The Power of Gentle Spite
How having friends successfully quit smoking helped me become smoke free.
Spite is how I quit smoking. Gentle spite; spite nonetheless.
I started smoking in 1990 when I was 17. One Friday night, my best friend Amos and I bought a pack of Marlboro reds and a lighter at The Sack ‘n $ave that was located in the Shops At Central Park in scenic Bedford, Texas.
RIP, Sack ‘n $ave
We went to the Chili’s in the same strip mall and sat in the smoking section, puffing (literally, we didn’t inhale yet) away on our smokes, before, during, and after our chips and salsa and dinners. We probably had cheeseburgers or fajitas—I would be hard pressed to name any other meals that Chili’s offered in the early 90s, their baby back rib reign of terror would not come for several more years.
I started inhaling a few weeks later, and then I was hooked. I went from a pack of cigarettes lasting about a week to smoking at least pack a day within the year. I was smoking up to two and a half packs a day at my highest point, and settled right in around a pack a day to a pack and a half when I moved to Chicago and had the massive sticker shock of buying cigarettes that cost almost twice what they did in Texas.
I finally quit for good in 2013, a few months after I turned forty. That’s almost 23 years of an expensive, nasty, deleterious habit that has undoubtedly shortened my life. But I didn’t just blissfully puff away ignoring all of the problems associated with my addiction. I was never in denial that it was bad for me. Far from it.
It’s really confusing, maybe a doctor could weigh in.
The ten years or so where I smoked Camel brands kept my “T-Zone” in good order. Thank god for that.
From the first puff to the last time I crushed one out on October 27, 2013, I was constantly trying to quit, with varying lengths of success. I could not possibly count all of the attempts that lasted only a day or two. Probably one hundred attempts that lasted three to five days, fifty or so that lasted a week or two, and a good dozen that lasted for a month or so. In 2001, I went six months smoke free on willpower alone. In 2009, I quit for almost a year by using the nicotine patch. I know that there are other multiple-month periods where I went smoke free, but these are the ones that taught me how slippery the slope back to cigarette addiction really is. Both of those times (and many of the shorter periods) I thought that I was surely finished with smoking—that I would never touch another one of the filthy things. But a girlfriend would break up with me, or a loved one would take ill or die, or I would lose a job/get a new job, be depressed, be manic, in a mixed state etc., and I would be at a party, a bar, the dumpsters behind work, or waiting on a bus, and I would bum “just one” cigarette, and next thing you know, I bum another one, and another. Soon I’m buying a pack and I’m a smoker again. Months of health benefits and the money savings go up in so much smoke. Literally.
Here I am near the dumpsters behind my old bookstore. 2012ish. At least smoking was maintaining my trim figure.
If only I had smoked Lucky Strike, I could have been a champion hurdler.
I would be a smoker again, and just like that I would smell bad, I’d hack and cough, I would get strange headaches behind my eyes, weird raw patches in the back of my throat (I now know that my “T-Zone” was annoyed at me for switching from Camels), asthma flare-ups, decreased lung capacity, and many other smaller vexations.
One of the worst parts of my cigarette addiction was always being anxious that I had enough cigarettes to get through the day. I would count them obsessively. My day was always like a word problem from sixth grade math:
“Jeremy overslept and didn’t have time to buy more smokes before work. He only has three cigarettes on him. Jeremy can buy a pack at Jewel on lunch—if he moves ten bucks from savings to checking on his phone and skips lunch, but he has four hours until then. How many cigarettes can he smoke while emptying the recycling bins out back and not have to bum a roll-your-own from Eddie or resorting to re-lighting? He will empty the recycling bins four times before lunch. How many of Jeremy’s recycling trips can also be smoke breaks? Show your work.”
I must have made at least 2,000 recycling or garbage trips in the eleven years I was a bookseller. On one of those days in mid-to-late October 2013, I realized that I was out of smokes, and I went to bum one off of my friend Jeff C. (he was one of three Jeffs that I worked with). He did not have any on him. In fact, he said that he does not smoke any longer. I asked him how long it had been, and he said about three weeks or so, and for once it’s not making him pissed off from nicotine withdrawal. Suddenly I am in a movie flashback where I see all of the clues that Jeff C. had indeed been smoke free for that time. I hadn’t seen him sitting out back cross-legged on a milk crate rolling a Drum in weeks. He’s not taking out trash or recycling hourly. He’s in kind of a good mood. It’s true!
<<<Mind Blown>>>
He told me that he had quit using The EasyWay to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr, a book that everyone who has ever bought used books for a living has seen multiple times.
I cannot more highly recommend this book. Our cat sitter just recently quit using this book on my suggestion, and she had been smoking for more than forty years. It works.
I would see a copy about once a week. I never bothered to read it myself, because I thought that if it worked so well, why would anyone sell it to a used bookstore? But Jeff C. had read it and quit—Jeff C. who had never been able to quit for more than a couple of days, and who was always a real prick during the times he had tried. He was smoke free and calm. Bobby, Jeff C.’s cousin, who had been trying to quit for almost the whole time he worked with us, used the book and quit. They told our co-worker K who had been smoking since he was twelve about their success. He read the book and quit as well. I was astounded. These guys were all heavy smokers with dozen of abortive attempts at quitting between them, and yet here they were smoke free—and happy about it—for weeks.
That day, I said,
“Fuck this. Those assholes can’t fucking quit smoking. I fucking quit smoking!”
I bought a used copy, which was about four bucks with my employee discount (a pack of smokes was almost ten bucks), and within a few days I was no longer a smoker. And I was happy about it. I was not craving cigarettes. I was not crabby. I felt better immediately.
Smoking may eventually kill me, but I have had six and a half years of freedom from it. I have gained a significant amount of weight since I quit smoking, but I do not think that I can blame that on quitting. I have serious issues with food and addiction. Being free from one addiction is better than me still being morbidly obese and smoking.
At least I’m free from one of my life’s prisons. All thanks to a little spite and jealousy at my co-workers’ success. And an amazing book. Seriously, if you are trying to quit smoking, please read it. You can get a used copy for less than ten bucks almost anywhere.
I will be writing a post soon about how I think that a little gentle spite will (hopefully) help me in my challenges.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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