This Saturday it will have been 41 years to the day since I quit smoking.
Stopped, actually. You don’t quit. Not ever.
After several previous attempts, one that lasted a little more than a month, I put my cigarettes aside at 2:30 in the afternoon on Feb. 4, 1976.
Oh, yes, I remember.
I remember taking my father’s advice – he’d stopped years before, also after several less successful attempts – and instead of trying to quit after finishing my “last” pack, I threw that pack away with six perfectly good cigarettes in it.
Just as Dad said it would, it involved me more deeply in my commitment. If I ever started smoking again, those discarded cigarettes would become a sinful waste.
There was more to Dad’s advice that helped me get to my current 41-year hiatus. He pointed out that tobacco abuse is not a personal choice, that choosing to die of a tobacco-related disease is not a personal choice.
It affects all those who care about you, as they suffer along with you to your probably horrible end, and then deprives them of added time they would have had with you if you hadn’t been so selfish.
The marked improvement in my day-to-day health over the following months also played large in sustaining my resolve for the past 41 years, until now I think I’ve almost beaten it.
It’s been several years since I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming that I’d started smoking again.
At first, they came randomly. Any given night could host them.
After two or three years, they only came on the eve of the anniversary of my last day of smoking. But they came every year for at least 20 years before that pattern was broken.
The anniversary nightmare persisted for more than a decade longer, but not every anniversary.
The last one was maybe five years ago. Maybe Friday night will make it six.
This year, National Anti-Smoking Week and Weedless Wednesday were overshadowed by an even bigger nightmare, Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Meanwhile, social media sites are inundated with thinly disguised advertising from companies that claim curbing their right to market tobacco in pretty packages interferes with the rights of their victims to make a personal choice that they don’t realize may change their lives – and the lives of those around them – forever.
