Let's get the disclaimer out of the way:

Smoking cigarettes is a filthy, disgusting, unhealthy habit, and you should never take it up, because you're playing Russian roulette when you do: You don't know, until you start--or rather, until the first time you try to quit--whether you'll be one of those people who drops it relatively easily, or one of those people who quits when they die, after their family has decided to discontinue the ventilator.

And, as I've said before--even if it doesn't kill you, it robs you of the full enjoyment of life long before then. It's the part where you're still smoking and still alive, but just barely, that people don't consider often enough.

Including me.

I bought a book on quitting recently. I can't tell you how many times I've done this--wait, yes I can. I have done it exactly once before. I bought a book titled If Only I Could Quit. It was a selection of quitting stories by ex-smokers.

Oughtta be hella motivational, right? Just imagine: All those ex-smokers.

Wrong. Turned out everyone who shared his or her quitting story began the story with a lengthy reminisce of how fun it had been back when he or she had started.

I do not know if all smokers are sentimentalists, but I know I am. Every time I'd turn the page to the next story, I'd get through maybe two paragraphs before thinking, "Man! I really want a cigarette! The way she talks about that first sweet drag--GodDAMN! I totally remember that! Let's see if I can find it again!"

These people . . . I don't think they had set out deliberately to romanticize smoking. But that was nonetheless just what they had done. Free advice: Don't describe in detail the almost sexual thrill you used to get from sneaking a pack of Kools out of Dad's carton, while you're trying to coax me to quit. Imagine a book on dieting written that way:

"I knew I couldn't afford the 786 calories in that slice of chocolate cheesecake, knew it in my bones. And yet--the rich marbleized swirls, the waiter's assurance that it had all been made in-house, with European dark chocolate, the invitingly crunchy, yet moist, graham-cracker crust . . . oh, I thought, it can't hurt to try it just this once.

"That was my downfall."

There is a damn reason diet books don't focus on helping you relive your most gluttonous moments: It is because this is not helpful to dieting in the least. So why anyone thought a book about quitting smoking should contain page after page of rapturous, glowing descriptions of the almost unbearable pleasures of lighting up, I have no idea. Maybe R.J. Reynolds actually published it, and I just never noticed. Those dirty, sneaking bastards.

I'm skeptical of this book I bought recently because I already gather from the reviews that its premise is that smoking is a habit, not an addiction, and that once you free your mind from the brainwashing of "it's an addiction," and accept that it is merely a habit, your ass will follow.

I'm not saying the author's categorically wrong about that; I'm just saying, if that's so, it is in my case one HELL of a habit. I mean, I first tried to quit when I was 19. I'd been smoking regularly for about 2-1/2 years at that point. And you know how long I made it without a cigarette, that first time out?

Nineteen hours. As many hours as I was old in years.

And the thing is, I didn't go into that quitting attempt thinking, "Oh no, oh no, I'm addicted." If anything, I went into it with the opposite attitude. I went into it with the brass balls (and naivete) of youth. I went into it thinking, "Well, I've done this for a couple years now, but shit!--I don't want to be like those old people smokers. I better quit now, while it's easy."

Ho, ho! Anyway, I got my ass handed to me. I literally shook for the better part of that day. I thought only drunks trying to lay off the sauce got the shakes. I thought a lot of things that turned out not to be true for me--among them, that cigarette smoking was just a habit that I could retrain myself out of fairly easily.

You might remember the National Quit Smoking Day slogan, something about how if you could quit for one day, you could quit forever. I'd like to stand up right now, brothers and sisters, and testify to you that the folks behind National Quit Smoking Day need to drop dead--because, honestly, did no one in the American Lung Association stop to think about the effect that slogan might have on people who couldn't go one day?

I'll tell you how I interpreted it at 19: I interpreted it as, "Wow, you're so fucked. You couldn't even quit for a day. Might as well smoke while you can."

So like I say: If it's just a habit, it is one motherfucker of a habit. We'll see if this book is helpful or not.

UPDATE: More here, including a correction to an obvious error in this post.

Posted by Ilyka at December 24, 2005 03:06 AM in navel gazing