Now that the price of cigarettes has gone up again I think I owe it to The Athenian readers to give them the benefit of my experience in kicking the smoking habit.
Like most people, I have given up smoking more times than I can remember. The last time was on April 29, 1974 or exactly twenty-one months, fourteen days and twelve-and-a-half hours ago at the time of writing.
I like to think that this time I have given up the noxious weed for good because I have conditioned myself to hate that rolled-up piece of rice-paper wrapped around the shredded brown stuff with the intensity of an Athenian bus conductor towards the person who tenders a one-hundred drachma note for a six-drachma fare.
So, if you are planning to give up smoking, you must change your love-relationship with your favourite brand into one of all-consuming hatred. We are told the dividing line between love and hate is a thin one, indeed, so you really should not have any difficulty in achieving this.
A highly recommended method is to pull out a cigarette from the pack and, as you lift your match to light it, say Ί hate you!’ in a clear and loud voice. (It is advisable to do this in private. If there are other people around they may think you are addressing them and say Ί hate you too/ or slap you in the face.)
After you have said Ί hate youFpull the cigarette out of your mouth with a dramatic gesture, crush it in your hand and then look down at the sorry mess with profound pity. Now declaim a few lines from Hamlet, such as ‘Alas, poor Winston’… or Marlboro, or Kent or Papastratos as the case may be… ‘Iknew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite smoke, of most excellent flavour. I have borne him in a pack a thousand times and now — abhorred in my hand he lies. My gorge rises at him!’ This too should be uttered in private for obvious reasons. After you have done it several times you will achieve a high degree of catharsis and satisfaction and begin to regard the cigarette as an object to be despised.
Next thing to do is to lay in a fairly sizable store of peanuts, biscuits, chocolates, chewing gum, boiled sweets, worry beads and anything else you may need short of handcuffs to prevent you from reaching for a cigarette.
If you manage to keep this up for a couple of weeks without ruining your digestion and your teeth, it will be time to start looking for a tailor to let out all your clothes. A gain of twenty to twenty-five pounds in the first year of non-smoking is considered normal. One British scientist has, I think, worked out the mathematical formula that tells you how many pounds you put on for every pound you save by not smoking and how many more pounds you will need to slim down again at a health farm. I don’t know exactly how it works but I think in the end you come to the conclusion that smoking is cheaper provided your treatment for lung cancer is taken care of by Blue Cross or some other insurance scheme.
As Christmas approaches, be sure to make it clear to all your friends and relatives that you have given up smoking for good. Otherwise you will find among your presents such useless items as a solid gold Cartier lighter, a box of fine Havana cigars, or a year’s supply of pipe-cleaners.
As the months go by you will become prouder and prouder of your success at kicking the smoking habit and you will be in danger of becoming an insufferable prig vis-a-vis your smoking friends and acquaintances.
They will offer you a cigarette in all innocence and you will look at them in feigned horror, as if they had asked you to take your pants down or commit some other indecency. With lip curled disdainfully you may say: ‘No thank you, I do not smoke,’ with an inflection that clearly implies anyone who does smoke is a creep.
You will also make yourself extremely unpopular by opening windows in smoke-filled rooms and exposing everybody to double pneumonia, or pointedly picking up ashtrays and holding them at arm’s length as you march them into the kitchen.
Finally, if you follow the suggestion made recently in a Time magazine article on non-smokers and put out a smoker’s cigarette in his drinking water (the argument being ‘if you pollute my air I can pollute your water’) you will risk either getting the water in your face or a plate-full of lasagna al burroin your lap.
So be proud of your non-smoking but be modest about it, too. If someone has left a cigarette smoking in an ashtray under your nose and the acrid fumes are tickling your sinuses, making your eyes water and bringing on uncontrolled fits of coughing, just bear it silently until either the cigarette burns down to the filter and the smoke becomes really poisonous and you pass out, or until the person it belongs to picks it up again nonchalantly and draws all the fumes into his black and tar-pitted lungs.
I myself have solved the problem by carrying a fireman’s mask around with me at all times. When someone starts smoking in my presence, I pull it out of my pocket and fit it snugly round my face. Then I hang the long tube out of the nearest window and come back to my seat looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. The expression, of course, is lost on my companion because he cannot see my face behind the mask but as conversation becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, he either gets the hint and puts his cigarette out or we communicate by exchanging little notes.
But if you don’t intend to stop smoking and you want to get around the recent hike in cigarette prices all you really have to do is cadge one cigarette a day, if you’re a one-pack smoker, or two, if you’re a forty-a-dayer. If you only smoke ten a day then you cadge every second day. It’s a simple formula and it works as long as you can prevent other people from cadging from you. The best way to do this, of course, is to roll your own and offer that little pouch with the draw-string and a packet of cigarette papers to the prospective cadger. In this case, the only persons likely to take up your offer would be a Texas cowpuncher or a camel driver from Afghanistan — and you don’t meet them every day.
