11-26-01, Voice in the Crowd, 560 words
Voice in the Crowd
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
Nicotine Worse Than Heroin
One of the rock superstars said he had been on
alcohol, cocaine and heroin. It was
easier to get off them than it was nicotine.
He fought to quit smoking harder than anything else.
I can believe it. After five months without a cigarette, I face moments of compulsion where the urge to find and light up one is almost overwhelming. The urge doesn’t come at any particular time, giving me some warning to prepare. I might be working at the computer or driving or watching TV. From nowhere, that intense desire to pick up a paper cylinder of tightly packed, aromatic tobacco strikes like a thunderbolt.
Sometimes I dream of smoking. Seems I have fired up a cigarette instinctively without realizing it. There is no burning or coughing to it. And I rationalize that since I’ve already smoked one there’s no problem with lighting up another one. In this recurring dream, I have eliminated the problems of smoking. But they’re there, as much as I want one at times.
Only the knowledge of how I suffered with the addiction
prevents me. Only the memory of
being unable to walk up stairs without pausing and gasping for breath helps push
the desire from my mind. And I
vividly recall that Sunday when I coughed, felt as if I were dying and
couldn’t get my breath. I put
them down and haven’t picked up one since.
It wasn’t easy after 52 years of smoking, and having as my brand of
choice unfiltered Pall Malls. I’m
still coughing up the residue and someone encouraged me by telling me it might
take only a year to get my lungs clearer.
I’m not ready to run the Boston Marathon.
I’m not even ready to arm wrestle a first grader.
But I do feel better, can breathe easier and have put on 20 needed
pounds. The cigarettes had killed my sense of smell and taste buds.
Now I can smell things, sometime things I don’t want to smell.
And food has taste to it again. I
still have congestion in my lungs and doctors say I will be coughing up the
leftover effects of smoking for some time to come.
People still smoke around me and that’s no problem.
No one else made me start smoking. No
one else made me quit smoking. In
fact, those well meaning souls who preached to me about quitting made it harder
for me to put them down. It was
only my own self admission that I couldn’t handle the nicotine any more that
made me do it.
Now the wife of Jim Brady is facing lung cancer—with a
cigarette in her mouth. She says
she can’t quit. I couldn’t
either, but I did. Anyone who knows
me would have bet I could never quit. I
would have too. It’s that
determination that comes from within us that will do it.
A friend tried acupuncture to quit smoking.
He went through several $80 sessions.
At one he had had a few drinks before the treatment and the therapist put
in a few extra pins for alcoholism. He
still smokes and still drinks. No
patches, no pins, no therapist can cause a person to quit smoking.
It is the individual's will that can do it.
And each of us is different. Each
nicotine addict will find a way to quit—when he or she is ready. Not one minute before.
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