How to Quit Smoking: What Worked for Me

Nowadays, it's next to impossible to watch TV without being bombarded with commercials encouraging us to quit smoking. But do they work? They didn't for me. Not even my own father having emphysema worked for me. He's had the disease for a long time now, at least fifteen years. He quit smoking in May of 1998, after being a smoker for over forty years. One day he just got up, smoked his last cigarette, and went to the store to buy Nicotine gum. He hasn't smoked since. And now, nine years later, he still chews the gum. It's a million times better than smoking, but it's quite an expensive habit. I think I've found a better one, or at least one that worked for me.

I started smoking when I was thirteen years old. I did it for the same reason a lot of teens start smoking: to be "cool". It was something all the "cool" kids did, especially this one cool girl I really wanted to become friends with. Back in junior high, I'd go to the deli before school and buy a pack of cigarettes and then once I got to school I'd whip them out, in front of everyone, so everyone could see how cool I was. Soon one person would see them and then another and another and then everyone, all the "cool" kids would come hover around me asking me for a cigarette. It was an awesome way to fit in, and at the age of thirteen who thinks about diseases like cancer, emphysema, or death? We're all immortal at that age.

I never thought to quit smoking because I always had it in my mind that I hadn't smoked for very long. At twenty-five, I didn't realize that the reality was I'd been doing it for over twelve years. That's just about half my life. I didn't like that. As a very overweight female, smoking just added to my propensity for disease. One day I made a decision, and it wasn't because of any commercial, it was because of something my father told me, having nothing to do with his own disease.