THE DIE IS CAST.
I started work at sixteen in a design office in Liverpool.
In those days a lot of people smoked. Smoking was allowed at work, on the bus, top deck only of course, in pubs, clubs, cafes, restaurants and maybe even doctors’ waiting rooms for all I know. My mother smoked and one of my brothers smoked.
I didn’t think much about smoking at the time but now when I cast my mind back I can recall that some did it, some didn’t and I was simply too busy with spots, guitars and Airfix kits to pay it much attention.
The Engineer I worked for had the weirdest habit of completely eating an apple. He didn’t reach the core and stop, he just carried on until there was nothing left but a vague apple smell and juicy fingers. It was almost as if he was concealing the evidence.
The other habit he had was smoking. He used to smoke like a condemned man and suck on his cigarettes as though the hole was too small to get the smoke out and he gave a fair impression of someone enjoying a really thick milk-shake. You could see the suction in his cheeks and get the worrying feeling that if he didn’t keep a firm hold on that Embassy it was going to rapidly follow the apple.
Being sixteen and pretty naïve I didn’t really understand the ups and downs of smoking but as a role model this chap was perfect. He was a cigarette advertiser’s dream. Every smoke seemed to reward him with so much satisfaction. At the time I was pretty naïve, in the practical sense, about human reproduction but if I’d been asked to paint a picture of an orgasm it would have closely resembled my boss having a smoke.
This was something I just had to be a part of, and fast!
Well it wasn’t long before the youngsters who had started their new jobs alongside me and worked in other parts of the building had found their own similar mentors and had joined the smoking club and inevitably, I too applied for membership, and was instantly welcomed with smoky, slightly stinky, open arms.
Now if I could just sort out this coughing, spluttering, gagging and retching business I was going to look so cool and maybe, if I was lucky, a little older and perhaps, heaven forbid, sophisticated. You never know, I might even find a nice girlfriend too.
Well it didn’t take long to master the art of smoking, in fact, it was a doddle. You could say I was a natural and by the time I went to University I was a master. I could do smoke rings that were actually circular and that funny thing where the trailing smoke from the drag on the cigarette is simultaneously drawn into the mouth and the nostrils and looks simply fabulous. I was pretty confident that if there’d been an O level for smoking I’d have got a good mark in that one too.
I even started completely eating apples for a while but never really felt comfortable eating the pips.
THE WORM TURNS
I was caught in the trap. Hook, line, sinker and copy of Angling Times.
I was a willing victim to the extent that I didn't even realise I was a victim.
Like most of us I used to avoid the stop smoking adverts on the TV lest the wife and child started pointing the finger of accusation at me. I'd loudly profess, "I enjoy smoking, it's one of the few vices I have." I'd avoid long-haul holidays as I couldn't cope with the flight and then recently, with the nationwide ban, I'd avoid rail journeys too. I spent a week, with my family, in London standing outside restaurants, theatres, museums, hotels and shops grabbing my fix when I was permitted. "I really enjoy smoking."
An early November visit to the bedside of a dying Grandparent, no, this is not a cancer scare, but a half mile return walk from her bedside to find somewhere I could smoke. The same week in a nearby hotel where you had to throw on some grubby clothes and stand alone in an icy car-park just so you can start sucking on the morning Marlboro. "I really enjoy smoking, it’s one of the few pleasures I have in life."
There are far more, as smokers we’ve all had them. We put on our rose-tinted smoking goggles and imagine every good time that we’ve ever had in our lives accompanied by a cigarette.
In the background we were always going to give up. I’ll stop when the wife’s pregnant, or maybe before the boy is old enough to realise his father smokes. I’ll definitely stop when I turn 40, I’m sure they’ll cure lung cancer soon, well let’s just get Christmas out the way, it isn’t Christmas without a fag is it..?
I knew quit time was approaching and I really ought to try giving up the fags again. I was a serial quitter you see, regularly stopping for between 3 and 12 months and once for 2 years but always coming back to them for some unknown reason.
This time I trawled the web. I had questions. I needed to know why I couldn’t keep up a good quit. I spent days reading stuff, some real rubbish of course, some cruel exploitative stuff but also some really eye-opening information.
I’d always known how bad they were for me and what their payload could ultimately deliver but none of that told me why, as a well-educated, intelligent forty-something, I sat there smoking them.
EPIPHANY.
It turns out that the only thing you really need is determination, a little knowledge and faith in yourself.
Firstly, understand why you do smoke then educate yourself not to.
Do NOT blame nicotine, stress, family, friends, pubs, or Philip Morris.
There is nothing that can be bought, prescribed, stolen, borrowed or invented that can make you quit unless you want to quit.
If you think it helps, then feel free to cover yourself in patches and potions and help Mr Glaxo-Smithkline-Pfizer buy an incredibly large yacht but similarly don’t feel you have to.
There is no point in quitting if your subconscious wants to smoke.
No matter how serious your conscious decision to quit is and how big a bag of drugs you have, you will not stay off the fags when the willpower runs out (because it will) unless you deal with your subconscious. The subconscious doesn’t talk to or listen to the conscious mind. The subconscious learns without the conscious mind knowing.
Confuse quitting smoking with cessation of nicotine use and the task suddenly becomes harder, a lot harder.
Quitting nicotine is easy, as easy as slipping off a Teflon-coated log floating in a pool of oil in fact, and ever so slightly uncomfortable; never make it a challenge as it's not.
We learnt to smoke like we learnt to drive or ride a bike. We made conscious actions to accomplish specific tasks until our subconscious autopilot took over. An experienced driver can compose letters, listen to the radio, and have deep meaningful conversations in the conscious whilst the subconscious drives the car. We do it all the time without thinking about it - that's how we smoked too.
Three writers helped me, Joel Spitzer, Allen Carr and Neil Casey. Between them they erased 25 years of ignorance and showed me why I smoked and it didn’t cost me or the NHS a penny.
On 15th November 2007 the penny dropped. The epiphany hit. The smoking switch clicked from on to off. I stared at my computer, fag in hand, thinking, “surely not? Have I just spent the last 25 years doing that?
That fag I was smoking was my last. Its 19 friends then lived in my kitchen for many years as a reminder of my stupidity.
Once you know why you smoke you have a simple choice. You stop, and feel embarrassed for all those wasted years and money, or you don’t. However, if you don’t stop you haven’t really understood the question.
I’ve read many forum posts that say something like, “I’ve read his book/been to his website, it didn’t work for me,” which suggests that there’s a technique involved, an ‘it’ as it were, which of course there isn’t, unless you call reading and short-term recall a technique.
TEN YEARS ON.
Today, and the reason for this lengthy note, marks the 10th anniversary of my separation from tobacco. According to Garmin my fitness age is now that of an ‘excellent 20 year old’. My VO2 max is apparently in the ‘superior’ category – whatever that may mean.
Last weekend I ran the Caer-Hilly trail race. This weekend I’m competing in a Duathlon using a posh bike that I could only afford ‘cos I no longer spend £300 a month on tobacco.
It’s somewhat ironic that, despite my attempts at motorsport, musical and engineering greatness, what I consider to be one of my finest achievements in life so far is to stop lighting dried leaves and breathing their smoke in and out.
Still, if it wasn’t such a fabulous achievement I wouldn’t have bothered writing about it would I?
Just clocked up 7 years. Nice!
Testing times!!
74 days clean....BUT tired