I used to be a smoker, a proper one. By proper I mean, wake up in the morning and have a cigarette with my coffee kind of smoker. It all started in college. I went to art school and it just made sense to smoke. All of my friends smoked. We would hang out in the smoking area and talk about life, love, art and the intensity of it all. We were cool; we wore a lot of black.
Then I graduated and quit. I moved back to California and started running. I remember the first run I did; I coughed for 15 minutes and my spit was black. All of my clothes smelled like an ashtray. My mother wouldn’t even let me bring my luggage in the house. I had to wash my clothes in the garage before bringing them to my room.
Then I moved to LA and amidst the glitz and the glamour, the stars and the starvation I began to smoke again. My life went through these off/on stages of smoking for many more years. In Scotland I didn’t smoke but in France I did. I smoked in the Castro but not in the inner sunset. Smoking has been a strange part of my life for sometime now and I would be lying if I said I didn’t love it. I don’t consider myself a smoker now but I do still occasionally have a cigarette when the mood strikes. It’s a love/hate relationship. I love it because it seduced me with its drug and I hate it because it’s killing me.
I don’t mean it’s killing me metaphorically. I mean it’s actually killing me. Tobacco causes over 438,000 deaths in the US each year and what seems even worse to me, some 8.6 million Americans live with a smoking related illness. How strong is the magic of cigarettes that they can persuade me to smoke them even with all that information? If I am truly living my motto (be good to your body, it’s where you live) then I certainly wouldn’t put what has been proven to be poison into my home.
Having the nicotine background that I have makes me hyper aware that having someone preach to you about the dangers of cigarette smoking is like listening to someone tell you exercise is good for you. We know it’s good for us but knowing the benefits isn’t going to get us to the gym any faster.
You have to want it. I want it because it smells bad and when I see people smoking I feel bad for them. I want to not smoke because it’s poison. I want to not smoke because it makes the after taste of your mouth taste like death. I want to not smoke because I am vain and I don’t want to have a shriveled mouth. I want to not smoke because it’s killing the people around me and polluting the earth and decaying my lungs. I want to not smoke because it’s not being good to my body. Those are my reasons. What are yours?
This Thursday is UCSF’s great American Smokeout. We believe that if you can stop smoking for one day, you can stop forever. You know that I am all about the baby steps and this is your first step. Take Thursday off. You can do anything for one day, anything, even not smoking. So please, join me. Find something that will make you feel good about yourself and do that instead. Maybe Thursday is the day you get a pedicure or a massage or buy fresh fruit at the farmers market or go for a walk and breath in the fresh air and say "I’m sorry" to your lungs.
Be Good to your Body, it’s where you Live.
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