Quitting: After You've Gone - Jim Kept it Upbeat

By Suzanne Danforth

October 27, 2007 6:00 AM

Until two Saturdays ago, I had a friend who struggled like I have with nicotine. He could be counted on to have one of two things in his mouth when in public but not on stage; a piece of Nicorette gum or a cigarette. Jim Howe, jazz bassist, photographer, woodsman, uncle, father and grandfather, died Oct. 13.

If he could have, Jim would have been with me on the sidewalk the afternoon I found out he was gone, in broad daylight and full public view, smoking up a storm. He would have laughed with me at the self-reflexive absurdity of it, and joined me in my pain at coming to terms with the idea that, suddenly, someone is gone and you will never see them again.

I know Jim because he came as a package deal with Tommy Gallant, the person who loved my mother and all of us by extension. In our family, Jim was known as Tommy's other wife. Jim has held a special place in my life since Tommy's gone and since my mother is too, now.

I spent many a Sunday night at the Press Room in the late 1980s and early 1990s, eating dinner with my mom, each of us moving to the sound and catching each other's eye on a good riff.

I liked rock music too, and my mom always gave me a hard time about their playing faces; until the night I leaned in to her to point out how funny Jim's faces were when he was massaging the strings of his upright bass. Jim would not only emote the music on his face, he would vocally talk it up and down the string line of his instrument. His playing was a voice-face-bass extravaganza, always.

Then Tommy got sick and Jim, my mother and I had the privilege of seeing him out of this world in the early-morning hours of Sept. 28, 1998. After he was gone, Jim and I made our way downstairs to the deck, as Tommy's daughters arrived and before his body was taken away. We shared two cigarettes that night, and marveled at the falling star we saw, wondering if it was Tommy on his way to somewhere.

Jim was there when you needed him to be, even if it was hard for him. I don't think he "wanted" to be there as Tommy died, but my mother and I had a rough night the night before, trying to care for and keep Tommy out of pain. Jim stayed to spot us, so we could get some sleep. He called for us to come late in the night when Tommy's breathing wasn't right and before any one of us realized, the process was underway.

I know he didn't want to see my mother in the last days of her life. I understood; I suspected my mother would only vaguely sense he was there. It didn't matter to me if he came; I knew he loved her. But I nonetheless took pains to let him know he might be sorry if he missed the opportunity to see her one last time. I didn't want him to be sorry after the fact, when it was too late.

He came.

I'm the only one left who was in the room the night that Tommy died. I never did make it up to Jim's cabin when he was there to welcome me. It is situated on Howe land, in a small Maine town "whose population is catastrophically reduced when Jim leaves for a gig," according to the 2004 disc liner notes for Sterling, written by fellow jazzman Paul Verrette.

Jim fed my soul in a primal way, too. I saw the sparkle of transformation in his eye each time we met. I had weight loss surgery five years ago and lost more than the equivalent of one other me in the year following. Jim never failed to make me feel like the most beautiful person on earth, before I lost weight. After I lost weight, when beauty actually came to visit my life, there was a lovely "I told you so, Suzie" quality to his regard of me.

After my weight loss, Jim saw me through bits of lovelorn sadness in a way I am learning is typical to the jazz world. I was boo hoo'ing to him one night at the Metro, where Jim was a Friday night fixture forever. I asked him to play the tune "After You've Gone." After the break, he launched with his pianist into a lively upbeat version, completely unlike the dark sad landscape of my heart.

Of course I complained after the set; I had been expecting minor chords and a slow beat, not swing! He laughed that throaty chuckle that could explode at any moment into a big life-filled guffaw, and said, "Suzie, you have to keep it upbeat. There isn't any other way."

Jim's canine companion, Gunner, came to Jim as result of his winning a quit smoking bet he had with his son. Play on, Jim. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Time to go Cold Turkey

October 18, 2007 6:00 AM

Since I have begun writing again I have found that alliterations bring me a type of satisfaction unmatched in any other area of my life. I get a kind of joy from tweaking a sentence to within an inch of its life, but the best bang-for-my-buck payoff comes from fashioning a string of words all containing the same sound.

"Core condo cadre" is a recent favorite; "crickets calling cadence" is another. Seems the hard "C" sound figures big in my amazing alliterative allusions.

I have already fallen down on "cognitive quitting." Not enough inches here for all the details, but the good news is that I haven't given up. I am getting ready to undertake the method that the data show is the most successful. Cold turkey.

I have received inspiration from the least likely of sources; an activist street band festival I attended this weekend in Somerville, Mass., called HONK. More specifically, from two people I met there and the comments they made, separately. Although neither had to do with smoking, each has undulated through my mind since.

HONK was described by one reporter in media coverage as the kind of gathering that results when the hip kids in band grow up. It is kooky, creative and cacophonous (whoops, another hard "C" word parade). It's about personal expression through music, dancing, performance and community, a celebration of individuality. This weekend, I wore chapeaus, and tulle and glitter and boots (Google your locally famous Leftist Marching Band for further explanation).

Most days I dress in a kind of pedestrian middle class way, and live a kind of pedestrian middle class life. I work hard at my profession and try to make the personal connections necessary to exhort change in others, which, at its most reductionist, is my charge.

Before leaving for the gala, I decided I was not going to struggle with trying to quit over this weekend. I intended to let the street performer in me win out. And the street performer smokes. At least she does for now.

In my own individual quest, reader, I find myself in a double bind. On the one hand, quitting in print makes for good prose. On the other hand, quitting in print makes its own case for continuing, lest what shall I write about?

Oh, I remain black and white; curses. Where are the shades of gray?

The comments that I can't get out of my head were made by people who are current friends, former roommates and who are both percussionists in Environmental Encroachment; a terrific band hailing mostly from Chicago.

One mention had to do with language being unnecessary for actual communication; the other had to do with choices, and making them despite feelings that urge you toward the opposite.

I love rolling in language perhaps as much as my Atticus enjoys his rolls in sea gull matter on Peirce Island. Language is uber-specific but ultimately unnecessary for communication. Yep. There it is. All these words are icing on the cortical cake. There are plenty of non-linguistic examples that illustrate the point; connecting with an autistic child, communicating a world of feeling through a look, or keeping quiet when words implore to be heard.

The other comment, like the person who uttered it, was more right-brain. The right brain is the part of us that operates on feeling. This half is the seat of our ability to "read" a situation without any specific information, to make an informed decision based on gut alone.

This comment was about making choices, feeling all the feelings related to a particular situation whether happy or sad, but choosing, ultimately, to be positive.

My feelings about not-smoking run the gamut, the gauntlet even. But, in service and homage to choosing positivity, I say that I can quit. Cold turkey. No Chantix buzz, no caving in social situations, no smoking. Period.

It will likely be a terrible but necessary month.

Recently, I have spoken to two people right on my block who you would never guess used to be smokers. They embody non-smoking, are active and unwrinkled and without that gray veil smoking affords you.

Each quit cold turkey. Patty, the erudite house cleaner around the corner, has regaled me with the tales of her first non-smoking month. You want me to do what when I clean that room (raised eyebrow)?

Well, I pledge, in print and to a fairly large circulation, to quit by the day this column publishes (Oct. 18). On Halloween, I will probably choose to be a lion (my sun sign in any case) so I can roar and posture and c-c-c-complain about the unfairness of it all, but I am going to do my damn level best to quit cold turkey for just one month. I will take stock on Nov. 18 and keep you posted, reader.

Wish me the courage of my convictions.

Suzanne Danforth wants to thank Mister Petey and Carlos for just plain existing. Talk to me at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Jeffrey Carter Albrecht

By Suzanne Danforth

October 11, 2007 6:00 AM

Trying to quit has evolved into Trying to Quit Chantix. There are some early, but disturbing, bits of anecdotal information out there on the mental side effects of this drug for a small subset of people.

The indie music world lost guitarist/keyboardist Jeffrey Carter Albrecht on Sept. 3 of this year in Dallas, Texas. Carter Albrecht, best known for his work with Edie Brickell, was shot by a gun-toting neighbor when he was mistaken for a burglar. He had recently begun Chantix and in a life unmarked (as far as we can know right now) by domestic abuse, on that night he got into a physical altercation with his girlfriend, and then ran out of his house. Evidently, the pounding and noise prompted the neighbor to shoot-to-kill.

The girlfriend, Ryan Rathbone, has come out in her grief to point to Chantix as a potential variable which resulted in such foreign behavior by Carter Albrecht.

Closer to home, mental health professionals are seeing effects of Chantix in some acute situations, and quit smoking blogs are rife with odd stories of changes in internal states of being.

I have mentioned here before that the pill has visited me with some strange effects. In detail, I can tell you that my Chantix odyssey has been a burst in creativity, sleeplessness and the kind of energy that is just shy of scary.

These effects were not immediately noticeable in either the first or second trials of the drug. What was immediately apparent is that the desire to and thoughts of smoking became, well, unimportant.

Three weeks or so in, I began to eschew sleep and write with a vengeance. Once the writing was done, I was still not able to quiet my brain enough to put head to pillow and slumber. I would catch a few hours, and be ready to go again in the morning. I am sure this tendency to wake immediately and fully is partly inherited; I hold dear my sweet stepfather's description of sleepily watching my mother wake up in the morning. He was a big one for substituting noises for words. His noise for this daily visual? Doink!

Back to Chantix; the brain buzz got to be too much, and I quit it, only to pick up the weed.

Which I hated. This resulted in my experiment of modifying the dose. I halved the pill, and took it once a day. All went well, again for about three weeks, when my internal engine again ramped up. Creative juices flowed, ideas were rampant and the midnight oil was burned, most often in service to getting my thoughts down, sketching out ideas and sending out queries.

I am currently four days off the pill, but its after-effects persist. I know, because of the last time, that it should be about another five days until my being is back to its homeostasis. A boring homeostasis; predictable routine, amid long bouts of staring at a blank word document taunting me to write something, anything.

Hypergraphia is a condition in which the need and urge to write is untrammeled. My friend, neurologist Alice Flaherty, wrote an entire book about hypergraphia. It was born of her experience after losing twins postpartum and suffering a breakdown of all the mental constructs we take for granted on a day to day basis. The book is a wonderful read, peppered not only with the brain basis for writing and other high-level (read: human) functions, but with well-researched and interpreted stories about writers with whom we are all familiar: Dostoevsky, Plath and James, both William and Henry.

I am loathe, on the one hand, to give up the sheer production value that has come with this drug. On the other hand, I just want some good dreamless sleep.

The fine print on Chantix, which was fast-tracked through the FDA because of the promise it showed in clinical trials, lists as infrequent the following side effects: aggression, agitation, disorientation, dissociation, abnormal thinking and mood swings. Rare side effects are listed as euphoria, hallucination, psychotic disorder and suicidal ideation.

One wonders if Carter Albrecht's chemistry was of the kind to invite both the infrequent and rare side effects of this new compound. A compound born in a laboratory, new but targeted at specific receptors. Problem is, we humans are enough divine that chemistry, with its lockstep logic, falls short of predictable; a predictability that may only become apparent when applied to the population at large. We are all part of clinical trials these days.

It is far from hard science, but personal experience with a change in internal state because of a drug leads me to mourn this musician, Jeffrey Carter Albrecht, in a personal way, as a casualty of the desire to try to quit.

Google Carter Albrecht on myspace to hear his music. It's good stuff. I remain suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Other People's Gardens

By Suzanne Danforth

October 04, 2007 6:00 AM

My best friend in all the world would snort if she knew I am trying to care for a neighbor's garden. When we lived together after college, she would return home from time away to find that I had not, as promised, watered the plants. Or even looked at them.

I don't know my neighbor; she lives along the route of my twice daily walk with Atticus. There is a tiny patch of garden on the side of her house that produces breathtaking amounts of tomatoes and basil. Last summer, I watched as the tomatoes grew, ripened, withered and finally rotted off their branches.

This summer, as they came into being, I began to pick the fruits as they turned red and leave them on her front stoop. Ten or so luscious plums, handfuls of good old-fashioned staking tomatoes, nearly by the day. (I did let the neighbor across the street know what I was up to, lest peace officers were called in on the case of the neighborhood gardener).

Today, there was a bucket on the step. I filled it up. I returned later in the morning to weed. I have never weeded in my life, but walking by as often as we do has afforded me a slow-motion film of the life cycle of a garden. And this garden was in need of cleaning out.

My garden also needs cleaning out, a revisit to the reasons why I tried to quit smoking in the first place. I truly thought I was going to be able to quit, but I have discovered that I have not tended my own garden well enough and the weeds are back.

I suspect we all have weeds that return again and again into our lives. Difference is, most people's weeds don't stink up the building. Humans can over-eat in silence, berate each other quietly, or watch TV alone while their partner sleeps. But if your fall down is smoking, there is no way to hide it, especially when the non-smokers have you surrounded. Smoking used to be something I did full time. Since trying to quit, it has become a kind of window into my well being, a personal barometer, even a bellwether.

I have been, as you know, struggling with the Chantix. Its side effects are noxious, including the most subtle one, which has to do with how I am inside of myself (see Alice Flaherty's "The Midnight Disease"). Although it continues to tamp the need and desire to smoke, as well as to squelch obsessive thoughts about smoking, it changes me in a way I am not willing to tolerate.

Enter a new action plan; cognitive quitting. Some weeks ago I received an e-mail from an anti-tobacco coach in Toronto. He evidently has read me from the beginning, but waited to write me until he began to see some chips in my veneer. I guess you too, reader, can probably tell that my once hopeful descriptions of being smoke free are no longer enough to keep me from actually not smoking.

Most smokers do very well in the early heady days of trying to quit. Most smokers in the long run, however, remain smokers, through obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, circulatory problems and of course the stink. Hey kids, another reason never to begin.

But some smokers do quit. I really, really, really want to be one of those people. I need to be one of those people, if the quality of my life is going to remain as it is, with two working arms and two working legs and the ability to get out of bed by myself and ambulate comfortably. There is no denying I am getting older (even weeding a garden can result in aches and pains) and I don't want to add to the inherent challenges of aging by continuing to drag smoke into my body.

So, my intention this week is to reset the barometer and take the cognitive quitting gentleman up on his offer to coach me through my trying-to-quit journey.

As for my neighbor's garden, turns out she is a they. I received a gift of fresh tomato and basil confit on my own stoop tonight. I am more than a little surprised that I have taken on this patch of earth to nurture and am pleased with its yield.

As for smoking as bellwether, wether is Middle English for castrated ram. Long-ago farmers used to tie a bell on the neck of these woolly castrati so they could successfully lead the sheep to pasture. Since it must be close to shearing time, I am happy that my neighbors grow tomatoes.

Suzanne Danforth knows she hasn't returned Donna's call. She will soon, or you can e-mail her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.