Smoking - Beating the Cancer Clock by Alicia L. Cervini I thought that smoking was a great adventure. And it was. Flip through your store of movie images of smoking--I had them all. But those images were cold comfort as I sat in the Emergency Room of St. Luke's Hospital, unable to breathe. Seven years earlier, when I started smoking, I would think, "I'm not really a 'smoker.' I'm a non-smoker who just happens to be smoking. It's just temporary." I believed that distinction set me apart from what I imagined a "smoker" really was. Other people were "smokers," not me. Two or three years into my "smoking-non-smoker's" pack-a-day habit, I read somewhere that mine was a fairly common mantra for people who would eventually launch into lifelong affairs with cigarettes. So, I finally admitted to myself that I was a smoker -- although I almost never said that out loud. Everything I knew said that the smoking section was one of the stupidest clubs a person could join. "Smelly hair? Stained teeth? Prematurely wrinkled skin? Count me in! Emphysema? Heart disease? A colorful array of cancers? Where do I sign up?" But I still didn't want to quit. None of the ill effects were real to me, but the pleasure of lighting up a cigarette very much was. That's when my game of "Beat the Cancer Clock" began. I figured I had a certain amount of time before I really HAD to quit smoking. After all, cancer doesn't kick in overnight. My mom had smoked for 15 years before she quit, and she seemed fine; my grandmother had smoked for 40 years, and she didn't seem any worse off. On the other hand, my mom's friend had smoked for 20 years and wound up with a gaping hole in her neck where they took out her cancer-riddled larynx. My grandmother's friend had smoked for 15 years and ended up with a mask strapped to her face, toting an oxygen tank everywhere she went. All the statistics I read, and the smokers I knew, told very different stories about what that "safe" amount of time to smoke was. Over the next four years I tried to quit smoking around ten times. The longest I quit was for six months, while the shortest didn't last through the day. There was always a reason to start again; papers to finish, weight to lose, depression to get through, boredom to alleviate. Besides, the voice in my head told me I was still in the clear; I hadn't smoked long enough to really do myself any damage. I was still beating the cancer clock. My smoking was still okay. That's what I managed to convince myself, despite the fact that my singing voice was sounding gritty, I couldn't run up the stairs without panting and feeling my heart pound, and I was stricken with three or four bouts of chronic bronchitis a year. Then the litigation maelstrom with Big Tobacco began and I couldn't turn on the television or cruise down the highway without seeing an anti-smoking ad. And they were GOOD. Billboards depicting graveyards that said "Smoking Section" over them. Posters of a woman with a charred face that asked "What if the effects of smoking showed up on the outside? Would you still do it?" A television commercial which follows a stream of white smoke down into a woman's trachea and, using time lapse photography, shows it scorch and desiccate her lungs. I felt like I was under attack. I could no longer be just a smoker in peace. These ads were chipping away at my smoker's confidence and letting me know that smokers were winning at "Beat the Cancer Clock" about as often as they were winning the State Lottery. But I still smoked. Now, I just felt overwhelmingly guilty about it. I had tried quitting cold turkey, I had tried quitting with the nicotine patch -- why was I still smoking? What was wrong with me? Why was I so weak? I hated the fact that I couldn't stop; I felt shackled to my Winstons and my ashtrays. Yet, every morning when I would wake up with my scratchy throat and wheezy lungs, the first thing I would do would be to light up. When smoker's guilt would resurface, I would just push it back down. Denial was all that I had left. I stopped trying to quit. When my boyfriend came down with a sinus infection, I did too. He took antibiotics. I kept smoking. He got better. I didn't. My infection moved down into my lungs and that's how I ended up in the Emergency Room at St. Luke's, struggling to breathe. I felt as if I had an immense weight on my chest, crushing my lungs. I would inhale as hard and wide as I could and come up with virtually nothing. As I sat on the doctor's table in my paper gown, seven years worth of repressed smoker's guilt and fear rushed up at me. Was I too late? Had I blown it? Was there something irreversibly wrong with me? Struggling to breathe, I imagined myself gasping for air for the rest of my life, viewing the world over the rim of an oxygen mask, unable to run or dance or play sports or do any of the things that make life worth living. Terrified, I cried quietly as I waited for the doctor to come back and say the word "emphysema," making my vision of a life without oxygen a reality. But he didn't. The doctor came back and said, "Reactive airway bronchitis." He explained that I had bacteria or a virus in my lungs that was irritating the bronchioles and making them constrict to the point of nearly asphyxiating me. I practically collapsed with relief. It's hard to believe in an abstract thing. When you're young, all of the ill-health effects of smoking are still abstract ideas, not cold realities. But not being able to breathe felt real and immediate. At 25, I suddenly felt, for however brief a moment, that I knew what it would be like to have emphysema. And I did NOT want to live like that. So I quit; I've been using the nicotine patch and I haven't had a cigarette in five weeks and six days. If you're a non-smoker, that doesn't sound like a lot. If you're a smoker, you know that's an eternity. And if you're a smoking non-smoker, chances are you're kidding yourself. Article courtesy of 98six.com "Where Health and Reality Meet."                    RECOMMENDED READING FROM THE PSYSTORE: Addictionary: A Primer of Recovery Terms and Concepts from Abstinence to Withdrawal by Jan R. Wilson, Judith A. Wilson Our Price: $16.95 "Addictionary provides definitions and meanings to the words and phrases commonly used in recovery groups. Written for anyone interested in recovery from addiction to alcohol or other drugs, food, gambling, sex, tobacco, exercise, work, relationships, and other substances or behaviors." -- Book Description For a selection of books on this topic, visit the Psystore. ** All prices subject to change without notice