We
all know that puffing on a cigarette makes anybody look astoundingly
cool. Put in a historical context, smoking is a part of Americana.
Soldiers in World War II movies sometimes expelled all their ammo,
but as good fortune would have it, they never ran out of Lucky
Strikes. During the heyday of crooners, cancer sticks meant as much
to the legacy of the Rat Pack as their mistrust of the Japanese, and
millions used to fantasize about rollin' in the linen and doin' some
sinnin' with puffers like Humphrey Bogart, Betty Grable,
and countless other stars who mysteriously died before they turned
60. Did you know John “Duke” Wayne smoked upwards of SIX PACKS a
day? Clint Eastwood might have had a fistful of steel, but that's
nothing compared to John Wayne and his iron lungs. In my smoking
prime, I could not compete with the Duke, and now, it saddens me
deeply to think that I never will.
Astoundingly
cool as it is, I had to quit. Now, it's usually not my style, but I
crunched some numbers to justify my decision. The occasional scoop on the news and
the overall word on the street hinted that those ads from the '50s
that boasted the vitamin content of cigarettes were slightly
fabricated... Maybe even dishonest.
(I mean, this tubby sack of shit isn't even real, so who do you trust?)
Folks,
those revelations upset me. On the all-important scale of Vitamin Goodness, what
I once presumed to be a seven out of 10 was only like a FOUR out of
10?! You gotta be shittin' me. I began to wonder if it was really
worth it to pay $8.48 to breathe in tar, rat poison, and a surprising
lack of vitamins.
On
a more personal note, I was always bothered by the saying, “Kissing
a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” It made me worry. I wondered,
what are the chances a woman is going to be turned on by licking an
ashtray? 25, 30% tops? Taking those keenly guessed stats into
account, I decided that pursuing women who don't get kinky with
ashtrays was probably a wiser bet than the alternative in my ongoing
search for a soulmate.
Most
importantly, I burned through roughly one pack every three days.
Compared to others, that is both paltry and humiliating. For me to
match the carcinogenic greatness of John “Duke” Wayne, I'd need
to be cloned a staggering seventeen times. If I'm going to be a measly fraction
of the smoker the Duke was, to hell with it, I must be in the wrong
racket, playing a game in which I could not prevail. If John Wayne was the
Michael Jordan of inhaling grits, I was a fledgling bum on the bench
who needed to retire.
A week into my bout with quitting, a friend spotted me at our favorite
bar. Incidentally, she happened to be a friend who had survived brain
cancer.
“What's
new?'' she said.
“Well, one new thing is that I'm trying to quit smoking.”
“Dude,”
she said pointedly. Her eyes bulged and jumped like almonds tossed in
the air. “Sorry to tell you this, but I thought that was even
harder than chemo.”
We
had a good laugh about that.
“Any
advice?” I said. “What did you do when it got really tough?”
“I
prayed.”
For
a moment, I contemplated.
“I
have other methods,” I said.
That
turned out to be true, but one such method was re-burning stubs in
order to get a minimal fix of nicotine. Early on, that minimal fix
was what it took for me to resist buying a pack. Life's funny: One
reason I decided to quit was this newfangled desire to become cleaner
and more hygienic. And by smoking once a day knowing it was the most
desperate, disgusting way to do it, by digging into my car's ashtray
for mini-periscopes to torch again, I think I'm finally on my way to
getting cleaner and more hygienic.
Aside
from praying or chuffing re-burns, there are countless ways to cope
when quitting gets really tough. And as long as you keep your goal in
mind and try as hard as you can, there's no reason for shame or
judgment. During the more aggressive phase of my nicotine withdrawal,
I did some things I'm not especially proud of, and there were times
when my anger and neurosis got the best of me, but I'm sure a lot of
ex-smokers can relate.
For
instance, I didn't know about the “Kool-Aid Man Fails.” You can
ask any RJ Reynolds revolter about these incidents. Kool-Aid Man
Fails occur when your entire being is overtaken by a craving so
powerful and evil that you gnash your teeth and boldly crash into the
nearest wall. No one knows what goes through our heads when we launch
into Kool-Aid Man Fails; maybe we fleetingly believe there are
cigarettes on the other side of the wall, and to crash through the
wall represents the most direct path. In my experience, I didn't
exactly break through that wall like a certain jolly, indestructible
logo has done to earn the love of America, nor did I even leave a
dent beneath my hat-rack, but I'm proud to say I didn't break a
single bone in my face. All I got was a “severe” concussion, but
I'll be fine. The thing I want to reiterate is this: Tropical Punch,
Oh-Yeah
Orange-Pineapple and cigarettes, plus a visit to the neurologist on
Tuesday, and Great Blueberry! Remember, you'll be able to quit if you
believe in yourself, Purplesaurus Rex.
Anyway,
you know what else caught me off-guard? The Grand Theft
Auto flashbacks. Those were insane! I had no idea that, because I
was enduring a lack of nicotine that was becoming a real shock to my
system, I'd get a little case of the cuckoos and convince myself I
was a hooligan rampaging in a GTA game,
that I had to get out there on the streets and run amok, maybe throw
some Molotov cocktails at hookers. Thankfully, my hallucination had a
happy ending, as my throw was far off the mark, the bottle I used was
actually just half-filled with harmless Faygo, the women in
question were not hookers but rather upstanding members of our
community, and they chased me down and beat me up.
If
you're gonna say no to something as funky as Parliament Lights, moods
swings and fits of mischief are to be expected. It's not uncommon to
surprise loved ones by toting a large, red sack and promising them a
present, reaching inward and fishing around, only to pull out a hand
flipping them a towering middle finger. I've been there, so don't
sweat it.
Feelings
of spite are par for the quitting course, so I know I'm not the only
one who broke into a Kinko's after dark, used their machines to
counterfeit some Grateful Dead tickets, and scammed a couple hippies
out of 80 bucks.
Perhaps
the biggest appeal of the withdrawal phase is all the swearing.
Seldom choir boys and girls to begin with, a smoker in the act of
quitting can out-cuss the Wu-Tang Clan and your racist uncle put in the same room together. Heck, I even coined a few obscenities as I seethed with
toxic fury. Staring at a coworker's pack of Camels and muttering
“Cocktobitch,” as well as shouting “Shitosaurus!” as I drove
past another smokes-laden gas station were true feats of creative Tourette's.
“Fucktocrotch!”
That's
what came out of my mouth on day nine when I scoured through the ashtray and found no more worthy re-burns. I sat up and throttled the steering wheel, blue eyes flaring in the sun. The closest gas station was a mere two blocks away.
As I let go of the wheel, I
was yearning for something bad and I had exhausted all my methods. There was nothing else to do.