Six Years Smokeless

Early this afternoon, I was driving on State of Franklin, returning home from a run to the post office, and I noticed a driver ahead of me flicking the ashes from his cigarette out the window. I first remembered doing that myself. Then I remembered to be glad I no longer smoke. Then I remembered that I've never smoked in Johnson City--not since I moved here, at least. Then I remembered that today is the 6th anniversary of the day I quit smoking!

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It happened like this. That summer of 2001, my little family and I were all over the place. We were in Murray, Kentucky, where I taught at Murray State University. We were in Asheville, North Carolina, where we were to live briefly again in preparation for moving to Johnson City, Tennessee. We were in Ahoskie, North Carolina, a small town down on the coastal plains where my wife's father came from. And I was due to return to Murray on 30 June to prepare for teaching a couple of classes in the second summer session.

All this traveling, all this up and down somehow upset my allergies, and I had strange dizzy reactions that I'd never experienced before. It was a bit scary, to be honest. And so I was concerned about that portion of my health--not the smoking--and, I think, was vulnerable to any actions that might tend toward improving the way I felt.

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Anyway, I left Arden, North Carolina, on the morning of the 30th and bought a pack of American Spirit (the yellow pack, I think) just before I got on I-26 to begin the long trip to Murray. I traveled west on I-26 and then west on I-40, smoking all the way. I stopped in Nashville and smoked with my friend Mark. I headed northwest on I-24 and then took the two-lane through the Land Between the Lakes--smoking, smoking, smoking.

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I remember rolling into Murray at 11:30 or so that night, smoking as I arrived the last cigarette in the pack I'd bought that morning. I finished it, and I finished smoking.

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Lots of elements probably came together to make this cold-turkey quit a success: the allergy-related dizziness already mentioned, the fact that I was away from my smoking buddy in Asheville, that I was house-sitting my first couple of weeks in Murray for non-smoking friends, that nowhere in Murray could I buy American Spirit, and--last but not least--that my young son wanted me to quit.

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I still want a cigarette periodically. But the urge is never that strong. If I survive to 75 ot 80 and both cigarettes and the urge are still around, I might take it up again.

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But I doubt it.