A year and a half ago, I, Shalagh Hogan, officially stopped smoking. That’s right, I did it. I ceased to light up on a daily basis. I quit. And let me tell you, I was the poster child for smoking. I was the quintessential, make no apologies, completely entitled to my addiction kind of smoker. At parties, I’d be outside with my fellow smoker whom I found way more interesting than the inside people. We had tales to tell. We oozed interesting conversation… or maybe we were jacked up on nicotine and grateful just to have someone to talk to. We were united.
My smoking habit was a product of my hard-earned neuroticism and soothed it too. Of course, at age fifteen, I wanted to impress the peers and I could afford the $1.25 a pack habit with my babysitting/counter help money. I was a punk and loved the disapproval of everyone, especially my mother. One of my sister’s fondest Shalagh memories is of me emptying my purse abruptly onto a sidewalk frantically exclaiming, “I just dropped my lit cigarette in my purse”. The thought of going without smoking was silly. It was my comfort and my friend. When I had a baby and thought my head would pop off, it was my time. And, yes, after delivering my baby, the nurse with the raspy voice mentioned that the baby might be going through nicotine withdrawal too.
And then, a sinus infection from hell that lasted from Thanksgiving 2007 through past New Year’s Day 2008, had me on my knees weeping and swearing to change if just the pain would end. The fear of never being well again as each antibiotic failed to bring back my sense of smell, had me ask myself, “What can I do to be my own hero?”. I answered, “Quit smoking”. I reread my journal to cull some truths about my habit and wrote those down on fifteen slips of paper. I put them in envelopes accompanied by five dollar bills, the new cost of a pack of smokes. Then I got my apparently incompetent doctor to write me a prescription for Chantix, an anti-depressant used as a smoking cessation drug, and that was the beginning of the end. I had a buddy quitting at the same time. My new routine would be to sit in a new chair with my coffee every morning and open one of those envelopes and read one of those truths (It will set you free). These were not someone else’s truths but one’s I had “coughed up” for myself. And here are a few of them:
· I don’t specifically remember any of the cigarettes I ever smoked.
· I often chose to run away for a smoke break rather than start creative projects.
· It’s who I used to be, not who I want to be.
· If I get through this, I’ll be the bravest person I know.
My quit date will forever be February 9, 2008.The even better news was that my husband quit three weeks later. My son has no memories of us as smokers. This is not to say, as a teenager he won’t come in contact with it. My parents were militant non-smokers but my sister and I became smokers. I’ll miss my outside friends at parties. I don’t go to that many parties anymore, however. I started running as a way to keep up my metabolism and I have neither gained nor lost any substantial weight. I do have pucker lines around my mouth and that is, thank goodness, the only regret I have. I made it out alive.
