The Anti - Smoking Brigade
I quit smoking a little over two years ago. I had tried before with limited success while employing every gimmick. I had the patch. I was on Zyban. I tried eating a carrot instead of smoking every time I needed a smoke. I chewed gum. I took long walks. My real problem was that any time I stepped into a bar, any time I was out with my friends everyone had smokes and soon I was either bumming em or buying a pack of my own. Go to any smoker on the street and ask em for a cigarette. If he or she has one to spare it is yours. They've been without and can not bare the thought of leaving a fellow addict high and dry. If hard drugs were cheaper you might find this same behavior in the drug community. As just acquiring drugs is a crime the addict is few and far between who will share.
So anyway I finally quit smoking about three months after I decided that perhaps I ought not drink so much or so often as once I'm drunk I have no controls. I'll spend every dollar in my wallet. I'll stay awake and with the party until my body shuts down on me. I woke up one morning at the Shack on the Tracks with no money, no smokes, and bills coming due in a few days time so I decided that it was time to go home.
A couple weeks after I got back to Chicago, the mom had her heart attack while on vacation in Idaho. So I flew out to Idaho where I stayed with an aunt who wouldn't let me smoke on her property. I had to hike a mile to have a smoke. That mile was in the mountains. I very quickly cut my smoking habit down from 2 packs a day to four cigarettes a day. When we returned to Chicago a month later I stocked up on video game and spent my days between administering moms IV drugs and burying my head in video games to make sure I didn't think about smoking.
I've been to two weddings, one bachelor party and one summer party since then. On each occasion I drank and stole smokes from people. So I've pretty much decided not to drink. I don't miss the drinking. It was always about being out with people. We've got booze in the cabinet. It doesn't call to me (and some of it is Irish Whiskey) but every once in a while when I'm typing at the computer I get an incredible urge to grab the pack from where it should be on the desk and light up. It comes and goes but it is a very powerful urge.
All of this is by way of saying nicotine is a bitch of a thing to kick, but most people already think they know that. People who have never smoked have no idea, unless they were addicted to something a little more hard core.
Anyway,I'm reading Fark today and I come across this story that coming from one of our very own local rags. I guess some local Radio guy decided to collect smokes for the soldier serving in Iraq. Of course the Anti - Smoking Brigade is totally worked up over this. Can't have our soldiers smoking. It's bad for them! The Wrigley company is going to send gum.
I'm guessing that being a soldier in Iraq has got to be one of the most stressful jobs a person can have right now. Seeing things blow up and losing friends and neighbors on a daily basis does not invoke calm and serenity. This is not the optimal situation for a person to make that concerted effort to free one's body of the need for nicotine. In the past cigarettes were packed with the food because people realized that soldiers smoke. The modern army must bow to the prevailing wisdom that we do not want to encourage such a bad habit in our fighting men and women. So Marlboro and Lucky strike aren't standard issue.
Personally I think this is so much crap. Id like to see the most rabid of the Anti - smoking brigade try to go cold turkey in a war setting. I say why not use some of the money from all the smoking lawsuits and send the soldiers a couple camel no filter. Maybe send em a big old tin of tobacco and a copy of Still Life with Woodpecker (the book that looks like a pack of camel cigarettes) and then they can read the book and use the pages to roll up big fatty smokes. Sure the ink might not go down very well but any smoker will try it if they are desperate enough.
In Summary: First Thanks to Mike North an ex smoker who knows what it means to be in a bad way. (If I were a sports fan I'd tune into your show). I'm still not a fan of the Anti - Smoking Brigade. I don't know the exact date of my last cigarette. I don't want to be one of those guys who splits his life up on that specific date.
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So anyway I finally quit smoking about three months after I decided that perhaps I ought not drink so much or so often as once I'm drunk I have no controls. I'll spend every dollar in my wallet. I'll stay awake and with the party until my body shuts down on me. I woke up one morning at the Shack on the Tracks with no money, no smokes, and bills coming due in a few days time so I decided that it was time to go home.
A couple weeks after I got back to Chicago, the mom had her heart attack while on vacation in Idaho. So I flew out to Idaho where I stayed with an aunt who wouldn't let me smoke on her property. I had to hike a mile to have a smoke. That mile was in the mountains. I very quickly cut my smoking habit down from 2 packs a day to four cigarettes a day. When we returned to Chicago a month later I stocked up on video game and spent my days between administering moms IV drugs and burying my head in video games to make sure I didn't think about smoking.
I've been to two weddings, one bachelor party and one summer party since then. On each occasion I drank and stole smokes from people. So I've pretty much decided not to drink. I don't miss the drinking. It was always about being out with people. We've got booze in the cabinet. It doesn't call to me (and some of it is Irish Whiskey) but every once in a while when I'm typing at the computer I get an incredible urge to grab the pack from where it should be on the desk and light up. It comes and goes but it is a very powerful urge.
All of this is by way of saying nicotine is a bitch of a thing to kick, but most people already think they know that. People who have never smoked have no idea, unless they were addicted to something a little more hard core.
Anyway,I'm reading Fark today and I come across this story that coming from one of our very own local rags. I guess some local Radio guy decided to collect smokes for the soldier serving in Iraq. Of course the Anti - Smoking Brigade is totally worked up over this. Can't have our soldiers smoking. It's bad for them! The Wrigley company is going to send gum.
I'm guessing that being a soldier in Iraq has got to be one of the most stressful jobs a person can have right now. Seeing things blow up and losing friends and neighbors on a daily basis does not invoke calm and serenity. This is not the optimal situation for a person to make that concerted effort to free one's body of the need for nicotine. In the past cigarettes were packed with the food because people realized that soldiers smoke. The modern army must bow to the prevailing wisdom that we do not want to encourage such a bad habit in our fighting men and women. So Marlboro and Lucky strike aren't standard issue.
Personally I think this is so much crap. Id like to see the most rabid of the Anti - smoking brigade try to go cold turkey in a war setting. I say why not use some of the money from all the smoking lawsuits and send the soldiers a couple camel no filter. Maybe send em a big old tin of tobacco and a copy of Still Life with Woodpecker (the book that looks like a pack of camel cigarettes) and then they can read the book and use the pages to roll up big fatty smokes. Sure the ink might not go down very well but any smoker will try it if they are desperate enough.
In Summary: First Thanks to Mike North an ex smoker who knows what it means to be in a bad way. (If I were a sports fan I'd tune into your show). I'm still not a fan of the Anti - Smoking Brigade. I don't know the exact date of my last cigarette. I don't want to be one of those guys who splits his life up on that specific date.
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posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 3:30 AM
3 Comments:
i too quit smoking a few years ago (after many, many, failed attempts). the urge to have a cigarette is not as frequent but when i get that urge, it as strong as it was during my first week of quiting.
i can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a smoker fighing and iraq and not have any cigarettes. why on earth did we stop providing smokes with rations? War is not the time to quit smoking. nerves are already frazzled. the last thing they need to worry about is a nicotine fit from hell.
Happy birthday Rich!
Thank you Sheri. It's official, I'm in my thirties. I Probably won't be posting anything new untill tomorrow. It's going to be a lazy day.
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