Are You In The Smoke Out?

Today is the 31st annual Great American Smokeout. It’s the day when people who smoke are encouraged to put down their cigarettes for just 24 hours.

In my 33 years of smoking, I never participated. Not once.

I’m not going to rehash my smoking history. I’m not going to tell you about health and living longer. If you’re alert enough to light a cigarette and hold it up to your lips, you know why smoking is not good for your health and why it’s so hard to quit.

I will tell you that before I quit, I was nervous scared terrified. Even hours before the moment, I wasn’t sure I’d make it. After 18 hours of being smoke-free, I was still preparing to fail. It took a full week for me to realize what I had been doing, subconsciously, to get to that point. Luckily, some of what I’d learned while my son was in drug rehab stuck with me. After 25 days, I was able to see the positive effects of being smoke-free.

Anyone who has ever been addicted to nicotine knows how difficult it is to quit. If you’re trying to get through today without a cigarette, good for you! If you make it only half the day or just a few hours, good for you! If you just don’t think you have the will power or desire to try, that’s fine. You have to be ready. You have to have your own reasons, even if they’re not the same as anyone else’s. Heck, my health wasn’t even on my list, yet that’s always the big reason the experts give for quitting. My guess is that the experts have never been addicted to nicotine.

Yes, quitting cigarettes is good for you. It’s good for your health. It’s good for your appearance. It’s good for your wallet. If you’re waiting for some of that lawsuit settlement money that the tobacco companies were supposed to payout, when the jury determined that they did, in fact, target kids, well… I’d forget about that. I started smoking because I wanted to be the Virginia Slims lady. HA! I was 14. Not only did I not get any settlement money from the tobacco companies, I never got any help with nicotine gum or patches when I quit. Ironically, as a “victim” of the tobacco companies (the government sued on my behalf, right) I did have to pay the settlement in the form of higher prices for cigarettes as well as higher taxes on them. Any legal eagles out there want to tell me if the victim has ever had to pay the judgment before? I’m curious.

Anyway, even though I gained weight when I quit (which I am now, finally, losing) I do not regret quitting. I regret not quitting sooner. My son who inspired me by beating his own addiction has not relapsed. My son who inspired me with his brave battle against asthma did not spend an entire day in the hospital last winter. And according to the FireFox add-on Quitomzilla, I’ve saved $7,772.36 by not smoking 41,015 cigarettes these past 16,300 hours (1 year, 10 months, 2 weeks).

Not bad.

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