53 years ago I had a friend and she was a girl.(not an official Girlfriend).
Her mom smoked and worked during the day so daughter used to pinch her smokes and shared them with me. Both my parents smoked as well.
So off and on I got used to smoking; my smoking got a real boost when I became a sailor at the age of 17, because you could buy cigarettes tax-free when you were outside territorial waters.
Over time I started smoking more and more cigarettes and had to get up a couple of times a night to have another nicotine fix.
Life without cigarettes was just not imaginable.
Going on an airline trip was sheer torture because I could not smoke for a couple of hours.
We flew to Singapore once and I had a couple of smokes in the washroom in spite of the fact that airplanes were already putting people in jail for smoking.
Over the years half of my mom's family died of lung cancer.
My dad's only sibling died of lung cancer.
My mom died of a brain tumor-she used to be a heavy smoker.
My dad got lung cancer.
After he got lung cancer he visited me; he was a pathetic skin over bones man now, wearing a corduroy suit, BUT STILL SMOKING IN MY GARAGE.
My brother's wife has breast cancer; my brother still smokes cigars.
I started having coughing spells at night and the vision in my left eye was deteriorating.
Me quitting smoking? Impossible- I have no willpower.
Because I knew I could not quit I never even bothered to buy Nicorette or any other stuff.
So after a whole lifetime of smoking I was going to die of lung cancer too.
BUT WAIT: the story is not finished yet.
On September 4, 2002 I was in Calgary browsing in a bookstore called Brown and Noble and a book jumped out at me.
The book was called "How to stop smoking" and had 385 pages in it.
I glanced at the first couple of pages where the author boasted that this book was the only way to quit smoking without any withdrawal symptoms or without the Patch.
I bought the book because I was curious as to what you could write 385 pages about how to quit smoking.
It took me 9 days to read the book.
On September 13, 2002 at 3 PM I took my last drag and exhaled it through a Kleenex.
That was my last cigarette. I have never even thought about smoking. People can smoke around me and I don't give it a thought.
The book changes your Mindset.
The book is called "How to stop smoking" by Allan Carr, a British Accountant and is not available in the United States.
I no longer cough at night and the vision in my left eye is fine now.
