I Was a Heavy Cigarette Smoker, This is How I Quit Smoking

Although I was born and grew up in a family of a smoker, I never had an interest or desire to smoke when I was young. My dad was a smoker, but he rarely smoked in the house in front of my sisters and me. My mother never smoked, and although many of my uncles and aunts smoked, I never saw them that much. I guess you can say that I was mostly in a non-smoking environment through the end of high school. There were kids in high school who did smoke, but I never hung out with them. After I went away to college, I never really lived or associated that much with smoking friends. There was absolutely no peer pressure or temptation for me to get started smoking.

I started smoking in June of 1967 when I was taking Navy basic training. During our nine weeks of training, recruits had very little free time during the day. When we were allowed five or ten minutes of free time, it was popularly referred to as a “smoke break.” We would all be in a “gedunk” area where you could get a coke from vending machines and puff on cigarettes. During one of these breaks when the “smoking lamp” was lit, a fellow recruit offered me a Tareyton filter cigarette, and shortly later I was hooked and buying my own cigarettes from the BX. At first, I really didn’t get that much enjoyment out of smoking. However, after a week or two when I started to crave the nicotine which was building up in my blood, it was an established habit and I had a good feeling each time I lit up. At that time, smoking was very popular in society, and there was no worry about the harmful effects of smoking.

During my 28 years of smoking, I went through an average of one to one and one-half packs of cigarettes per day. Looking back over the experience, I would divide my smoking life into four stages as follows:

1. Light Smoker

During the first seven years, I was generally a light smoker averaging no more than a pack of 100 mm Tareyton filter cigarettes per day. I would smoke after all meals, during breaks at work and school, and while I was studying at night. At times when I was drinking with friends, I would smoke more than usual, While I was smoking with the Navy in Taiwan, a Chinese man once remarked that my Tareyton cigarette was number 10 for smoking but number one for health.

2. Moderate Smoker

Throughout the second seven-year stage of my smoking life, I was a moderate smoker puffing on about one and one-half packs a day. At this stage, I started to need cigarettes while I was working. During most of this time, I was living and teaching English in Taiwan. Vividly do I remember smoking and allowing my students to smoke during class.

3. Heavy Smoker

From about 1981-1993, I was a heavy smoker needing one and one-half to two packs of cigarettes per day. I remember smoking the most during work when I was under pressure to think and complete work assignments. At times I would even chain smoke. Smoking in the workplace environment stopped about 1988 when the federal government decreed that smokers could no longer light up in the presence of non-smokers. It didn’t matter to us smokers because we would first go to designated smoking rooms and then outside for frequent smoke breaks.

4. Light to Moderate Smoker

During the last two years I smoked, I was a light to the moderate smoker. At this time I was recently divorced, and my new girlfriend was putting a lot of pressure on me to quit smoking. For that reason, I stopped lighting up inside the house. Most of the time I only smoked when I wasn’t in her presence.

On a few occasions, I tried quitting smoking. I never lasted more than a week before going back to my “old friend.” This all changed one evening in 1995 when I had my last cigarette and quit smoking for good. At that time I had been complaining about pains in my chest when breathing. After listening to my complaints, I remember my girlfriend saying that she didn’t want to lose me from cancer. Upon hearing this, a spell seemed to come over me, and I became very afraid and started to perspire. I began to associate cigarettes with the pains in my chest and cancer, and I actually convinced myself that I would get cancer and die if I smoked another cigarette. I threw away the cigarettes I had left, and I have never had another one. That was on June 30, 1995.

I have never regretted quitting smoking, and only wish I could have stopped sooner. Since giving up cigarettes, I feel fortunate to have reaped the following benefits:

1. Recovered Sense of Smell

It’s amazing how much a person doesn’t appreciate his or her own sense of smell while being a smoker. While I was a smoker, I never realized how badly I smelled, because I couldn’t smell. Within one week of being smoke-free, I was starting to smell things I hadn’t smelled in 28 years.

2. Clothes Smell Fresh and Smoke-Free

After quitting smoking, more people gravitated to me because there wasn’t a bad smell of smoke on my clothes.

3. No Smell of Smoke on Body or Hair

While I was a smoker, I can now imagine how my breath must have smelled when I talked to people. It’s amazing I was able to have a girlfriend considering the smell of smoke in my hair and on my skin.

4. Decrease in Blood Pressure And Better Health

Four years before I quit smoking, I was diagnosed with hypertension. Although I was on medication, my blood pressure was still high while smoking. It’s amazing how much my blood pressure decreased after I stopped smoking. I also could breathe a lot better, and felt generally in much better health.

5. Saved a Lot of Money

Since quitting smoking, I have saved an average of $1,440 per year on cigarettes. From 1995 until 2016 that amounts to $30,240. To me, that’s a significant amount of money that I have spent on more worthwhile things.

6. Avoided Smoking Friends And Places of Smoke

While smoking, it seems that I was constantly with smoking friends or in a smoke-filled environment. Since I quit, I have experienced a new better kind of environment away from smoke.