■ 09 March 2011 | 8:39 PM
I started smoking at an unusual time in my life-I was being treated for Cancer at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland at the age of 15. Sitting around letting Doctors poison your body with all manner of cancer-fighting drugs was bad enough, but the boredom or waiting for your body to get better leads to making some decisions that aren’t in your best interest.
My father sold cigarettes at his gas station and I had a pack stuffed away in the back of a drawer and would spend my time in the men’s room smoking a Marlboro red. Until one day my Aunt Millie made some flippant comment about “Jimmy running to the bathroom to smoke” let me know that my “secret” wasn’t so secret after all and the small card I found tucked in the cellophane of the pack one day confirmed it, “Jim, haven’t you had enough problems without these? Mom” The next person in the precession was my father that asked me, “Are you smoking?” and I figured since Aunt Millie knew, mom obviously knew and now here was “the dad” asking me, what’s the point of lying? I told him that it was true and he said, “Well, I’m real disappointed, I wish you’d quit but I can’t make you.”
That began my career (I guess you’d call it that) as a “legal” smoker and Marlboro has been “my” brand most of my life.
Some of you might not believe me when I tell you that there once was a time when not only could you smoke in public, but you could smoke in planes, trains, taxicabs, even in hospitals! Sure, they had us smokers confined to the back of the plane, but we’re still waiting on our “Rosa Parks” to stand up and say “no more-I’ve gone as far as I’m going to let you push me.” Through the 80’s, I began to see more “NO SMOKING” signs pop up, smoking was pushed back and then entirely off of airliners then the ban started in restaurants, hotels and even in the workplace.
I’ve sworn that I’d quit smoking when cigarettes hit $1.00 a pack, $1.50 a pack, $2.00 a pack, $3.00 a pack but have in recent years out of sheer desperation paid New Jersey, “The garbage state” $6.00 for a pack of smokes. They didn’t do a thing to urge my need to smoke but certainly showed me an opportunity to exploit a black market for cigarettes. I could buy a carton of Marlboros in Virginia for $22.00, have them in New Jersey that afternoon and sold for twice that much. Let’s just say that my grandfather ran booze during prohibition for a very famous American family whose name rhymes with “Mennity” to make it through the depression-and his family never went without because he was willing to take a chance that he knew the local waterways in Cape Cod better than any Federal agent.
They never caught gramps.
I get a kick out of Rush Limbaugh and other pro-business types who say “There’s no evidence that second-hand smoke is dangerous or addictive” and that makes a lot of sense, I don’t know anyone who is addicted to second-hand smoke, but I can’t help but wonder what this brown stuff is on my computer monitor. I know that it’s nicotine, from either a burning cigarette nearby or, blown directly from my own lungs and sticking to everything. Although I have no factual evidence to tell you that it’s harmful or addictive, you don’t have to be a complete idiot not to know it can’t be good for you.
I also get quite a laugh out of these vitriolic non-smokers who lash out at smokers every opportunity they have. My God, you’d think a smoker just beat a kitten to death with a puppy to hear them tell it and the truth of the matter is, I think they just enjoy having someone who engages in a still-legal habit that they can attack, humiliate and otherwise feel superior to. They rarely deal in those pesky things called facts, but they do spew a lot of venom about how harmful second-hand smoke is to them and how they hate smelling it, hate having it on their clothes, in their car, their home, on and on and on. At the end of the day, they don’t really give any thought to what cigarettes might be doing to you, the smoker, they’re only interested in themselves and this priority seems to rule their sorry little lives. Sure, it’s an annoyance, but how much you suffer from it is directly proportional to how much you whine about it, so please, save your breath so you can hold it when you go by us smokers outside the bar.
Another thing to point out is, I dare say that as a smoker, I have just a small taste of the kind of discrimination that minorities must have felt at one point in our nations history. I’ve been excluded from just about everywhere and looked at with everything from mild contempt to downright disgust when I’m outside, in the elements trying to enjoy a cigarette break. I’m starting to wonder if smokers will ever be afforded the appreciation that comes with someone who is paying a lot in taxes to enjoy a legal product, you’d think that someone might stop to thank me for spending the money on cigarette taxes that pay for things like State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to provide health insurance for underprivlidged children that I had no part in making, but instead I’m slapped with more taxes, more scorn and I’m stuck with an addiction that is pretty hard to break.
It IS an addiction.
For those of you who have never smoked, let me try to give you an idea of what it’s like to be addicted to nicotine;
Imagine that you’re holding your hand over your nose and mouth so you can’t breathe. As the minutes begin to feel like hours, imagine that the most annoying person you know is right up in your face blathering on at the top of their lungs about how you need to do this, you need to do that, smoking is bad for you, you’ll die sooner, you’re going to get cancer, blah, blah, blah.
This is what it feels like when your brain is telling you that you need a cigarette.
Now imagine the same scenario where you’re suffocating and being yelled at and all of a sudden, the hand comes off your nose/mouth and you find it clamped across the windpipe of the person annoying you, shutting them up.
That’s the feeling you get when you finally are able to light that cigarette and draw the smoke into your lungs-not healthy, but certainly therapeutic. According to the American Heart Association, Nicotine is a powerful drug and it’s a very hard addiction to break.
I certainly wish I was on the receiving end of the sympathy that’s afforded to those addicted to heroin, cocaine or alcohol. But alas, I’m a cigarette smoker and these days, hating me is not only PC, it’s downright cool and some would even say it’s not just tolerated, it’s encouraged.
Now, I know and have known for years that smoking wasn’t good for me, but as the years pass and age becomes a consideration it is nearly impossible to ignore the deleterious effects that I know smoking cigarettes has had-I don’t need a scientific study to know what’s happening to me. I’m shorter of breath, I cough like a son of a gun when I exert myself and its getting harder and harder to take in a “full” lung of air all of the time. But I think that part of my resistance to finally quitting was more a matter of pride-I didn’t want to take a chance of becoming anything like these cry-baby non-smokers who in the attempt to show you the error of your ways, end up showing their backside. I have nothing but contempt for these people.
I am also concerne about the “Stevie Ray Vaughn” effect doing something positive for you seems to have. For those of you who might not remember, Stevie Ray Vaughn was a musician who decided to get his act together, quit the booze, the drugs and all of the other demons that held him back-then a helicopter in which he was riding flew into the side of a hill. There is also The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, he too started putting the bad stuff down and the next thing you know, he’s dead, too.
It worried me to know that as soon as these guys started trying to do what was best for their health, they died almost immediately. Wouldn’t it be a crying shame to finally kick the habit and a year later, you’re diagnosed with cancer. You put yourself through a hell-on-earth to finally kick the habit only to die anyway.
Free to smoke, taxed to death.
Currently, the state of Virginia isn’t too bad about cigarette taxes, but occasionally I will travel “over the line” to North Carolina to commit an act of tax evasion. I can buy two cartons down there for $76.00 versus $96.00 in Virginia. Sorry, I love my native state but I’m not going to cough up (pardon the pun) an extra $20.00 for the privilege of buying cigarettes in Virginia or, Virginia Beach. I personally don’t care what the taxes are slated for or, which social ill our lawmakers have decided to solve at my expense. If I can get away with buying cigarettes cheaper by driving a few extra miles, I’ll do it. All I can tell any revenue agent is “catch me if you can.” My attitude is you can have part of something or, all of nothing. If you want me to pay a reasonable tax on a still-legal product, I’m cool with that. But if you want to start balancing the entire state budget on my back or expect me to pay more because someone produced a child they can’t afford the expense of raising you’ll just have to look somewhere else for a cash cow.
Here’s a novel idea-why not hold PARENTS responsible for the welfare and provisions of their own children?
A matter of economics.
I pointed this out to Miss Scarlett the last time I returned home from North Carolina-I had saved $20.00 on our weekly purchase of cigarettes. Whoopee! That’s when the numbers finally “clicked”-we have faithfully been spending nearly $100.00 per week between the both of us on just cigarettes. That’s $400.00 a month (half a house payment), $1200.00 per quarter (a new computer for Miss Scarlett) or, $4,800.00 per year which is a NICE vacation to Jamaica. With as much trouble as the “Hope and Change” economy has been giving Miss Scarlett and I it’s hard to rationalize parting with nearly $5000.00 per year on tobacco-a product that literally goes “up in smoke.” There are so many other things I could do with that money instead of handing it over to Phillip-Morris and their partners, the Federal, State and Local governments under which we live.
The Willingness to Try
Both Miss Scarlett and I knew it would be pointless for either of us to try and quit if the other didn’t try also. Trying to kick the habit with your spouse not four feet from you puffing away is an exercise in futility. There is nicotine in second-hand smoke and there is the smell that is quite attractive to someone trying to quit, so if Scarlett was sitting there smoking, there wasn’t any way possible to be successful. The reverse was true for her, too. We both like to smoke, we’ve been doing it all of our adult lives and we both knew that without the help of the other, this would be just another attempt.
Our Journey Begins Here
So Miss Scarlett and I will be relating our experiences about our attempt to quit smoking here. I just can’t imagine what this will include: Will we be writing about how much better we feel, how much better food tastes or, will we be talking about how appealing the thought of choking each other as the nicotine withdrawal hits us. It’s also going to be tough to get through the day without taking our regular “smoke” breaks or stopping ourselves from reaching for a pack of smokes after a meal, while we’re working on the computer or, writing this blog.
So wish us luck, it’s going to be a tough, uphill assault on a habit that anyone who has ever done it knows is a hard habit to break-but we’re going to try.
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