps around the parking lot. Donnie walked with me the first month, and he doesn't even smoke. Four laps is about a mile. By my count I've walked a few hundred miles of parking lot this year.

• Cinnamon gum. By the case. Also toothpicks, sunflower seeds, and a cinnamon stick I'd chew on in the truck.

• Sherri's swear jar. The first few weeks I was not a nice man. Sherri put a pickle jar on the counter and every time I cussed it cost me a dollar. By the end of January it bought the three of us a steak dinner. I still think some of those were entrapment.

• Changing the routine. I used to have coffee and a cigarette on the back porch every morning. Now I have coffee at the kitchen table with the radio on. I had the truck detailed, ashtray and all, and I keep the windows cracked.

About Cravings

Here's the thing nobody believes until they try it: a craving passes. It feels like it's going to last forever and drive you crazy, but a real craving lasts a few minutes. Look at the clock when one hits. Drink a glass of ice water, walk around the house, chew something, and look at the clock again. It'll be gone.

The worst of it was the first three or four days. By two or three weeks the body part of it had mostly let go of me. What hangs on longer is the habit: after supper, in the truck, with coffee, when the Cats are on and it's a close game. Those snuck up on me for months. They still do now and then, but they're little and they don't stay.

The First Week

Friday, Jan. 1. Put the patch on before I got out of bed. Spent the day watching the Wildcats lose the Outback Bowl to Penn State. If I could get through that without a cigarette, I figured I could get through anything.

Saturday, Jan. 2. Cleaned out the truck. Found four lighters and eleven dollars in change. Chewed a whole pack of gum before noon.

Sunday, Jan. 3. Church, then a long walk. Dad shook my hand and didn't let go for a while.

Monday, Jan. 4. Back to work. Worst day of the bunch. The break room smelled like heaven. Walked six laps.

Tuesday and Wednesday. Short-tempered. The swear jar did well.

Thursday, Jan. 7. Couldn't sleep. Watched an old western and ate a bowl of cereal at 3 a.m.

Friday, Jan. 8. One week. Ashley made me a card with a trophy on it. I've got it on the visor of the truck.

The Bad Day in May

I want to put this in, because I think people expect it to just get easier and easier, and mostly it does, until it doesn't.

Saturday, May 1, Derby Day. I was supposed to be off. Instead a press went down at six in the morning and I was on the floor fourteen hours, with a supervisor standing over me asking every twenty minutes if it was fixed yet. Hot, filthy, behind, and missing the Derby. Around four o'clock one of the fellows on the line held out his pack to me, being friendly, and I took one. I want to be honest about that. I took it. I stood there with it in my hand for a long time.

Then I handed it back, walked out to the pay phone, and called Sherri. She didn't give me a speech. She just talked to me about nothing until I was all right. I went back in and got the press running at eight. A long shot named Charismatic won the Derby, and I heard about it on the radio in the truck going home, still smoke-free. I was prouder of that day than of any since January 1.

If you have a bad day, call somebody. That's the whole trick.

Milestones

All dates 1999 unless it says otherwise. I can tell you to the day because I've got a calendar on the refrigerator where the lungs used to be, and Ashley puts an X on it every night.

Get Help

• Talk to your doctor. There's more help than there used to be, between the patch, the gum and the pills, and your doctor can tell you what's safe for you.

• The American Lung Association has quit-smoking classes and booklets. Look in the phone book or ask your doctor's office.

• The American Cancer Society has help for quitters too, and every year they hold the Great American Smokeout on the third Thursday of November. This year that's Thursday, November 18. Good day to start. Better than waiting for New Year's like I did.

• Your county health department may have free classes. Ours does.

• The people around you. Tell them. Let them help. Let them put a swear jar on the counter.

And if you've quit, or you're quitting right now, put your name on the Quitters' Board. There's nothing like seeing other people's dates up there. It's like a scoreboard, and I hate to lose.