Be A Quitter

The last cigarette I smoked was on August 26, 2003.

It might be a bit surprising to learn that someone who endorses healthy living once smoked.  I look back and wonder why I ever did.  More absurdly, I didn't have my first cigarette until my senior year in college.  What kind of idiot does that?!  This one.

I never considered myself a full-time smoker.  I was more the annoying guy bumming butts from people at bars, when you were still allowed to smoke inside.  I don't ever recall feeling like I "needed" a cigarette.  My habit was more a byproduct of the people I was hanging out with and the atmosphere.  Therefore, I never really thought that I had an addiction to smoking.

Years passed like this.  Finally, on one of the last days of a great 10 day hiking trip in the Pacific Northwest, I woke up feeling like crap, dove into the ice cold lake, and swore off them.  That was that.

I consider myself lucky.  I realize how challenging quitting can be for most smokers.  If it was so easy, the tobacco industry in the U.S. wouldn't haul in $45 billion annually.

Writing a blog about the dangers of cigarette smoking is like writing to tell you that the sky is blue and that water is wet.  I understand that.  But a current patient of mine has me thinking about the issue.

Harriet is a very sweet 74 year-old woman who started smoking when she was 14 years-old.  She's suffering from (among other things) peripheral artery disease, which is an atherosclerotic condition of the blood vessels.  This disease causes extreme pain in her legs whenever she walks more than a short city block or two.  She then has to rest for a couple of minutes to allow the pain to dissipate, then repeat the process until she gets to her destination.  It's made her dread leaving her apartment just to do the basics in life.  Whenever she's in the clinic on a table, she has to be elevated or she cannot breathe well.  The crackling of her lungs earned from a lifetime of smoking makes simple respiration an exercise in and of itself.

Sadly, smoking is just about the only thing in Harriet's life that makes her happy.  I know she won't quit now, and I'm not asking her to do so.

I give a pass to folks from Harriet's generation.  She grew up in a age well before Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a report in 1964 highlighting the deleterious effects of smoking.  But young people who continue to smoke do so at their own peril, by conscious choice.

Several years ago, while working at the Department of Education, the therapists were holding a health in-service for the rest of the staff .  Somebody asked a fairly straight forward question:  "If people know that smoking is so bad for them, then why do they continue to do it?'

I responded, "If I told you that the next smoke break you take today will leave you dead by the end of the week, would you still go smoke that cigarette?"

Life isn't meant to be lived in a sterile bubble without risk, pleasure or fun.  It's meant to be enjoyed.  But I don't want to see the young smokers of today one day suffering the way Harriet suffers.  She would be the first one to tell you that it's just not worth it.  And if you have kids and still smoke, remember that they'll be the last ones who will want to see you suffer.

It's never too late to kick the habit.  You're worth it.