I quit smoking lots of times. Sometimes for months, weeks, days, hours and yes, even minutes. It got to be a joke with me. You know, one of those jokes that sounds kind of funny in your mind, until you say it out loud. Then you just sound stupid. "quitting is easy. I do it all the time." Nobody was laughing.

Shortly after I turned 27 I develpoed asthma. According to an ER doc who asked, "do you smoke?"

"Of course not!" I lied. I was at a little less than a pack/day at the time.

"Looks like you've got exercise induced asthma," He misdiagnosed. "Take two puffs of this before working out." He handed me a yellow puffer and a perscription for more.

Over the intervening years, along with my dependance on nicotine, my asthma got worse and worse. ER visits got to be common. Sometimes I lied to the doctors, nurses and RTs. Sometimes I didn't bother. They all did the best they could. Stronger meds and higher doseages seemed to be my only hope. Oh, and quit smoking of course. "Pfft!! Ya right!! As if!!" I'd be thinking as I nodded in all the right places with a feigned look of consternation on my face. At the time it seemed like a better idea to take massive overdoses of my puffers rather than quit smoking.

It wasn't that I didn't want to quit. It was more that I was afraid to try. I was afraid that after so many failed attempts, there was no hope of ever doing it. More importantly though, and seemingly at odds with wanting to go smoke free, I was also afraid that I'd succeed. Part of me wanted to smoke. I'm a nicotine addict. Of course part of me wanted to smoke. Thats not what I told myself though. I told myself things like "I need a smoke" "I enjoy smoking" "I can't quit" "I'll quit tomorrow" and of course the biggest lie of all, "One won't hurt"

A couple years ago I found whyquit. I learned a bit about the nature of nicotine addiction and quit smoking for good. Cold turkey. Despite the latest push to convince the world that it's impossible to quit smoking without the help of the latest and greatest pill, patch, or puffer. One thing I learned at whyquit is that as long as you continue to put nicotine into your body, your mind will scream for more. Cut off the supply of nicotine, and your body will adjust. Keep all nicotine out of your system, and your body will start to heal. One day at a time, a new life will emerge. A life where you go days, weeks and months without even the slightest thought about lighting up.