This is an article I wrote for Urban Moto (I’ve been doing the layout for the newspaper for a few months) which came out November 2006. Thought it might be useful as a model of how one can go about quitting smoking.

I Quit
by Torrey Nommesen

I’m quitting smoking. There are lots of reasons. Health for one. It’s never been a secret that smoking is bad for you. I think King James the 1st said it best (and possibly first) in the eighteenth century – hundreds of years before all these lawsuits against the cigarette corporations. He said (wrote, actually, and in Latin as was the style at the time) “the habit of smoking is disgusting to sight, repulsive to smell, dangerous to the lung, spreading its fumes around the smoker as foul as those that come from hell.”

But wait! That last part sounds pretty good. Surrounded by hell-fire is a pretty cool image. And let’s face it, smoking IS cool. No way around that. Steve McQueen, James Dean, Che Guevera to name a few of my heroes – all smoked. None of them died from it.

When you get nervous, or bored, you just put a cancer stick in your mouth, and quietly, suavely, silently laugh death in the face. What can be more cool that that? It’s kind of like a woman in fur – you feel sorry for the little bunny, but c’mon, it’s sexy!

This is the crucial thing to understand why people smoke. There are tons of reason why not to. But the real reason why is “why not?” It’s the middle finger to straight laced society. The smoker is the outcast who’s rebelling against whatever you’ve got.

Cruising down the street on my bike with a lit cig dangling from my mouth is a real sense of freedom. I like pulling up to a bar or cafe, taking one out, and lighting up a little bit of fuck you. Thank you Prometheus for your little gift that let’s me steal fire from your pathetic, bickering gods, and suck it deep down into my lungs. Take that Zeus! We humans are in control of our own destiny.

I believe that freedom is taken away when you take away a person’s right to smoke. Whether a symptom or a cause of a conservative government, regulating people’s habits is a move towards a more prudish and controlling society. There is a balance, and I actually don’t care that you can’t smoke inside of most places in California, but it should never go so far as Omaha’s outright ban on smoking unless you get all the cars off the road and get all cows to stop farting. I think it’s a basic (shall I get on my pedestal and call it unalienable?) right to live, and to live the quality of life you want, and this absolutely includes the right to smoke.

And that is exactly why I am quitting (ironic, right?). I am addicted to it. I don’t like having something so out of my control in my life. You go ahead and smoke. If you can just have one or two while your drinking a beer and hanging out, I envy you. But I can’t do it. And I can’t stand living a life as a slave to smoking.

Image from article. Photo by Grant Miller

Here’s my plan. I’m cutting down one cigarette, one day at a time. As I write this, I am smoking 18 cigarettes, tomorrow 17, and so on to Zero on November 11th. It’s a little trick I’m pulling on myself, and it’s actually worked once before and it got me off the stuff for 5 years, so I know I can do it again.

Another trick is to tell everyone that you’re quitting. That way, you look like a dick if you can’t kick the habit. My friends (especially the ones that smoke) are sick of me telling them that I’m going to quit on November 11th. Why that day? That particular date is a personal matter, thank you very much – ask me in person if you really want to know and I’ll tell you. But the day was far enough away from when I decided to quit to give me time to psych up for it, and close enough that it’ll be less than 2 years from when I started smoking again.

But let’s raise the stakes a little here. If you see me smoking while I’m hanging out in the back at Zeitgeist, or in front of Caffe Trieste, or going down the street on my bike – after the 11th – do me a favor and give me shit about it. Then go ahead and punch me.