Somebody else for a change

Kate quit around the same time I did - six weeks ago.
She is about the same age.
She has smoked for about as long.
Because there are some who think this blog is whiny and silly, I thought you might like to hear how someone else is coping.
Kate is funny.

Kate says:

"I smoked for 16 years, which is precisely half my life. I'm 32."

Why did you start smoking?

"Cause I thought it was cool. I don't know. I remember trying to learn how to smoke. I remember taking two drags and feeling like I was going to barf. I was, like, the leader. I was probably responsible for a whole bunch of people smoking."

How much did you smoke?

"I would say I probably pretended I smoked half a pack a day but it was probably closer to a full pack a day."

Why did you decide to quit six weeks ago?

"I got married last year and that was a big (motivator) because I was a smoking bride, which was not a cool thing. I had to sneak off with the bridesmaids to go smoke. Nothing says class like a white wedding dress and a cigarette hanging out of the side of your mouth."

How are you doing in this attempt compared to previous tries?

"This time, I'm now actually officially farther than I've ever gone before. In previous attempts I was trying to see how long I could last without smoking. This time I'm trying to live without smoking, which is a totally different approach. I don’t think there's anything you can do to prepare for this."

What has it been like?

"It's been awful. Absolutely awful. The first four days are the toughest. Then you're not pacing anymore, you don't have this level of simmering rage all the time. After that you have this state of depression. It's almost like I'm grieving. I wake up and think something terrible has happened and I can't remember what it is, and then I remember ... it’s that I can't smoke. Coffee isn't the same. Booze isn't the same I just have to get over it and learn to live without smoking."

How has your husband coped?

"He's a non-smoker (but) he's been awesome. He's been totally staying out of my way. I think one of the things non-smokers have a hard time understanding is that this is a battle every day. I still need you to say, 'Good job. I’m proud of you. Keep going.' It’s not over. It’s not going to be over for a while.”

Any downsides to quitting?

"I put on eight pounds. I don’t know how (my husband) feels about that. But I can be fat and a non-smoker. That’s okay. Because I've quit, I sort of decided that I am allowed to do anything else I want. If I want the shoes, I can buy the shoes. If I want to have a latte every day this week, I can. I’ve become a little bit indulgent."

If only ...

A reader pointed me toward a great story, a hilarious look at one man's attempt to develop a pack-a-day habit in 30 days.

Tom Chiarella's adventure involved:

"... thirty-four different brands of cigarette, eleven lighters, spiritual revelations and moments of clarity, gatherings at alley mouths, unions with strangers on the streets of various cities, huddlings on a ragged porch watching the hand-cupped flare of a match in a snowstorm, a perpetual sore throat, a nagging cough, several puking sessions ..."

If only ...

I wouldn't be struggling to kick this pernicious, snarling monkey off my back if starting smoking was as challenging for me as it was for Mr. Chiarella.

How I started is:

In about five boring, inglorious minutes.

I was 16, with a few friends at a basement comedy club because it was probably the only place that either took our fake IDs for real or didn't care.

In between drags off his du Maurier Light, one of those friends looked at me, squinting through the smoke, and issued a challenge.

"I bet," he said "that you could have a drag and not even cough."

This friend was blundering through an ignominious teenage-hood filled with aggression and mindless rebellion.

I, of physical and moral weakness, would do whatever he said. And he knew it.

I was an easy mark for someone who took pleasure, as this friend did, in bending wills and forever changing lives.

But it was also an interesting little experiment.

How would I, someone who had been second-hand exposed to my parents' smoking all my life, react to my first drag?

He handed me his cigarette.

I took a drag.

No headrush.

No coughing.

Not even any guilt.

It simply felt amazing.

Within half an hour, I was out the door and heading to the nearest convenience store for my first pack.

Serenity Now!

The last several days have been enough to make any respectable Torontonian take up smoking and a quitting smoker consider violence.

I didn't breathe for the entirety of Jeffrey Buttle's long program, which probably did more damage to my brain than 16 years of smoking.

The Jays cut perhaps their gutsiest player in Reed Johnson.

The Jays lost their new third baseman for weeks after he got hurt during routine fielding drills. Are you kidding me?

Hillary Clinton's campaign seems intent on turning Barack Obama's former pastor into Osama bin Laden. So very depressing yet predictable. I bet Barack is smoking again.

TTC employees may strike next week. Philip Morris should set up vendors along major transit routes.

Today was perhaps the ugliest, most depressing day in the history of Toronto weather.

As I am writing this, on the TV news, "a police officer has shot a man ..." in an apparent attempted bank hold-up.

The weatherman cheerfully talks about an Alberta clipper. I think I should find this guy and beat the sleet out of him.

And, starting in just a few minutes, the Leafs continue on their sadistic journey ... and I will watch it with gritted teeth and dreams of Dunhill Special Reserves.

I can't go home again ... can I?

Quitting smoking is a home-wrecker.

Until I quit in mid-February, I frequently visited my parents.

(They live in the midtown house where I grew up. I now live with my wife in the east end.)

There were many benefits to making the 20-minute drive:

Coffee is always on.

Since I don't know how to cook, and because the Star doesn't pay me enough for a full, balanced diet, I appreciate that their fridge is usually full. Sometimes they have those prepared finger sandwiches - tuna or salmon or egg or cream cheese - you can get at fancy food stores. I can eat a whole package in about five minutes.

There's good bagels.

A wickedly sharp big screen TV perfect for watching football or basketball.

And packs of cigarettes lying all over the place.

Both my parents smoke.

My father now smokes those long, white, tasteless, light Benson & Hedges cigarettes. You can pull a neck muscle just trying to suck the nicotine out.

But my mother smokes a stronger brand that I like.

Which would come in handy when I had no cigarettes of my own due to my low salary.

I would wait until she left the pack unattended, quietly move in, slide a cigarette out, then head out on the porch to light up.

But visiting now is excruciating.

Both my parents light up inside, then take their sweet time sauntering to the front or back porch, the delicious contrails slowly moving under my nose.

I have been to their house only two or three times since I quit. It's just too difficult.

But I think I'll be okay.

Without dropping $10 a day on smokes, I can now afford finger sandwiches of my own.

Beware of feeling too good

It's not the stressful event - a knock-down, drag-out fight with my editor, or a very public blunder in one of my news stories, or an expensive fender-bender - I am worried about.

It's the good things, and good times, that have ended previous quit attempts and will threaten this one, too. I just know it.

When I am feeling sentimental or victorious, my addiction tells me it's okay to have a smoke.

Treat yourself. You can have just one. Right?

That's what I thought a few years back, while I was having one of the best days of my career.

I was working for a small daily newspaper in southwest Mississippi.

I loved it down there. Especially the music.

I had become a big fan of a record label called Fat Possum Records.

One of the blues musicians who recorded with Fat Possum was playing in a nearby town. His name is Robert Cage. I went, saw him sitting and strumming for about an hour. The next day, I did some research and saw no one had written about him yet. So I called him up and asked for an interview.

Two days later, I was sitting on the stoop of a ramshackle juke joint, in the middle of the Mississippi woods, drinking beer, while this guy played song after song - for me. In between songs, he ruminated, in his guttural voice, on the history and future of blues music.

I couldn't believe where I was, or what I was doing. It felt surreal.

Then he pulled out a pack of smokes, opened it and offered one to me.

How could I resist?

(At that point, I had quit for a year.)

That one cigarette became another, and then another, and I smoked steadily until the middle of last month, when I quit and started this blog.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, for the sake of my health:

Let's hope nothing great happens.

Turning a corner

A co-worker here at the Star said, "I'm getting sick of seeing your blog advertised all over the website. Why can't you just declare victory and be done with it?"

Right. Because quitting usually only takes a few weeks. There must be some other reason so many people keep smoking and die from cancer and emphysema.

Dork.

I cannot declare victory. I don't expect I will be able to for quite some time.

But don't worry ... I don't plan on subjecting you to this indefinitely.

Can you imagine?

Hi there. This is David Bruser. Remember? The reporter blogging about quitting smoking?It's day 245 of the quit. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, well, I had Cheerios for breakfast. The whole box. I now weigh 300 pounds. Well, at least I'm not smoking. Be sure to read tomorrow about my new recipe for saltines and peanut butter. ...

But with some satisfaction, I can say I don't think about smoking every waking minute.

And that, I think, is worth reporting.

It has been several days since my last post. Part of the reason is that I was out of town for several days. Then I had to catch up on other work.

But also - and please don't be offended - I just wasn't thinking about smoking or the blog all the time.

I did not wake up craving a cigarette. I did not sip my morning coffee vividly imagining how a cigarette was missing from the ritual. I simply enjoyed the coffee. When I arrived at the office, I did not log on to my computer itching to fill this space with rants.

Then an editor reminded me it had been days since my last blog post.

And I wanted a cigarette.

One month later, and still flying

The "flight service director" hands me a two-pack of cranberry citrus oat crunch cookies that look like petrified scat, and I knew I was in trouble.

I could feel the anxiety and rage bubble up.

The problem is, I have a bone-deep fear of flying. And I hate nearly everything about the experience, starting with the bank account-busting cab to the airport.

I was worried that my first flight since I quit would do me something like Icarus, bringing me back down to earth, knocking me off the wagon and send me scurrying to buy a pack of cigarettes once on the ground. Assuming this plane lands ...

The flight didn't start well.

The pilot said liftoff was delayed because a maintenance worker noticed a nick on the exterior of the cabin door. In a folksy voice, the pilot then informed us that a safety crew was en route to see whether the door was damaged. But if it's a blemish, he continued to drawl, we should be on our way.

I thought, this is the opening scene of a CSI episode that ends with Grissom sifting through the debris strewn about the burnt husk of the plane. The impending revelation visible in his eyes, he stands up, sighs and tells of how the plane was brought down by a speck of grit that burrowed in a nick in the cabin door. Aggravated by the high winds blowing at 33,000 feet, Grissom concludes, the mote had the force of 10 jackhammers and  tore a hole in the metal.

Why do pilots talk about this stuff with passengers? I don't need to hear it. My imagination did the rest and now I am sick with fear.

And the cookies and the grey, lukewarm coffee aren't exactly calming me down.

To my left, with his head slumped awkwardly in the narrow gap between headrest and window, a man snores loudly but sporadically. In his stupor he has let his right knee drift into my personal space. Our knees are touching.

To my right, across the aisle, another man struggles with a wet-sounding head cold.

I look heavenward, hoping that someone or something can make this end.

That's when I notice Embraer, in this relatively new model plane, has pointlessly included a no-smoking sign.

A cruel beacon, lit up to remind me of what I want to be doing more than anything else.

Across the aisle, the guy's nose gurgles into a Kleenex, and I gag.

I am flying to Boston, allegedly, but all I see out the window as the plane hurtles down, is water. Nothing else. I start to reel. I grip the armrests and rock and back and forth, muttering prayers and obscenities, until finally, the plane lands.

I try not to think about smoking.

But at the cab stand, I am standing near a guy smoking a Marlboro. I get a whiff.

Ahhh.

Cigarettes just smell better here. More woodsy. And usually way cheaper.

Despite my better judgment, I tour the hotel lobby, and saunter into the gift shop. I ask the lady how much for a pack of cigarettes. Just out of curiosity, I tell myself. She says $8. Wow. Not so cheap anymore. Expensive enough to help me forget about smoking for a little while.

A big test ...

Impassive and unhelpful airline employees.

An idiot taking up a whole row of seats in the departure waiting area with his garment bag, laptop and fast food trash.

A ludicrously short lay-over and subsequent wobbly sprint to connecting flight, the flailing baggage nearly tearing a rotator cuff.

The sheer, mind-numbing cost of traveling by plane.

It's all more than enough to make me fall off the wagon.

Also, I have a crippling fear of flying.

In the past, a turbulent flight has ended quit attempts.

I get off the plane, and head right for the nearest kiosk selling newspapers and cigarettes. Just happy to be alive, and smoking.

I have to get on a plane tomorrow, and I am not happy about it.

That company trying to start an airline for smokers is on to something. I'm not kidding. Check out the link, click on "About Us" and make sure to read paragraph five, that starts, "SMINTAIR reinstates the liberty of smoking in all seats ..." Can you guess what SMINTAIR stands for?

I have to fly to Boston tomorrow. I think that's one of those flights, where if you look out the window during the descent, it appears as though the plane is plummeting toward the sea. Lovely.

If I can get through this, I will feel much better about my prospects for staying quit.

Stay tuned. I will report from Boston ...

Speeding to recovery

I was snagged yesterday by Vermont's only state trooper, on a two-lane highway that maybe four other motorists have ever driven.

This morning, about 24 hours later, I was grinding molars, still stressing about my first speeding ticket in years.

That's $130 I could have spent on shoes or gas or physiotherapy on my left hand, which has become a muscled claw after a winter of relentless shoveling.

But then I got an email from Smokers' Helpline.

Help, just when I needed it.

The email was evidently one of the benefits I get from having signed up for the Driven to Quit challenge I mentioned in my first blog post.

The email started off talking about how to manage the triggers that urge people like me to smoke.

Remember the three "A"s, the email said.

Avoid.

As in, avoid stress.

But I could not ignore the gaudy ticket burning a hole in my glove box.

Alter.

"Don't reach for a cigarette as you usually would," the email said. "Instead, get up and brush your teeth. Alter your response."

If I brush my teeth every time I have a craving, and do so with the gusto with which I smoke a cigarette, I would very quickly scrape away my gums and resemble Skeletor.

But point taken.

So I ate an English muffin covered in peanut butter and gulped down a Coke.

Don't judge. It's a tasty stopgap.

The comforting ritual is also the chief reason I will be fat in two to three months.

Accept.

"For example," the email suggested, "You are at a BBQ and some of the guests are smoking. You may not be able to avoid or alter the situation, but you can use one of your coping strategies, like positive self-talk, to help you through the challenge. You could say to yourself: 'This is a challenge. It won't last forever. I will get through it.' Or, 'I will be a stronger person for handling it without a cigarette.' "

Talking to myself in public seems drastic, I thought, but when the urge to smoke becomes unbearable I should be prepared to do almost anything to stay quit.

But then, after licking some peanut butter off my gnarled left hand, I wondered how this "Accept" tactic would actually work ...

"Sir, I am Deputy Charles Smithson of the Vermont Highway Patrol. Could I please see your license and registration?"

"Ah, sure."

"Do you know why I stopped you today?"

"Nope."

"You were going 70 in a 55 zone."

"Oh, er, ... This is a challenge ..."

"What?"

"It won't last forever ..."

"Hands on the dash, sir. Right now."

"I can do this. I am a stronger person."

"What did you say?"

"No, I mean ... smokey smoke ... This is a challenge ..."

"Dispatch ... This is Car Zero One. What? No, I know I don't have back-up. Just clear out a cell, okay Darlene? I'm bringing in a possible DUI for resisting arrest. Ten-four."

Shame

If you ever want to quit smoking, it helps to spend some time in Vermont.

I am here visiting my wife. She is working as a college professor in a quaint town called Middlebury.

About the riskiest thing for sale within a block of her apartment is a cup of Americano at the local cafe. There's also a bookstore, and a place to rent snowshoes.

Looking out the window, I don't see any tobacconists or neon signs advertising Budweiser and Winstons.

I see many, many Subarus, men with grey beards and women without make-up.

I see a lot of green and white and water and sky. Just a whole bunch of Vermonty goodness. Not a smoker or a cigarette in sight.

A few hours ago I had a strong craving. With restless legs I headed outside to walk it off.

I stumbled into a cross-eyed local, who had granola chunks in his scraggly beard, and he told me - though it was hard to hear him over the waterfall raging nearby - that the law in town is clear: If you smoke within three feet of a live tree you will be trussed and shot by a cheese-fed park ranger named Leslie.

Though he added that a risk-taker might find cigarettes at the Exxon station up Route 7.

But I imagine they're made with dried berries, bark essence and the parched skin of the last smoker to cross Leslie.

Hey, don't scoff. They recycle people here.

I would just as soon smoke a cigarette in public in Vermont as I would bungee jump off the CN Tower.