Visit Janet Marshall's blog: In Moderation

- View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

Finding the motivation to quit

The tragedy of smoking, and the agony of quitting

Date published: 11/4/2007

BY DONYA ARIAS

Many people say quitting smoking is the hardest thing they've ever done. The trigger can be anything from a personal health crisis to financial strain to a new pregnancy.

These days, online support groups can help, as can new prescription medications such as Chantix and pressure from employers in the form of higher insurance premiums for smokers.

Sometimes, the best support comes from a buddy who has been there.

Here and on Page 2, readers share ways they've managed to kick the habit.

GRANDMOTHER'S SICKNESS INSPIRES 'I DIDN'T THINK I COULD LIVE WITH THE GUILT' OF SMOKING trying 'every means imaginable' saving money along with her lungs fighting to quit, for the baby's sake after false starts, 19 years of smoke-free living even now, 'if somebody gave me a cigarette '

The third Thursday of every November is Great American Smokeout day, when smokers are encouraged to give up cigarettes at least for the day. Need some inspiration to quit? Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 438,000 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and victims of "secondhand" exposure to tobacco's carcinogens. Smoking is directly responsible for 87 percent of lung-cancer cases and causes most cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking by parents is associated with a wide range of adverse effects in their children, including exacerbation of asthma, increased frequency of colds and ear infections, and sudden-infant-death syndrome. If you smoke a pack a day and quit now, you'll save more than $1,300 in a year. --American Lung Association George Van Sant remembers filling an ashtray with cigarette butts during many a Fredericksburg City Council meeting in the early 1980s, and during his lectures as a philosophy professor at the University of Mary Washington, he often would pause for dramatic effect as he took a drag on his ever-present cigarette. Yet when he came home late one night after one of those council meetings, his then-wife Sue was sitting in the living room, crying. A family friend (and heavy smoker) had just died of lung cancer. Two days before, the sermon at St. George's Episcopal Church urged parishioners to make a personal sacrifice for the Lenten season. Although he had smoked since his Marine Corps boot-camp days at age 17, the then-55-year-old Van Sant went to bed that night without a cigarette. He carried a pack in his pocket for the next five or six days but never went back to smoking. He'll celebrate his 80th birthday on Nov. 20. His younger sister, Peggy Mills, made it only to age 60 before dying of lung cancer eight years ago. "A few days before she died, she said to me, 'You know, the worst thing about it is, I brought it on myself,'" Van Sant said, his voice cracking. "The awful tragedy about cigarettes, nicotine, and the habit is, if somebody gave me a cigarette and I actually smoked it now, I'd probably go out and buy a pack." "I quit smoking on July 28, 2001, cold turkey," said Kimberly Rudisill, 41, of Bealeton. "I was watching my grandmother go through some difficult medical issues including foot amputation due to poor circulation caused by years of smoking, and that was enough to motivate me. I have not touched a cigarette since (I was a full-pack-a-day smoker for 20 years prior to that.) I find that it is strictly mind over matter. One must really have a strong desire to quit and stay committed!" "My wife nagged me into trying Chantix and that seems to have worked, as I haven't smoked since March of this year," said Dan Hurd, 52, of Unionville, who started smoking in third grade. "Prior to that, I had tried just about every means imaginable--the lozenges, the gum, the patch, the goofy looking inhalers, cold turkey, all with no real luck. I managed to stop once for about four months, but shortly after wrapping up a divorce, I went right back to them." As a state employee, Victoria Waldron of Fredericksburg was eligible for the Breaking Free from Tobacco program, which provided free nicotine patches and information on how to successfully quit smoking. One tip that helped: setting a quit date and then removing one smoking-related trigger each day as the date neared. Waldron also tried a prescription nicotine inhaler, "which didn't really help all that much" and Wellbutrin, a medication that for some helps ease the discomfort from nicotine withdrawal. "About the same time, I was surfing the Web and found an online support for smoking cessation on the About.com Web site, so I signed up for that," Waldron said. "That support was absolutely invaluable, particularly during the first year." "In one of the literature pieces I read, it suggested buying yourself rewards--in the beginning perhaps daily," Waldron continued. "Nothing big, just something to treat yourself. Then move to weekly and then monthly." "To this day, I still find something to buy myself around the 14th of every month. It's usually nothing big--perhaps a new book, a nice bottle of wine or something smaller." Waldron also made use of a quit meter, which helps smokers keep track of the money they're saving and cigarettes they're not smoking once they quit. (See one at quitmeter.com.) "When I first started, I put in my statistics--how many cigarettes I smoked per day, what the cost of a pack was, and when my quit date was. I have it on my [computer] task bar and it keeps a running total of how many cigarettes I haven't smoked and how much money I have saved. I think I have saved something like $4,600 and not smoked approximately 32,000 cigarettes!" "I used to smoke 2 to 2 packs a day. I always made sure I carried at least 2 packs with me when I went anywhere," said Bob Daniels, 54, of Fredericksburg. "I tried to quit a few times, saw a nice-looking pipe, bought it, and before I knew it I was back on cigarettes again. [Later] I went to the doctor and he prescribed Nicorette gum, which I tried for at least 15 days. It just was not working for me, so I threw the gum away, threw the cigarettes away and quit." "I realized that you are not going to quit unless you really want to. I have not even taken a drag on a cigarette for 19 years. I can go to a bar and the smoke doesn't bother me until I get home and take off my shirt, and [then] I can understand how bad I smelled when I smoked." Jean Vest, 45, and her husband, Gene, 54, of Stafford County quit smoking on July 4, 2005. In addition to taking frequent walks when the urge to smoke reared its ugly head, what worked for the couple was the team approach. "On the night of July the 3rd, we decided we would quit, and we smoked our last one that evening. We tried to quit before that. We tried to quit by cutting back, and that didn't work for us. I was ready to tell my husband that we needed to quit, so when he brought it up that evening and said he was ready, I told him we needed to do it now." "The main thing that worked for us was that we were both ready. You must be ready to go through with it. It was also great that we were doing it together--it made a big difference. The next biggest thing that worked for me was that I knew if I started smoking, my husband would also. I didn't think I could live with the guilt if he ended up getting sick because I started smoking again." Karen Myers, 34, of King George County, started smoking when she was 13. "The only time I ever tried to quit was 17 years later, when I was pregnant with my first child. It was relatively easy. I used a 7 mg nicotine patch for three days and didn't pick a cigarette back up until my daughter was 8 weeks old. "Now I am pregnant with baby No. 2. Completely different story. I am 11 weeks pregnant and struggling to quit smoking. I pushed off trying to quit until I thought that I was really going to damage my baby. Of course, I justified it in my own head that it was going to hurt my baby worse going through withdrawals." "I started on a 7 mg patch at 8 weeks. I stayed on the patch for 10 days, having cravings for a smoke so bad that I felt like how crack addicts are portrayed on TV. On the 11th day, I bought a pack of cigarettes. The pack of smokes lasted me just about a week. Again, I justified this by thinking it is better than the pack a day I normally smoke. "And once again I am on a 7mg patch. It's been seven or eight days now. I am still jonesing. I want one so bad at times that I take a break from work and go down to the "smoke shack" just so I can smell it. I have the countdown going on: 204 days. The sad part, [it's] not until my baby is born, but until I can have another smoke." (Note: Two weeks later, Myers said she was off the patch and still smoke-free.) Donya Arias regularly contributes to many health-related publications, including the AARP Bulletin and the American Public Health Association's newspaper.

Date published: 11/4/2007

Most recent reader comments: