By
August 09, 2007 6:00 AM
I have tried to quit smoking before. How does the old joke go? I can quit anytime I want — I've done it before. The first time, I was living in San Francisco and smoking, if memory serves, a major national brand. One chock-full of ingredients and additives I wouldn't dream of giving my dog, but which I willingly dragged into my own lungs.
I quickly became acquainted with "the hole," a nearly literal black hole of sorts centered in mid-chest and serving much the same function as the black hole in the middle of our galaxy: to devour all matter, light and (in the case of not smoking) good intentions. It is hard to adequately describe the feeling to someone who has never experienced it. The word would be withdrawal, while the experience is pure longing, a cellular yearn, a willingness to disclaim idols and break promises. I smoked, of course, and did smoking one better. I became a reporter.
In those days, newsrooms (at least our newsroom) were clogged with smoke and ashtrays and scribes frantically sucking on small white stick after small white stick on each deadline day. It is stunning to remember that we smokers were in the minority, but we were allowed to stink up the newsroom anyway. Belated apologies to all my former non-smoking colleagues.
The culture at large aided my switch some years later to a "natural" cigarette, one without additives. States had begun as early as 1975 to enact smoking bans; the term "secondhand smoke" became part of the vernacular; "The Insider" movie was somehow bankrolled and distributed; Marlboro Man Wayne McLaren died of lung cancer and so did Yul Brynner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We began to become aware of what was in those things, (storax, benzyl alcohol and both gamma and delta decalactone) and, somewhat smugly, began to smoke the natural kind.
Until recently, that is, until now. I am going to quit, for good, for real, forever. There are a lot of reasons; I will write of them another day. Today, I am dreaming of saving money, of taking a deep breath without a vague constriction, of, perhaps if I'm lucky, dodging one of the handmaidens of smoking: cancer, emphysema, vascular disease, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I might even become one of those ex-smokers, a nickname fondly given to my friend Rebecca Emerson, who steadfastly screws up her face and loudly proclaims "Yeccchhhh ...;" each time I light up.
To continue smoking now would require as deft a dance with denial as I could muster, since I am painfully aware that despite the pretty packaging and earth-friendly tobacco farming, I continue to regularly inhale carbon monoxide and countless carcinogens. I implore my nieces and nephew, don't start. Just don't start. For any reason.
It is more than a little humbling to think back to when I started to smoke and remember that it made me sick. Oh gosh, no need to pretty it up, it made me vomit. I was 15, and there was a convenience store on the corner of Dennett Street and Maplewood Avenue, where the medical product supply store is now. The old gentleman who worked there cared not what you bought, and although there were laws, the "must be born before ...;" cards were not yet invented and propped near the cash register.
I can't even remember why I started. Both my mother and my father smoked, a sure predisposing factor. My best friend's mother did too. She and I would greedily buy a pack of ridiculously long 120's, slim sticks, which we dubbed with a name unprintable here, and leave the store to puff and puff and, at first, puke. Later, after our bodies had acclimated to what they had tried in vain to tell us was poison, it was easier.
After it got easier, it became pleasant. In college, smoking even conferred a sort of status on my group. I can see us crowded into a hazy dorm room, grandly smoking and debating those lofty college concepts that stun you the first time you consider them; being, nothingness and the like.
Now there is nothing easy or pleasant about it. I have to make sure I have a pack with me at all times. I have to wash stinky clothes. I have to go outside to partake. I had, before she died, to face my mother every time she was able to formulate the question, "Still smoking?" (It didn't help that she could only think to ask when I actually lit up!) I have to reconcile the fact that I work with lovely children who I could not bear to see me smoke. I have, now, do to one more thing. Quit.
Suzanne Danforth is a Portsmouth native who has smoked off and on since 1980. She is nervous about it, but intends to chronicle her attempt to quit in the Herald. She can be reached at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
