Stop smoking?

Ten years ago I stopped smoking cold turkey, meaning I just completely stopped. I carried around a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with me just in case it got too bad but about four years later I found that pack still sealed and intact. The cigarettes inside were moldy so I threw it away. I did not resume smoking again. It has been 10 years. Sometimes I wonder why I did not resume when I live alone. No one would object to the smoke. No one would claim harm from secondhand smoke. I used to be a pack-a-day smoker but I gave it up when I did because I wanted to stop. I had had an operation on my throat that kept me in the hospital for almost a week and they did not allow me to smoke. I thought then that made a lot of sense so I stopped. I wanted to stop so I succeeded. That is key to giving up smoking. You have to genuinely want to stop.

How did I start? It was 1961. I was in finishing school in Switzerland. Then smoking was considered glamorous for women. Julie London, who many don’t know now, was a torch singer and she had done an ad for Marlboro. She was chic to me. I saw that ad when I was around 11. Far away from home with my newfound taste for independence, I decided to teach myself to smoke mainly because the school forbade it so most of the students wanted to do it. Learning to smoke was tough. You coughed. You felt nauseous. You got a headache. But you wanted to learn to smoke because it was rebellious and fashionable. I learned to smoke Reyno, the European Salem brand then, filtered and mentholated. Then I switched to Chesterfields, non-filtered, non-mentholated. Then as a student in Madrid I switched to Bisonte, cheap, short, non-filtered, non-mentholated. I smoked for 40 years exactly, beginning when I was 17 ending when I was 57.

Boy, did I put on weight! In one month I put on 30 pounds. I would breathe and it would quickly turn to fat. I read somewhere that smoking has an effect on your metabolism. It may be the nicotine. When you stop, your metabolism goes haywire and you can put on as much as 30 pounds before you can begin to lose weight. You might exercise, nothing will happen. You have to max out at thirty pounds then you will lose weight slowly. It took me 10 years to lose 20 pounds. The rest of the weight stayed on.

Much later in my life I handled cigarette advertising then on the verge of being outlawed. I became spokesperson for cigarette advertising. Advertising may make people want to smoke, like Julie London did me, but one does not automatically light a cigarette and fall into smoking. One must want to smoke to bear the cough, dizziness, nausea, headaches that come with learning how to smoke. Once you learn how to smoke it becomes a habit. Smoking is stress-related and advertising, where I worked for 33 years, is stressful. You get to understand how people think, what they desire, but when you try to explain it to people who don’t understand other people, like senators and congressmen, you fail completely because only they know the whys and wherefores.

Cigarette smoking is definitely stress-related. I stopped the last year I was in advertising. Two years later I had a mild stroke. Some friends who continue to smoke say I got it because I stopped smoking cold turkey. I don’t know. I think I got the stroke because I have my father’s heart. Gonzalez hearts just stop early.

As spokesperson I used to tell the world — you cannot stop smoking by stopping advertising. Advertising just helps establish brands. It does not teach people to smoke. They did not listen. So no more advertising. Have people stopped smoking? No. You can put warnings on packs and make them more horrifying as time goes on. Will it stop smokers from smoking? No. You can write about all this brouhaha about second-hand smoke. Does it stop smoking? No. In fact among the young smoking has turned into a sign of rebellion, part of puberty, a sign of cutting the cord between teenagers and parents. It has become a sign of disrespecting the rules and all the older people who say don’t smoke. It’s dangerous to your health. Health? The young people think quietly. Who cares about health when we are so young?

Now they have declared buildings and sidewalks as non-smoking areas and they will catch people they see smoking outside. I have an idea. Smoke on the roofs of the buildings where you work. There, there will be plenty of air to ventilate.

When I was handling cigarette advertising I learned that there are four reasons for lung cancer. Only two of them are related to cigarette smoking. The other two are caring for birds because birds release something that causes cancer. This explained my grandmother’s lung cancer to me. She took care of canaries most of her old age and they were in her room. The other is drinking liquids — soup, tea or coffee, water — that is very hot. Why don’t you know about the other two? Because how do you sue birds and hot water? They have no money. But you can sue tobacco companies because they have a lot of money and they are coerced into paying. That’s the truth.

I think, if anything, these anti-tobacco activists should pressure the cigarette companies into manufacturing more natural cigarettes made with less chemical preservatives and whatever other chemicals they mix in. Look at the old lady smokers in the Ilocos who smoke tobacco and live up to their 90s. When you smoke natural tobacco it does no harm. It’s those preservatives that bring harm.

But you may go ahead and ignore me. I don’t smoke any more. I really don’t care anymore. I just want to help. I want to tell you that all your anti-tobacco activity is building a symbol of rebellion for our teenagers. It’s not going to stop smoking. The person who decides to stop smoking is the smoker himself. For so long as he or she continues to be under stress, it will be hard to give up smoking. But when he or she really wants to stop he or she can. I did. I was a smoker for 40 years and then I stopped. I can hang out with people who smoke, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t make rude statements to smokers about what they do or how they smell, it’s all okay with me. I have grown old a real cool non-smoker who quite often wonders why I stopped but since I did, I will stick to not smoking. Maybe I’m admitting that I am not glamorous anymore.

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