February 2009

Early to Mid February 2009
Smoking and Drinking

I started smoking when I was sixteen years old. A friend and I were participating in local summer theater production, which is totally out of character for me but not her. I decided to go along for the ride. I had my first job and was eager to do something different in the evenings and meet new people. I met a guy I liked, of course. We used to hang out behind the theater talking. Someone lit up a cigarette. I tried one. It tasted like crap. Gee, I think I’ll have another one. And the rest is history. Before I knew it, I stopped bumming and started buying my own packs of Eve Light 120s, a beautiful feminine cigarette with little flowers around the filter. I don’t know if they still exist. Anyway, I felt very cool and very attractive to the opposite sex. My relationship with Steve lasted a few months, but I smoked until I was thirty-two, the year I started this journal. Actually, I quit about a month before my first entry.

Never a heavy smoker, I rarely smoked more than five ciggies per day and often just smoked socially or in my car in when I drove to school. I loved smoking in the car. It got to the point that I couldn’t back the thing out of the garage without lighting up. By my mid-twenties I was a confirmed smoker, though I never smoked more than a half pack a day, and that was rare. Like most smokers, I liked smoking. I really liked it. A cigarette took the place of a snack especially when accompanied by a cup of coffee.

Also in my mid-twenties, I had become heavily involved in ice skating. But I was young and never though to give up my bad habit. However, I was short of breath on the ice. As a practical solution to this problem, I did not smoke the night before I planned to go skating. As soon as I backed my car out of the parking space at the rink, I pushed in the lighter and enjoyed a smoke. This went on for years. Finally I quit cold turkey in May of 1999. I’m not sure exactly why I quit. Skating had something to do with it, and I had gotten a sick, maybe the flu. I never picked up another cigarette. Well, that isn’t completely true, I occasionally bummed a puff from my husband. He quit when he had heart surgery in January 2003. That was the end of my smoking until I mooched one cig from my dad’s cousin a few years later.

When I went to care for my dad, who had terminal cancer (from smoking, by the way), my sister and I spent a couple of nights with one of his high school friends. The friend’s wife smoked. I bummed a few butts but went several days without until I started accepting cigarettes from my dad’s neighbor and his cousin. The stress of caring for my terminally ill father was incredible. My sister bought wine and we drank every night. I did not smoke in my dad’s house while he was alive. I went to his cousin’s house across the street and smoked with her. Then I started buying packs of my own cigarettes fully intending to quit once the stress was relieved and I went home. After my dad passed away, I started smoking in his house. My sister was a social smoker for several years, but never took up the habit again. In fact, she had to put a stop to the drinking because she feared slipping back into a pattern of drinking too much. I was never a drinker, though I enjoy a drink now and then.

My sister went home and back to work. I stayed in my father’s house for another two weeks. I had taken a leave of absence from the rink and needed time to decompress. So I hung out with the neighbor and cousin. We smoked. We drank. I listen to audio books, sewed, walked the dog, and took care of post-mortem business. I planned to extinguish my bad habit before I got home, so I would not be smoking around my husband. At the time of this writing (May 8, 2009), I have not given up cigarettes. Actually, I am enjoying one right now as I type.

I know I have to quit but don’t know when that will be.

The content of this site is copyright by K. J. N., 1999 - 2009