How to not Quit Smoking

How to not Quit Smoking

Yes, you read that right. How to not quit smoking is the title of this article, and I’ll explain why.

I have been a cigarette smoker for years, a lot of years. We won’t go into exactly how many years, but let me put it this way: I should win an award for how many years I have smoked. Perhaps something like that could be offered each year by a consortium of all the companies that make cigarettes since it is hard-working and committed cigarette smokers who buy their products, put up with deteriorated health, the waste of money, burnt clothes, lost time, bad personal odor, scorn and derision of family and friends, and sometimes even death in pursuit of what they practice and believe in. I’m sure that all cigarette smokers will agree that this habit is not an easy one to maintain, in fact, if you think it is easy, you should try quitting. It isn’t easy. In fact, you should consider not doing it, if you smoke. Someone once said, “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times,” or something like that. And before you say, “Oh yea, Mark Twain said that, be advised that the Internet also attributes it to W. C. Fields, and ultimately, no one really knows who it was attributed to. That doesn’t really matter here. Someone said it, apparently. And regardless of who said it, it is pretty funny. It is funny because those who say “don’t smoke” say that it is difficult to quit. What is even funnier is that anyone would ever want to quit smoking. Why bother? Starting to smoke is the really hard part, and no one makes jokes about that.

How to Start Smoking

Of course, before you can ever not want to quit smoking, you have to start smoking. And trying to start smoking is almost as hard as not quitting smoking. This is probably the most difficult part of not quitting smoking because it is not easy to do. You may disagree, saying that you simply pick up a cigarette, put it in your mouth, light it, and then puff on it. You are partly right. That is truly easy to do, but just puffing on a cigarette is really not smoking. Puffing is reserved for the more effeminate forms of smoking like cigars and pipes. Supposedly, you don’t inhale when you engage in these forms. However, there are apparently a few hearty individuals who choose to inhale cigar or pipe smoke, which seems super-hardcore to me, but perhaps they started out as cigarette smokers, for whom the thrill of cigarette smoking just wasn’t enough. More power to them. They are brave souls and I’d wager a guess that they really find it hard to not quit smoking. I know it sounds a little confusing, but bear with me.

When learning how to start smoking, it takes a little while to learn the coordinated ability to suck smoke out of a cigarette and then inhale it. It’s not easy. In fact, the first time I began to master this technique, I almost fell out of my tree-house, which is where I went to hide to try to learn to start smoking. The first time I managed to inhale the smoke, it was like doing LSD. The nicotine contained within the inhalation must have gone straight into my blood stream through my lungs, and then straight to my brain. I got very dizzy and almost vomited, but it was worth it. After a few minutes, I began to calm down, regained my composure, and then tried it again. You are probably wondering also, where I got the cigarette that I used for my first attempt at starting smoking. Well, fortunate for me, my father smoked and I sneaked one out of his pack one day as it laid alone in the living room when he got up to use the restroom. When he returned, the pack was still there, but I was gone. Having grabbed a pack of matches out of the kitchen junk drawer, I was on my way to the tree-house. After that first inhalation there, I debated whether I should continue or not. Did I feel bad enough because of trying it? Was it exciting enough for me almost falling out of the tree-house, and did I want more? I have to admit that I gave in to temptation and curiosity, and I tried again. Same thing happened. In fact, I tried a lot again while I worked to overcome the dizziness, perfect my inhalation skill, and not feel nauseous. I couldn’t believe it later when I returned to the house, without falling out of the tree-house, and my father immediately confronted me, inquiring if I took one of his cigarettes. Are you kidding me? He counts his cigarettes? Wow, what a dedicated smoker he must be to know exactly how many he has at any given time. It seemed apparent to me that he would definitely never find himself in a future situation where he would try to not quit smoking. Why would he ever want to? I considered him a master of his pastime. It took years before I figured out that he had smelled tobacco smoke on me and realized that I must have taken one of his cigarettes. But did he give me a hardy handshake and say, “Welcome to the club, Son!”? No. Instead, he yelled at me and told me about why I shouldn’t smoke. But Dad, if I shouldn’t smoke, then why do you? That was confusing. In fact, at this point, I know I had seen him not quit smoking many, many times. In fact, you could say it was really an everyday thing. So I quickly learned that there was a whole trick to learning how to start smoking that I had to master if I was ever going to be successful with the habit and someday try my hand at not quitting smoking.

Quitting Smoking Advice, not not Quitting Smoking Advice

It’s out there, in fact it’s everywhere. Quit Smoking! It’s even printed on packs of cigarettes. That’s crazy! Whoever came up with that idea? Unless…maybe it’s some sort of reverse psychology. Yes, that has to be it. Perhaps making people think about quitting smoking only makes them want to smoke more because they probably don’t really want to quit in the first place and saying that makes them think more about smoking. Otherwise, why would they continue to buy them? You certainly don’t want to see warnings printed on the side of ever food item you buy that contains corn syrup, telling you how bad it is for you. Or you don’t want to buy a car that runs on fossil fuels with a big warning across the dashboard, which tells you all about global warming or the degradation of the climate. But like I said, the warnings about cigarette smoking are out there. They are everywhere. So right from the beginning, when you may be trying to start smoking, there are entities trying to tell you to not do it, from your parents to the very people who make the cigarettes.

I went online a typed a search string into my favorite search engine: How to quit smoking. 108 million results. OK, so I then typed in, “How to not quit smoking.” The results numbered around 114 million, but they were really all cleverly disguised websites about how to quit smoking. Nice try. Everything leads back to how to quit smoking, but how well does that work? They don’t realize that it is infinitely harder to not quit smoking, which is perhaps why everyone is so afraid to talk about it, or try.

Why Quit Smoking, or not?

All you have to do is watch an old Humphrey Bogart movie, or maybe any old movie from the 1930’s or 40’s to see firsthand how cool smoking looks. Bogart had a way of smoking a cigarette that looked like he invented it. A cigarette was barely held by the ends of his thick lips and it would droop down as if it was melting out of his mouth. He had a way of lighting it with a match that was even cooler. As he did so, you’d almost imagine that the movie was about how Bogart held and lit a cigarette than about gangsters or private detectives. And speaking of movies and lighting cigarettes, there were as many ways of lighting a cigarette as there were cool ways to hold one or blow smoke from one, but you had to look cool. Matches could be lit by dragging them over almost any surface, including a bad guy’s unshaven face. And once the match ignited, it was quickly brought to the end of the cigarette, which seemed to be eagerly awaiting it like a starving Ethiopian child with its outstretched arms seeking a bowl of rice. Lighting would be followed by the end of the cigarette glowing brightly as the smoker deeply drew in his first puff and sinewy ribbons of smoke began rising toward the sky. It all sounds very romantic doesn’t it? Well, except for the part about the starving child. People who smoke or were ever portrayed smoking made it look cool. I think they had to. Because if they didn’t, people might think it wasn’t cool and then they might never want to try to start smoking.

And then there are the occasions when any smoker will tell you that a cigarette tastes the best, like after eating a meal, or first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee. They will also tell you that a cigarette is the best thing to have when you feel stressed out. Again, going back to the movies, imagine all the scenes you may have ever seen of a hospital’s birthing waiting room, with fathers pacing up and down, back and forth, waiting for the birth of their child. They chain smoke as they pace, wearing a path into the carpet, looking like a locomotive with an engineer who died at the controls while the train operated at full speed. You have a fast-paced, dynamic job in sales perhaps, or marketing. What to be a better performer and deal with the pressure better than anyone else? Smoke a cigarette.

Years before I ever became a professional smoker, I was introduced to it. I was in grade school, and used to hang out with a few of the kids who weren’t necessarily trouble-makers. Let’s just say they were from the wrong side of town. One day while walking with them through some weeds, we all stopped at some trees that had been blown over during some storm that happened years earlier. One of the kids, Mark, pulled a pack of cigarettes from out of his shirt. I don’t know where he kept them all day so the nuns at our Catholic school would never find them, but he could produce them in an instant. I sat across from him, watching. Before he stuck one in his mouth, he offered me one. “No thanks,” I said, “I haven’t tried starting yet, and I don’t think I want to just now.” Many years later, when I had already been a successful smoker for a long time, I ran into a friend from those bygone days. He noticed how cool I looked when I smoked, apparently stepping back away from me to get a more admiring look as I lit one, and asked me if I remembered Mark. I told him that of course I did. Turns out that Mark had been able to quit smoking and eventually became a well-known and respected heart surgeon. I would have thought that quitting smoking would have taken him forever because he looked so cool doing it as a kid and seemed so committed. Life is funny that way.

So, all these things considered, if you do smoke, be aware of how you do it and why. Remember to look and act cool. It wasn’t easy to start smoking, so once you become an accomplished user, it is necessary to maintain the act by knowing how to properly do it, otherwise you are faced with trying to quit, or worse yet, trying to not quit.

Conclusion

Getting back to how this article began, you may have decided by now that the easiest way to not quit smoking is to never start, but if that were the case, then I would write an article entitled, “How to not start smoking,” and as previously stated, starting smoking could be even harder to do than quitting. My father probably discovered the easiest way to not quit smoking. He never did quit or even try to quit. He ultimately developed emphysema and then later, heart disease, which is the thing that killed him. He must have known all along that it is way easier to not quit smoking than it is to start. To quit, all have to do is die. but if you really want to live, don’t start.

Years before I ever became a professional smoker, I was introduced to it. I was in grade school, and used to hang out with a few of the kids who weren’t necessarily trouble-makers. Let’s just say they were from the wrong side of town. One day while walking with them through some weeds, we all stopped at some trees that had been blown over during some storm that happened years earlier. One of the kids, Mark, pulled a pack of cigarettes from out of his shirt. I don’t know where he kept them all day so the nuns at our Catholic school would never find them, but he could produce them in an instant. I sat across from him, watching. Before he stuck one in his mouth, he offered me one. “No thanks,” I said, “I haven’t tried starting yet, and I don’t think I want to just now.” Many years later, when I had already been a successful smoker for a long time, I ran into a friend from those bygone days. He noticed how cool I looked when I smoked, apparently stepping back away from me to get a more admiring look as I lit one, and asked me if I remembered Mark. I told him that of course I did. Turns out that Mark had been able to quit smoking and eventually became a well-known and respected heart surgeon. I would have thought that quitting smoking would have taken him forever because he looked so cool doing it as a kid and seemed so committed. Life is funny that way.

So, all these things considered, if you do smoke, be aware of how you do it and why. Remember to look and act cool. It wasn’t easy to start smoking, so once you become an accomplished user, it is necessary to maintain the act by knowing how to properly do it, otherwise you are faced with trying to quit, or worse yet, trying to not quit.

Conclusion

Getting back to how this article began, you may have decided by now that the easiest way to not quit smoking is to never start, but if that were the case, then I would write an article entitled, “How to not start smoking,” and as previously stated, starting smoking could be even harder to do than quitting. My father probably discovered the easiest way to not quit smoking. He never did quit or even try to quit. He ultimately developed emphysema and then later, heart disease, which is the thing that killed him. He must have known all along that it is way easier to not quit smoking than it is to start. To quit, all have to do is die. but if you really want to live, don’t start.