I quit smoking two weeks ago for the 28th time since I foolishly started the “habit” back when I was 16. That was a long time ago, when we all had to smoke barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways.

I use the word habit in quotes like that, because smoking is not a habit, like chewing your nails - which, I’m sorry, is pretty much as nasty as smoking, and if you disagree with that statement all I can say is you never met this dude I used to work with, whose fingertips were these raw, scabby stubs, which he was constantly gnawing on. So, maybe my cigarettes stunk, but at least people didn’t taste their partially-digested breakfast coming back to say hello when they smelled me and the Marlboro man doing our thing. Anyway, calling it a habit makes it sound as innocuous as a little foot-tapping thing you might do while talking on the phone; as innocent as running your fingers through your hair when you feel nervous. And, it just isn’t.

Well, OK, we can call it a habit if you like, if by habit you mean a desperate physical compulsion which must be satisfied lest the smoker become a homicidal maniac.

The need for a cigarette, once you become all “habit”-riddled, is profound. Cigarette cravings are much stronger than all other bodily signals - like, say, hunger, thirst, a full bladder, and impending childbirth.

The cravings are also stronger than the desire to not die a horrible, suffocating death, which ought to tell you something. Horrible suffocating deaths are, I would guess, something we’d all like to avoid, but when the nicotine levels drop in your bloodstream, it seems like a good trade-off.

That guilt and worry is part of what provoked me to try to quit. It’s what ALWAYS provokes me to try and quit. See, I never stuck one of those damn things in my mouth and didn’t have my internal voice simultaneously say, “You’re going to die of caaaancer! You’re going to get emphysema and your lungs will burst with tumors! You’ll be sorryyyy!” I think all smokers have The Voice; the one that conjures images of your future, older self in a doctor’s office getting the inevitable news that you have lung cancer, flashing to your pangs of remorse at having never quit. Shut up, stupid, truthful voice in my head, taking all the fun out of my deadly habit.

I also recently became engaged to a non-smoker, who, from the beginning, was pretty clear that he didn’t care for my smoking (what, it’s not like I bite my nails!). The fact that he doesn’t smoke was a daily reminder for me that I DO, and that started to eat at me, too - much like the cancer that would eventually ravage my body if I didn’t quit, blah blah blah. You get the picture.

I brightly figured that if he smoked, too, I might not have to quit after all, so I tried to talk him into sharing a cigarette with me. I told him everybody does it, that it’d make him look cool; all the shit that worked on me, but he somehow wasn’t falling for it. I told him he could quit any time he liked. “Yeah, I see how true that is for you,” he smartassed. Foiled again.

I decided I’d better quit, and there’s no time like the present, right? So, after stalling for....a few months, I thought I was ready.

As smokers who have tried to quit know all too well, that motherly voice in your head that used to nag you mercilessly as you smoked, now, starved of nicotine, dons its devil horns and starts bullying and taunting you. It tells you that you can quit tomorrow, or next week, but today just isn’t a good day. It tells you that you’ll get fat. It tells you you’ll never quit, so why try. It tells you that you probably wouldn’t have gotten cancer after all, really, so forget those things I said, and let’s run to the 7-11 and put this foolishness behind us, shall we?

You cannot satisfy this voice, this Jiminy Cricket from Hell.

This voice is why I can’t even look at people who smoke when I’m trying to quit, because I know that if I quit for 20 years and I go to a bar and sit with someone who has cigarettes, that voice in my head will come alive and yawn and stretch and be all, “Huh? What the....? Now, where was I? Oh, right. Mmmm, don’t those look good? Aaaah, you know you want one! Now, why don’t you bum one? One won't matter. You know you want it. Look, she has a full pack. She won’t mind, so ask for just one and no more. Well, ok, maybe one now and one later. Or several. Or, we can get some of our own and have one now and one later, and a few more if you like, and then we can throw the rest away. I promise; we will throw the rest away. Or....maybe we can keep them, and have one every day. Like, one every morning and every evening. Yeah, one every morning, and evening, and maybe one after dinner, too. Every morning, and evening, and after dinner, and with my coffee in the morning. That's it; you can totally limit it to 10 a day. 10 a day won’t give you cancer. It really won’t. We can stop on the way home and buy a few packs and then you can have as many as you want, whenever you want them. How does that sound? You’ve been good for so long, you deserve to have one. Plus, you look so cool doing it, and you can quit whenever you like...”

It takes all of 4 seconds for VIMH to say this to me, because VIMH hates me and doesn’t want me to have a moment of freaking peace. I am surprised VIMH doesn’t go further, to the point where it is encouraging me to buy stock in Philip Morris. “Just 10 shares...yeees...10 shares of stock. You know you totally want to smoke those 10 shares of stock...”

At any rate, when you quit you really cannot be around smokers, and this is especially difficult if you work with them. Because you KNOW the smokers. You know when they go out, because they walk by you on their way outside, smiling and fondling their lighters. You know where they are going, and you KNOW what they are doing, damn them. But, you’re an exile from that little social group. No more discussing last night’s Survivor on your cigarette break. No more jokes, no more gossip about so and so. Because you’re a quitter, and you can’t go out there with them any more. You have to sit at your desk and try to think useless thoughts about clean air and healthy lungs while that voice pleads with you to chase after them, lying that you can just go stand out there with them and not smoke.

I have tried to do the quit-but-still-hang-with-the-smokers thing. It doesn’t work, because I watch them smoke, and the voice in my head goes fucking nuts, alternately begging for mercy and bitch-slapping me while calling me foul names, and I totally wind up in a daze, bumming a smoke off someone I sternly told three hours earlier to not give me any cigarettes ever again, no matter what I say or do - and they do it. They do it, because smokers know that other smokers never mean it when they say that crap about “never give me another cigarette.” They do it, because the smokers know if the wanna-be quitter comes running up with the wild hair and the dilated pupils, saying, "gimmie a cigarette," it’s because the wanna-be pretty much has GOT to have one, like, right NOW, and if the smoker said, "But, you TOLD me NEVER to give you one..." the wanna-be would shoot the smoker dead on the spot with a gun proffered magically by the voice in their head, and then the wanna-be would take their cigarettes anyway. So they smile that “knew you’d cave” smile and fork over the cigarette and life gets back to normal.

I am lucky to be the lone smoker in my building. Everywhere I have worked before now I have had a smoke buddy, but there’s no one here who smokes, which means there’s no one to do the wild-haired bumming with....which may be what saves me this time.

At least until my stock certificates arrive.

~ August 17, 2004