A Smoker Quits . . . Again

This is about the downsides of suddenly not smoking after eight years of enslavement: Trying to ignore my lungs chanting “Feed me!!!� all day, like the carnivorous plant in “Little Shop of Horrors.� Trying to open the insidious little Nicorette packages by hand until I finally give up and resort to garden shears. Shouting at my middle-school musical cast at Indian Mountain, instead of directing them. Shouting at my cat, instead of petting her. Shouting at the hot-water tap for not getting hot fast enough. Having the attention span of a fruit fly. Eating peanut-butter cups like they werecandy. Having to talk on the phone without cigarettes. Having to drink without cigarettes. Having to write without cigarettes.

   Of course there are the upsides of giving them up: Saving $15.82 a day. Not having to lean over the gas burner when I can’t find the matches, and singeing my hair lighting the cigarette. Not having ashes fall into the keyboard anymore. Not having to empty the ashtrays into the wastebasket and having a cloud of smoky dust erupt like Vesuvius into my face. Not having to flick ashes into the car ashtray in the dark and knocking the burning tip to the car floor and frantically trying to stomp it out as I face an oncoming truck on the tricky S-curve bend on Route 44.  Not having my clothes smell like they were salvaged from a fire anymore. Being able to run on the Hotchkiss track. Being able to run up the stairs. Being able to taste the subtlety of sautéed kale.  

   But the real upside: re-discovering what I knew all along — that I have will power. That the addiction is all in my brain.

   Of course, as you read this, Iam only on Day Nine. If I’m lucky, therewill be a Day Ten, but quitting cigarettes last week was worth its weight in pain if only because of the psychological high, a bliss all its own. The self-esteem quotient is skyrocketing.

   I know about the power of the brain when it comes to cigarette addiction.

   Flash back 30 years ago, to when I visited a doctor on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I was in my late 20s, and just about every known substance had visited my bloodstream in the previous few years. I was smoking three packs a day. I was a mess. So after the exam, this famous doctor (who happened to be Claus von Bulow’s personal physician, which gave him some weird cred) walked into the examining room, looked at his clipboard, and said, “You know you have a heart murmur, right?â€�

 â€œSure,â€� I said, the cool, surly rebel. “Had it since birth.â€�

   “Well,â€� said the man in the white coat. “If you keep smoking I give you about 10 years. Settle up with the receptionist on your way out.â€�Then he left the room, and I walked out onto East 72nd Street and launched my pack of Newports into a trash can.

   It was 23 years before I had another cigarette. That’s how I know it’s all in your head. All we need is motivation.

   OK. So, you are asking, why did I start again? After a quarter century of running 5 miles three times a week? And shaking my head at the poor fools buying their discount Mustang Lights at the Cumby in Millerton?

   Simple.

   I signed a book contract for more money than I could imagine (just a Christmas bonus for a bond broker, maybe, but a whole lot to a struggling writer). And the pressure of having to deliver a work of literature commensurate with that bloated paycheck began to freak me out.

   I needed to relax.

   More alcohol was out of the question. When you get to the third glass of wine, the sentences begin to unravel.

   Weed? Hadn’t touched the stuff in a decade. Who needs cotton candy in the brain, anyway? 

   But wait.Cigarettes! It will be fine. I started up. I quit ’em once, I’ll quit ‘em again!

   Later.

   So finished the book. Kept smoking. Finished the next book. Kept smoking. Finished the next book, which came out just last month. Kept smoking. And then, in October, decided that I’d done enough coughing and wheezing for a while. It was time. 

   So I laid out a plan. I found a friend who wanted to quit, too. True, she was only smoking two cigarettes a day, and I was smoking two packs. But still, there’s safety in numbers.

   Then I looked at the calendar.

   We had dinner parties on three consecutive Saturdays, ending Nov. 13, which meant alcohol and conviviality, which meant smoking.

  And the Giants had a huge game against the Cowboys on the 14th: No way to get through a Giants game without cigarettes.

   And so, on the morning of the 15th, I awoke, and took a breath, and coughed, as usual. On the morning of the 16th, I didn’t cough. On the morning of the 17th, I said to myself, “Well done.â€� On the morning of the 18th, I woke up thinking, â€�I did it! Three days! So when can I start again?â€�

   This other voice in my head said, “Ummnever.â€�

   Which is how I got to Day Nine, and counting.

   Phone calls are tough.

   Writing is tougher.

   But damn, does this feel good.

    Peter Richmond dropped out of ITT Technical School for Auto Mechanics in 1974 when he realized his only marketable craft was writing. He lives with his wife, Melissa Davis, three chickens and a cat in Millerton, where he writes books about anything that publishers will pay him for.