Now, here's the thing ...

Smoke-smoke-smoke that cigarette …
Smoke-smoke-smoke it ‘till you smoke yourself to death.
Tell St. Peter at the Pearly Gate
That you hate to make him wait,
But you’ve just gotta have another cigarette.

They say that nicotine addiction is more ferocious than heroin, and I suspect there is truth to that. As an addictions counsellor I know a lot of people who have quit the booze, and even cocaine and heroin, but still cannot or will not give up tobacco.

I confess – mea culpa – I still smoke. Not much; about 10 a day, which is dramatically down from what I used to smoke, but it’s still 10 too many. I lead a healthy life. I don’t drink, I eat very sensibly, I walk whenever I can and when Wendy and I go on vacation, hiking is very much part of our pattern, as is swimming – but I still smoke a bit. It's silly, really. I mean, why do I smoke a bit when I should smoke not at all?

I am about to embark (yet again) on a regime of quitting the weed. This time I genuinely want to succeed without a ‘maybe’ about it. My health scare last week hit this home with me. I love my life and I want to hang around for a long time. Smoking isn’t conducive to that longevity. Oh, I know there are exceptions and I’ve personally known people in their 90s who have been puffing away all their lives – but they are exceptions.

Added to which, why do I want to shore up the coffers of morally-bankrupt ‘big tobacco’? Why too do I want to shore up the coffers of governments via their huge tax bite, but paucity of balls to actually ban the stuff. Of course they won’t; they don’t want to give up the cash cow.

I come from a family of smokers. My father was a heavy smoker when I was a kid (though he ultimately quit), my siblings are smokers, my aunts and uncles were smokers, my grandfather was a smoker. Damn it, I grew up with it. To smoke was a mark of pending adulthood. And, smoking was ‘cool’. It was ‘way cool.’

And, the elders smoked in the house, and they smoked in the car, and it stuns me to think that when I began smoking, people smoked in grocery stores, department stores, even clothing stores. Nobody thought anything about it. It was a cheap, guilty-pleasure with cigarettes at about 35-cents for 20. Wow.

My celluloid heroes smoked. Bogey smoked, Mitchum smoked, John Wayne smoked, James Dean smoked, and so on and so on. I wanted to be like them.

Though, I actually first took stock of the effects of tobacco with the death of Bogey (at 56) and the lung cancer of Wayne. Hmm, that’s not so good.

But, I continued, largely heedless. My early newspaper days were the worst. Everybody smoked. The newsroom was perpetually in a haze of blue fumes. We smoked as we wrote, we lit up when we answered the phone, we lit up when we made a call. We just smoked and smoked and nobody thought anything about it.

I liked smoking. Liked it a lot. It was a time-out from the rigors of life. A pause that refreshed even more than Coca-Cola. Smoking was fun. Smoking was nearly my hobby. Even today, if I hated smoking, if I had chronic bronchitis, or even a smoker’s cough, it would make it easier, but I have none of the above. But, I do have a health issue, so I must bite the bullet; I know I must.

Even then, as years went by I altered my behavior, and some of my alterations came about because of public health decrees. They banned smoking in restaurants, which initially irked me, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I was astonished when we went to the Cook Islands a few years ago and found that eatery smoking was still acceptable there.

They banned smoking in the workplace. Again I chafed, but I also found I cut down considerably in my smoking, and that was a good thing. They banned smoking on airplanes. Initially it made me uneasy, but now I’ve made 10-hour flights to and from Europe and haven’t even noticed.

Then I married two women, neither of whom would allow smoking in the house. I acceded to their concerns, and ceased smoking in the house. That made a body cut way back. I do smoke in the garage in inclement weather, but never inside the house proper.

I’ve made forays into quitting before, and have for brief periods of time. Now I have a stronger motivation – my health. Wish me luck, and any suggestions would be appreciated.