The author of the article has been a life long smoker from Europe. After immigrating to the US, and being diagnosed with asthma, nearing her middle age, she was trying to quit smoking nearly on everyday basis, but all of the attempts sadly did not succeed. Nicotine gum and patches didn't work for her, therefore she consulted her surgeon, who registered her in a program and suggested medications, but that didn't her her quit smoking either. What she found was that a severe change of routine worked good in her case. Something funny came to to a quite serious issue suggests that everybody needs to find what works best for them, as popular "one size fits all" approach never makes everybody satisfied.
In the first person: I was born 40 something years before in Europe, with a cigarette in my mouth. My parents smoked, my relatives smoked, my friends smoked. My father is 82 and still a chain smoker. Smoking is an necessary part of cultural habits, meeting people, and having excitement. For a culture that lives on lanes full of cafes, smoking is not optional, it's almost necessary.
I was 13 when I got hooked on cigarettes, enough to begin budgeting part of my daily allowance for cigarettes. Mind you, I wasn't an outcast, a straight A learner, from a rich academic family, I was truly trying to fit in. At that point, and also many years later, trying to stop smoking was not even in the back of my mind. It will take me 30 more years to get to that point.
Novelist by profession, smoking was greatly a part of my everyday routine. It was exactly like it used to be in the old black and white movies - me, the typewriter, and the big ashtray with the cigarette butts heaped up high. Soon after I moved to the US, the problems with my smoking arised. They were not simply of social nature any longer; they became a health concern too. Not just did I move to the Bay Area, California, which was the undoubted leader in the witch hunt on smokers, I was detected with asthma.
I could say from that moment on, 15 years before, I was trying to quit smoking on a daily basis. There was by now a drastic change in place for me - I couldn't smoke at my workplace any more and I had to time my smoking habits according to the office schedule. It was harder at home because my colleague, an American, was a smoker too.
We decided to only smoke outside the home. That didn't work at all, because, sadly, it's California, the weather is lovely year around, so we both ended up simply sleeping in the house, while living, eating, having friends over on the back yard patio. It's astonishing with how much yard work you can spend - our postage stamp sized back yard became more like a jungle with heirloom tomatoes, tea roses, sweet peas, and citrus trees.
I lastly quit smoking cold turkey. Two years later, with a new lease on life, I'm proud to say - I haven't had a cigarette ever since. I understand it very well: once an addict, forever an addict and I had my share of night sweats, nightmares, unstoppable shivers, uncontrollable crying. But I can always say it was resulted by my divorce drama, not nicotine. Every now and then, during lunch break in the financial district, I stop by someone smoking in front of their office building. Second hand smoke still smells so nice.
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