Wednesday, June 16, 2010
BY STEVE JANOSKI
Since I was 16, everyone and their mother has informed me about the evils of smoking.
Women (and it was always women) would come up to me outside pizza places while I was enjoying an after-meal cigarette, and impart their knowledge on me of the human body and its propensity to die.
"Oh honey, you know that causes cancer!" they said.
I'd roll my eyes.
"Does it? Oh wow. Thanks. You've saved a life right here lady. I'm forever in your gratitude," I said as I'd stub it out and walk away.
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But it's been a decade of smoking for me now, and even a hard-headed fool like me knows that the older I get, the more the damage stacks up.
That, along with my turning 26 this year, has convinced me that I'm apparently in this for the long haul, and I should start walking away from the things that are gradually killing me.
So the day before my birthday, I took my last drag of a Marlboro light, crushed the remainders, and started the dark, arduous journey to freedom.
When people tell you the first three days are the worst, they're not kidding.
A friend of mine, who was watching me chew gum and jitter with a scowl on my face while at a barbecue, asked me how I was doing with it.
"Well…let's just say that right now, I'd cut the head off a baby seal with a spoon and beat an orphan with it to get another smoke," I said, shaking my head.
He laughed. Kind of.
It's a difficult thing to take something that you did 20 times a day, every day, for 10 years, and just stop — a non-smoker asked me what it was like, and I said it was like being told that you can't use your left arm ever again.
After three days though, and some tribulations that came in the form of massive cravings while drinking beer, it started to dissipate.
Two weeks later, I've become used to not stopping for a cigarette when walking into or out of a building or bar.
I like waking up in the morning not coughing so hard my stomach wrenches, or being able to go a couple extra rounds on the heavy bag without gasping for breath.
My tongue has returned to the pink color that I assume it was supposed to be, and I can actually taste things that I've been eating and drinking for years like coffee and wheat bread (which I've now realized that I don't actually like that much).
I won't dramatize it by saying lies about how I've got a new lease on life… but I do feel better, and I'm almost convinced that it was worth it.
I miss smoking insanely; it was a nice crutch, and a good way to be able to disappear from awkward situations or other places I didn't want to be in, if only for a few minutes.
By quitting, however, I'm truly hoping that I dodged the one place that I really didn't want to be — and that was in some doctor's office in a few decades, and having him tell me that I have lung cancer.
And that's worth whatever I've got to deal with in the meantime.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/health/96534534_Crushing_the_smokes.html
