2 Smoke Free Years for Kevin

"Be patient. Be strong. Have courage."

I hope that all smokers can one day enjoy their lungs the way they did in their smokeless childhoods. One of the ways I convinced myself to finally quit involved reminiscences of my own childhood lungs, their indefatigable prowess, how deeply I was able to breathe while rounding the bases after smashing a line drive into left/center, or the massive huffs of air I’d take every third stroke while competing in a free style race. My lungs, I would dream thirty years into smoking, never fought back when I was a child. And every time I dreamed of those easier times, the more I wanted those times back.

Of course I’ll never have those times back, but I do have something close. Recently, while in China, I walked up some steep temple steps, about four hundred of them without breathing too hard. As incense smoke wafted above the Buddhist altar to pings of symbols and the beats of Mu Yu drums, I thought of my childhood and of all the ensuing years of dreaming that I’d one day quit.

None of the temple visitors and none of the monks knew I’d quit smoking nearly two years before, nor would they have cared too, too much had I told them. I turned around and looked down on the stairs I’d just climbed, and I felt not only the wheels of victory turning inside me, but I also felt great sadness for the “smoking part” of my life. Quitting smoking is such a personal act whose joyous and sad music always come violining back. Whatever emotional ups and downs I experienced that day, I came back, like always, to my great personal victory.

One of the few places you can receive deserved accolades for quitting is About.com’s Smoking Cessation. The world is a better place because of this site. After all, we all need applause for acts of unusual courage. Really, this site helped me so much in my struggle especially in the first year, after which I found a strength in me that I never knew existed.

In my second year, I came back to the site mainly to encourage other quitters. To test my strength, I tried not to ask for outside help. Seemingly, this has worked for me, for I am now a "secure-in-myself" quitter of a one-to-two-pack-a-day (thirty year) smoking habit. Am I proud? Of course! But more than that, I’m "grateful," a word I noticed so often back in my early days of posting on this site. How gushy, I’d sometimes think, talk about an over-used and overly sentimental word! But now I know exactly why long-time quitters use that word so often. I understand so thoroughly that, well, here:

...grateful, grateful, grateful, and grateful . . .grateful, grateful, grateful . . .and grateful . . .to all the grateful quitters who helped me along the way, I hope you’re all still NOT smoking (that’s what I hope for you the most), and thank you from the top of my soul!

To Newer Quitters

While you’re in for a tough time, you’re in for a "do-able" time. Stay with this site. Many of the "longer-time" and "not-so-long-time" quitters can and will help you through the hard times, if you let them. Second only to knives and bullets (and, well, maybe a few other weapons), smoking is the worst thing you can thrust upon your body.

Be patient. Be strong. Have courage. Have the courage to keep getting help from this site, and help from yourself (yes, from you too), and your chances of staying quit will be high.

Remember, it’s never too late to quit.

My Uncle Emery quit when he was 65 and then lived a healthy life to age 97. At the time he quit, he’d smoked for fifty years. Of course he was always trying to get me to quit.

"Son," he once told me when he was in his early nineties, "I was a tobacco-chained man most of my life. After the chains came off, I could go anywhere I wanted."