It’s great to stop in after so long away. I haven’t forgotten how terrific this forum is. It’s a disease prevention forum, and it helped cure me of my disease: smoking. My everlasting thanks to that sweet saint, Terry.
I want all of you to know that, after four years without smoking, I hardly think about cigarettes anymore. You’ve heard this countless times from long-time quitters. Well, they’re telling the absolute truth. I can honestly say that I almost never think about taking a puff. I don’t have smoking dreams anymore (I think those ended after about two and half years). I don’t even think much about smoking when I’m talking, face-to-face, with a person who is smoking. It’s almost as if I’ve never smoked.
But I did smoke. I smoked for over thirty years.
At age forty-seven, I started coughing plumbs of blood (blood mist) onto the bathroom mirror. I didn’t tell my wife and daughter. My friend, a chief of staff at a local hospital, conducted tests for me in secret. He suspected that I was in deep trouble. But after we completed all tests (and we re-did some of them just to make sure), I felt so, so lucky. I had only popped a few capillaries due to a deep infection. My friend said to me, "This is the last time I’m going through this much trouble for you -- unless you quit for good."
Well, immediately after I started coughing blood clouds onto the mirror, I had quit. But I was thinking about starting again after my tests came up negative. My doctor friend, with his hand on my shoulder, said, "I’m serious, Kevin...No quit, no favors."
I smoked one more cigarette. It was the next day, December 10th, 2004 at around 10:40 a.m. It was a lousy cigarette that made me heave. I threw the butt into a trash can outside the university where I was a professor, and I never looked back. I haven’t had one puff since. It was as if a window opened, and I had the choice to jump through or not. It was my choice. I jumped and the feeling of freedom was astonishing. And I’ve been free since.
I need to tell you that you must quit smoking. I'm not sorry for saying that. I'm not pulling punches. I don't care how uncomfortable it makes you feel. If you continue to smoke, you're just committing suicide, and, frankly, you're a chump...like I was for over thirty years.
Ask yourself:
- Do you really want the oxygen canister in the twilight of your life? To hell with bad breath and nicotine stains. They’re nothing!
- Do you really want so little breath that you can't even cough right?
- Do you really want your lungs flooding with fluid as you die from lung cancer -- not to mention the gargantuan pain that comes with it?
- Do you really want to lose half of your weight in front of your family in a matter of months or even a few weeks? Do you really want them to see that?
Thanks for your honesty in sharing this account, Kevin. As smokers, we all harbor the secret hope that we will be spared the disease and death that follows nicotine addiction. We tell ourselves we’ll quit in time and somehow dodge the bullet that smoking is. But with four million people dying every year due to tobacco use around the world, the odds aren’t in our favor.
However, once we quit smoking, we substantially increase our chances of avoiding smoking-related complications, and in fact, within 20 short minutes of the last cigarette, our bodies begin the work of healing.
If you're still smoking, don't waste anymore of your precious life on an addiction that will kill you, given the chance.More from Kevin:
Be Patient. Be Strong. Have Courage. -- Kevin's 2 Year Smoke-Free Milestone
