Looking for inspiration

If Barack can do it, I can, too.

For inspiration, I've been searching for famous people who have quit.

People who have not become dorkier or irrelevant after dropping the habit.

Senator Obama, whose captivating run for the White House has me tuned into CNN most nights, is about the only one I can find.

That's if you believe he's actually quit.

I picture him choking down two or three cigarettes after a speech, in a dark alley surrounded by hulking secret service agents who would die before giving up the secret.

I tried googling "famous people who quit smoking."

Depressingly, this was the first hit:

"Famous people who died from smoking related illnesses"

Nat King Cole

Clark Gable

Steve McQueen

Roy Orbison

Babe Ruth

George Harrison

Edward R. Murrow

Very little, though, on people who have quit and lived lives as interesting as those in this roster of the dead.

I'm 30 years old, and still have a notion I could be famous or make a difference. Laugh all you want. Indeed, some readers of this blog aren't convinced. One told me in no uncertain terms "this thing needs a plot line!" Another said, and this cuts deep, "I can't believe someone is getting paid for this story." So, okay, fame will probably pass me by.

But right now, my mind, deprived of cigarettes, is beckoning me to the corner store, where I should drop $10 for a pack of smokes, and get on with smoking and back on the road to my reserved spot in the pantheon of writers.

Sick and deluded, I know, but such is this smoker's mind in withdrawal, telling me I am nothing without cigarettes.

Can someone please find me a few heroes, people who quit and then made a trillion dollars, or wrote a great novel, or came up with a cool invention?

Maybe that vacuum cleaner guy smoked three packs a day and quit before coming up with the perfect suction technology.

Anyone?

Mental gymnastics

A smoker's mind, at least this smoker's mind, has an acrobatic ability to rationalize.

Here's what I am thinking right now:

I am a better writer when I smoke.

I laugh more when I smoke.

I think more clearly right after a cigarette.

Hell, my grandmother smoked into her 90s.

I also think:

There's a rhythm to how I live, a beat that would sputter and die without smoking.

After a well-written paragraph, during halftime of another disappointing Minnesota Vikings choke-fest, after Dick Wolf's name fades to black, concluding another gripping episode of Law & Order: SVU, a cigarette keeps the beat. It's something to do between times. It's the metronome that keeps the song playing.

Of course, this is all crap.

But this is how my mind works when the body is screaming for a hit of nicotine.

I cannot allow empty time to pace and hand-wring like this.

Fill the time.

Occupy the mind.

Eat.

Eat.

Eat.

That's all I can do, it seems, to distract the physical need for a cigarette.

Mindlessly, I just ate three or four pitas - I've lost count - slathered in peanut butter. Washed down with a Coke.

Strawberry ice cream waits in the freezer.

What's better? Smoking, or a peanut butter drunk?

Somehow, right now, the answer isn't clear.

Unhinged

So, um, no one told me rage was a major side effect of quitting smoking.

I am not doing so well.

At times, unhinged, you might say.

The other day - this was three days after my last cigarette - this is what happened, I am ashamed to report:

Driving in Yorkville.

Below the speed limit.

There are dirty snowbanks and illegally parked cars, both of which conspire to leave little room for driving and little to no ability to see what's coming at you from the left or right.

As I am approaching a crosswalk, a woman walks out from behind a parked van, setting foot on the street - not even on the crosswalk but five feet away from it - as I am driving past.

She starts wildly flapping her arms, and I can tell she is trying to tell me I have done something wrong.

What I see in my unstable state is someone who feels she should be able to cross the street whenever she wants, and that the rest of the world should anticipate it.

To me, the look on her face says: "How dare there be moving cars when I want to cross the street!"

She is dressed in cashmere and high-heel boots that have her wobbling like a drunk. Most of her face looks pinched with Botox, and the rest of it is covered by huge sunglasses.

So, instead of ignoring her, I punch the brakes - blocking her path - roll down the window, and bark: "What the #^&$ is your problem?"

"It's a crosswalk," she says.

"I can see that," I say, my voice increasing in volume with each word. "So why didn't you press the button over there that lights up the crosswalk signs?"

Now I am yelling.

"THAT'S

HOW

CROSSWALKS

WORK!"

Amazingly, she says, "There's no button."

I scream, "Yes there is. Look. Look right behind you."

Still in denial she says, "There is no button!"

"What are you, $%^&#*& stupid?" I bark.

The woman totters on, leaving me red in the face, enraged at her arrogance.

I roll down the window even more, so I can lean out, take a deep breath and scream:

"A$%^#&E!

Then I notice everyone on the street has stopped walking. They are all looking at me.

A few seconds later, I figure out that I have totally lost it.

But hey, after quitting cold Thursday, I still haven't had a cigarette.

Now what?

Pictures of ravaged, blackened lungs.

Videos of former smokers speaking from what used to be a fully formed face before cancer and tumors and surgeons took their toll.

I appropriately cringe, and for a fleeting moment recognize that this could happen to me.

I go on smoking. These hideous images have absolutely zero effect.

But now that I am trying to quit, I am confronted with a frustrating irony:

A grim testimonial of another kind is scaring me off the pill that was supposed to wean me from nicotine.

A recent article in New York Magazine featured a first-person account of a smoker who took this popular drug, called Chantix or Champix, and started spiraling into a depressed state that included suicidal thoughts. The writer cited a recent advisory issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it was aware of more than 30 suicides possibly linked to the drug made by Pfizer.

Lovely.

Now what?

That was my crutch, now broken. This drug was to be the silver bullet that would finally, once and for all, slay the habit.

I've tried Zyban, and it made me feel too up, too happy. Sleepless, and unsettled by a creepy perma-grin I noticed in the mirror, I dropped it.

I've tried the nicotine gum. That helped me lay off smokes for a year, the longest I've ever stayed quit.

I flagrantly abused the gum, chewing each piece for an hour until it took on the consistency of cement. My molars are nubs. (To help stop the disappearance of my back teeth, my dentist has ordered me to wear a protective mouth-guard -- it resembles a retainer -- so I don't grind teeth in my sleep. Out of pride and a sense of dignity appropriate for any 30-year-old, I don't wear it.)

So the gum is out.

What am I left with?

Cold turkey?

Oh God, this is going to suck.

And please don't show me images of tumors and black lungs that look like torched footballs. None of that magnanimous medical stuff adds up to an antidote for quitting cold.

Day One

If I am going to quit smoking, I have learned after several failed and some comical attempts, I cannot do it alone.

I used to think I could staidly quit without a complaint or eating binge. That's how my grandfather did it, or so the story goes.

But I don't think I'm strong enough to do it that way.

I'm considering going on a controversial drug that is supposed to block nicotine's effect on the brain. It's a new drug, and drawing attention for its effectiveness and possible links to nasty psychological fallout.

I have also scheduled regular meetings with my doctor. She says doing so ups the chances of success by 80 per cent.

I like the idea of regular doctor visits because it's like entering a bargain, and if I fail in my attempt, I won't just be disappointing myself but my doctor, too.

So I started thinking: Maybe, instead of not telling anyone, as my heroic grandfather did, I should involve everyone I can.

I don't care anymore whether I quit gracefully. I just want to quit.

I put my name in a quitting challenge to win an expensive car. A cancer charity is running the contest.

What if I actually win? Wouldn't do to ride around in a new hybrid, my yellowed fingers dangling out the window holding a smoldering, tasty Dunhill.

I've also told my editor and some friends that I'm quitting.

And now you.

I'd like to say I'm writing to help others. But for the most part, I'm not. This is selfish.

I need people to know I'm quitting.

The bigger the audience, the bigger the shame if I fail.

Doctors orders are to start with a half pill per day for a while, then up to two half-pills then eventually two full pills a day.

Today's the first day. I start now.

Just huffed down a smoke on my front porch.

This is it.

But the moment feels empty.

Shouldn't there be some kind of celebration, maybe a gang of salubrious backslappers to rush into my house, with kazoos and overflowing mugs of viscous fruit-shakes and words of encouragement, to cheerfully usher me into a new era of health and taste buds and ruddy skin?

But no one is around, and I realize there's a few smokes left in my pack of Dunhills.

Maybe the pills can wait for tomorrow.