Doomed to take up jogging?

Press, 3 September 1984, Page 16

Doomed to take up jogging?

RUSSELL BAKER

the “New York Times,” columnist tells how he deceived

himself out of his addiction to cigarettes.

One of the things I did to break the cigarette habit was to promise myself eternal life.

“If I give up these smokes,” I said to myself, “I won’t have to die.”

This is not quite as silly as it sounds, because the medical literature on tobacco has for years insinuated that smoking leads to death, and I had had enough such literature drummed into me to believe it.

It was natural, then, to tell myself that shaking the addiction would relieve me of the obligation to die.

Did I seriously believe this? Let me put it this way: when struggling to be free of tobacco, a resolute battler will use any weapon available, including lying to himself and believing the lie. Let me cite another example. “Instead of smoking two packs daily, I put aside every day the price of two

packs of cigarettes, I can soon save enough money to buy an Italian sports car.”

A minute’s arithmetic will expose the absurdity of this proposition, but if believing it would help conquer the habit, I would believe it. And I did believe it, just as conscientiously as I knew how.

After seven weeks of putting aside $4.60 a day — the price of two packs in Manhattan — I had $224.

This is enough to buy a very good dinner for two in a good New York restaurant, but at this rate it would take 30 years to accumulate the $50,000 necessary for the car. I had no doubt about living another 30 years to claim my reward, since I had persuaded myself that giving up cigarettes had made me immortal. On the other hand, the promise of eternal life did not necessarily excuse me from the possibility of insti-

tutional confinement in such condition that I could no longer distinguish an Italian sports car from the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

I had been seven weeks free of cigarettes when I made these calculations, and no longer had any appetite for a smoke, and, therefore, no need to continue kidding myself, so I spent the $224 on I don’t remember what: candy bars, shaving cream, shoe resoling — things like that. Whatever it was, it was nothing like an Italian sports car. As the addiction lost its grip, it was possible to move back toward reality about matters such as how rich I would become by saving the price of 40 cigarettes per day. Soon I was also able to abandon the notion that, having quit cigarettes, I would no longer have to die. To tell the truth, I had never been entirely comfortable with my new im-

mortality. During my smoking days, anti-smoking people had so often told me I was doomed that I had become resigned to the idea of eventual death. It seemed that for miserable smokers like me, at least, life could lead nowhere else.

But now, having persuaded myself that I had escaped this commonplace conclusion to life, I had trouble adjusting to the idea of infinite longevity.

As the years galloped on toward eternity, my joints would become increasingly creaky, I suspected, unless vigorous measures were taken.

Did giving up cigarettes mean I was doomed to take up jogging at the age of 95? Such thoughts were so depressing that I refused to entertain them during the first month of my struggle against tobacco. After the first month, when the addiction was fading, I slowly perceived, not without a

sense of relief, that the medical people had been conning me. I whined a bit about their betrayal until a medical friend spoke to me like a Dutch doctor.

“Yes, even non-smokers must die,” he said, “to make room for the 10 billion new people who will be arriving in the next century.

“They’d hate you if you hung on, talking about how much better things were in the good old days, and — believe me— you would positively hate them.” I’m sure I wouldn’t hate them, but I’d probably feel contemptuous of any who smoked. I’m entitled to do that now. It’s one of the few enduring rewards of breaking the habit. That, and being able to walk up two flights of stairs without gasping for air, and having an extra $4.60 every day, which will buy two rides on the subway and a candy bar with wrapper suitable for littering.