Confessions Of A Former Smoker

I’m 44, I grew up in Manhattan, and I started smoking cigarettes in 1989 when I was 15 years old. I was born and raised on the largely Jewish and upper middle-class Upper West Side of Manhattan. I attended private school for grade school, first a Jewish school and then the elite Calhoun School.

But when the time for high school came, my parents recognized I was talented and they wanted me to apply to the elite specialized public high schools in New York. So I took the test and was accepted into Stuyvesant High School, the top public high school in New York City.

My first year at Stuyvesant I partied a lot and didn’t take my studies too seriously. But when my sophomore year rolled around, I straightened out and starting studying hard.

I also started smoking.

Joe Camel was the big, popular smoking campaign on TV and on billboards around the city. So many students at Stuyvesant smoked that it just seemed natural to start. I had had a few cigarettes here and there over the years, and I had never really liked them.

But now here I was, at age 15, a high school sophomore with wet, milky and porous lungs, inhaling half a pack a day of nicotine, tar, and other assorted toxic chemicals.

The Joe Camel ads were an ingenious campaign by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that portrayed a camel-like figure dressed in a suit who would frequent pool halls and other hip spots and remind everyone how cool Camel Cigarettes were.

My cigarette of choice was Camel Lights, because somehow the tobacco industry had convinced the public that “light” cigarettes were healthier than full strength, like a diet coke or something.

I graduated high school and moved on to Oberlin College in Ohio, and the cigarettes came with me. By now I was up to a pack a day. I still played pick up basketball and lifted weights, but there is no question that the cigarettes were starting to sap my wind. I could feel my lungs physically burning when I exerted myself too much.

After college I went on to graduate school at Columbia University, and the cigarettes followed me there too. By now I was up to about a pack and a half a day, and my girlfriend at the time was constantly on the verge of breaking up with me over what had now become my “filthy” habit.

And the truth is, it was. Smoking is one of the nastiest things a human being can do to themselves in the name of leisure and pleasure. You’re literally better off mainlining heroin. Because with every toke, every puff, every inhale, you’re moving one step closer to dying of lung cancer.

There’s a great line from the song “Time” by Pink Floyd in which Roger Waters sings:

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Bang! That’s the exact freaking point. With every cigarette you smoke, you’re shorter of breath and truly one day closer to death.

I don’t want to paint a one-sided portrait though. Because here’s the thing. I absolutely loved smoking. I liked the ritual, I liked the buzz from the nicotine, I liked the taste, I liked the feel, I liked everything about it.

Here’s what’s really interesting, to give you some inside psychology into the mind of a smoker.  When you’re a smoker, every transition from one state to another is cause to a have a cigarette. Just finished a meal? Have a cigarette. Having coffee? Must combine with a cigarette. Just got out of the car on your way to shopping? Have a cigarette? Just got back into the car after shopping? Have a cigarette. Just got out of work and are walking home? Have a cigarette? Just left home on your way to work? Have a cigarette. Just made love? Obviously have a cigarette. Just woke up? Have your first cigarette of the day, to ease into the morning. Going to bed? Have a cigarette, to ease into sleep.

There is literally a reason to have a cigarette for every single minor change in what one does throughout the day, and smokers take full advantage of these transitions to indulge. It’s like a dependency, a crutch. It’s as if smokers can’t move throughout their day and throughout the external world without that nicotine buzz taking the edge off of the potential minor anxiety or discomfort that accompanies life’s routine changes throughout the day. I should know. I was the same way.

By 2014, I was 39 years old, and I was smoking two full packs per day. I was short of breath all the time, I was out of shape, and I was spending $25 per day in New York City on cigarettes I couldn’t afford.

And then in April of that year, something clicked. I was home one day watching Japanese music videos, because I lived in Japan years ago and I like Japanese music, and I suddenly started feeling kind of strange. Happy, actually, would be a better word. I felt strangely happy, which was unusual, given that I was struggling in my writing career.

By around 2:30pm in the afternoon I had had only three cigarettes, which was way below my normal intake. I then took a long walk to Astoria Park in my neighborhood in Astoria, Queens, and I only had half a cigarette.

I felt great, like I was floating on air. I came back home around 5pm, and I told myself, since you’re feeling so happy and energized, why not do something really positive and lasting for yourself?

So I had another half-cigarette, stubbed it out in the cheap black plastic ashtray in my bedroom, and I never had another cigarette again. I just quit cold turkey. I had tried the patch and the gum, and those had never worked for me.

So I just quit. Boom! No more cigarettes. For the first day or two after quitting I felt a little weird, but I can honestly say it wasn’t that big an adjustment. I didn’t go through withdrawal or have the shakes or anything like that. I just quit. Period. I made the decision to end this noxious practice that had held me down and destroyed my health for 25 years, and that was it. I was done.

I’m not saying that my experience is replicable, or that other smokers can quit the way I did. And I’m certainly not trying to preach the gospel about the evils of smoking, or to convince others to quit. Then again, I would love it if every smoker who read this essay did in fact quit.

But that’s not the point. The point is to shed light on my experience, and to let other smokers know that it is possible to quit, and that life after smoking is just fine. It really is.

I want smokers to know that if I can quit, you can too. That’s really all I’m trying to say.

Because the worst fraud the evil tobacco industry ever perpetrated on Americans was to convince us that smoking is cool. Really? Like, is lung cancer cool too? Is dying at 57 cool? We all know the answer to those questions.

So here’s hoping more people find the light and are able to find the inner strength to quit that I found. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Just do it.

Quit.