Sunday, May 30, 2010

My $100,000-$250,000 Tobacco Windfall

I used to be a smoker. Starting to smoke cigarettes in 1964 I might have rationalized my decision by pointing out that men smoked and boys did not. As an impressionable young man I could not help but notice that all of my role models smoked. My dad smoked as did both of my grandfathers. The movies provided addition reinforcement. John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and even Bing Crosby smoked. And so I started not so much because of peer pressure as what I might call societal pressure, a right of passage if you will. 
Tobacco companies and the medical profession were still arguing about the health issues associated with smoking. Television programming was riddled with cigarette commercials. Hospitals permitted smoking. And I suspect there were as many ashtrays in the halls of government as there are Marxists now. In short there was no stigma attached to smoking. Looking back now I can not imagine that I enjoyed my first cigarettes but somehow I acquired the habit. By the time I reached my eighteenth birthday I was fully addicted to the damned things and easily smoked a pack a day. I even smoked an occasional cigar and pipe. Upon reflection I have to admit that I probably did not look as sophisticated as Bing Crosby with my pipe. But somehow the human mind deludes itself and presents a self image that has absolutely no connection with reality. 
Smoking was not as expensive in the sixties as it is now. I paid $2.87 per carton (10 packs) for most brands and for a while smoked the more expensive ($3.60 per carton) Benson & Hedges cigarettes that came in hard pocket size boxes. Unhappiness reigned in the smokers’ world when cigarette prices reached $5.00 per carton. 
As the years passed evidence for the relationship between smoking and cancer accumulated. In spite of this I continued smoking regularly reaching a peak of about two packs a day. At some point I decided to quit or at least cut down on my smoking. Trying to quit is a fun activity. So much fun that I did it many many times over a period of years. Well, maybe fun isn’t the word. 
I could tell you that my success was variable or I could be honest and say I failed in every attempt. When I made a conscious effort I found that I could easily get by on a half pack a day but over time my smoking would increase and I would find myself going through more than a pack a day. Sometime in early 1975 I detected some blood after coughing. This event elevated the importance of quiting to a new level. If I needed incentive to quit this was it. But so powerful is the addiction to nicotine that even fear can not overcome the urge to light up the next cigarette. I discovered that the first cigarette of the morning was critical and needed to be delayed as long as possible. On a work day I usually broke down around 10AM. Getting aggravated was a license to smoke. A quarrel with a poor outcome might elicit a response such as, “Why do I even care if these things kill me”. Any excuse worked. 
After a few weeks of successfully keeping my smoking down to half a pack a day I determined that the time was right to just quit. If I was a man I would be able to beat this. I knew most of the triggers that would have to be overcome and prepared myself psychologically to face them. I finished dinner, smoked a cigarette, and prayed to God that I would have the strength to follow through with this. Those first hours were pure misery. I kept an unopened pack of cigarettes in my pocket at all times in case of emergency. Not having cigarettes just makes you obsess more. Failure would require the opening of the new pack and even though that was a weak barrier it was a barrier. Somehow I made it through the evening. The next morning I fought off the urge and went to work. I skipped my coffee since I knew the association would be strong and would make it more difficult. I sure didn’t need to make it more difficult. At noontime I drove home for lunch and had my usual two sandwiches. Then the craving for a cigarette became irresistible. It had been 18 hours since my last fix and I started to lose it. I broke down and lit up. It was the best cigarette I ever smoked in my life. Overcome by guilt I wondered if I would ever be able to follow through. Then it occurred to me that the full feeling after a meal was the strongest trigger possible. I always needed a cigarette after a meal. If I ate breakfast that day I would not have made it to noon. This best cigarette also turned out to be my last cigarette. I still remember the date, May 5, 1975. The secret that finally made quitting possible was quitting meals. I no longer ate lunch and dinner. I divided all of my food into tiny snacks so that I was never even close to full. This didn’t make quitting easy. It just made it possible. I would be lying if I did not admit that quitting was nearly a living hell for the first week. The physiological need for a smoke probably goes away after a week or two but it did not feel that way to me. I can not remember anymore, but the craving did not go away for a long time. The desire to smoke lasted for months.
Trying to recall events from 35 years ago is difficult; but I think is is useful to at least make the attempt to remember how I managed to pull this off.  Here are the main points I think made the difference:
 
  1. Cutting back to half a pack a day a few weeks prior to actually quitting may have helped. Smoking less means that the concentration of nicotine in my system was reduced slightly well in advance to reducing it to zero. Since I do not understand the mechanism of nicotine addiction I can not say with certainty that cutting down prior to quitting actually helps.
  2. Quitting coffee drinking removes a recurring action associated with smoking. Let’s face it, coffee and cigarettes go together like toast and butter. The same is true of beer and smoking. Anything associated with smoking has to be eliminated. I started drinking coffee again within a month with no problem.
  3. I think the pack of cigarettes I carried with me for the first few weeks was an important psychological crutch. You may be able to navigate your basement in the dark but that is no reason to not have a flashlight with you.
  4. Giving up meals was the single biggest factor. Reducing my food consumption to nibbling and avoiding eating enough to get full was critical. Dare I say that to a smoker a big meal without a cigarette is like sex without the orgasm?
  5. I changed my routine. I started taking walks and avoided activities like reading, watching television, and listening to music. They had too strong an association with smoking and so why take the risk.

It has been established fact for a long time that smoking is bad for your health. Smoking is associated with emphysema, cancer—lung cancer in particular; and smoking combines synergistically with other irritants such as silica and asbestos to cause a whole host of health problems. With governments using cigarette smokers as a major source of revenue the habit has become very expensive. To put the cost into perspective I performed a rough calculation to see how much money I saved by quitting 35 years ago. If I assume an incremental price increase between 1975 and the present and make reasonable guesses about returns on investment over that time I figure that the money I saved approaches a quarter of a million dollars. If I assume my numbers are too optimistic I can scale it down and say that at worst I saved $100,000. 

There is a part of smoking I never hear anyone talk about. Smoking stinks. Tobacco smoke sticks to your clothing, permeates your home and car, and gives you bad breath. Which brings me to the question of the century. Why would someone do something that costs a lot of money, harms their health, and makes them smell like an ashtray all the time? If you were born after 1980 and smoke you have to be either self-destructive or else just plain stupid.