Quitting Smoking

by Jerry Blackerby

Smoking is a habit and habits can be changed. The key requirement to quitting smoking is motivation. A person that is motivated and has the Lord’s help can quit. I know—I did.

My father smoked from childhood until he was 42. He smoked cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. He preferred cigars and inhaled everything he smoked. Before he quit, he was chain-smoking one cigar after another. He began preaching at age 40. Two years later, he was driving to a church to possibly become the pastor when he decided to quit smoking. He finished a cigar and threw the burned-out stub out the car window. He immediately reached into his coat pocket for another cigar. He removed the cigar wrapper; bit the end off, and started to light it. At that moment, he thought that if he was considering being the pastor of a church, he needed to quit. He tossed that cigar out the window. He then pulled out the other cigars that he had in his pocket and threw them out also. Mom asked him what he was doing. He said he had just quit. He never smoked again.

I began smoking at age 15. I could not stand cigars, but did smoke both cigarettes and a pipe and inhaled both. I smoked from two to four packs of cigarettes a day, depending on how much I smoked the pipe. I watched many people try to quit and fail. I never tried because I enjoyed smoking and did not want to go through the problems other people had when they tried to quit. I did not have any noticeable health problems from smoking. In fact during my annual physicals, when a doctor would admonish me about smoking they would have me do the emphysema test, blowing into a meter to measure lung power. Most of the non-smoking doctors would blow into the meter to show me how good a non-smoker’s lungs were. Then when I blew into the meter, I baffled them because my lungs were stronger than theirs. They always had me repeat the test because they could not believe what they saw.

My wife began smoking after we were married because of me. When she had her heart attack in 1989, the doctor said she had to quit. I knew that I could not sit and smoke in front of her, flaunting the fact that I could smoke and she could not; therefore, I quit. I told the doctor that she had already quit when she entered the hospital and I would quit when she came out. I quit at noon the day before she was released from the hospital. Neither of us have smoked since. Both of us quit cold-turkey. We have been quit for over 17 years.

On Friday before my wife was released from the hospital on Saturday, the doctor told me they were releasing her the next day. I would have to drive 120 miles to take her home. I left the hospital and went to the hotel room to make telephone calls to our home area. I lit a cigarette as I waited for a return call and remembered that I had promised to quit the day she got out of the hospital. I decided that I could not wait to quit, because I had to drive two hours to get home the next day and driving would be my hard time. I would have to quit right then and not just before starting to drive home.

I normally would reach in my pocket, get a cigarette out without removing the package, and light the cigarette without thinking. While smoking my “last” cigarette, I reached in my pocket and turned my cigarette pack around backwards. I would not be able to get a cigarette out of my pocket without thinking about it. I enjoyed that “last” cigarette. When I left the room, I stopped in the bar to have a beer before returning to the hospital. As I sat down, I reached to my pocket and remembered not to smoke. I reached again as the bartender brought me a beer. The bartender asked if I needed a light or something. I laughed and told him I had quit smoking. He asked me when and I told him 30 minutes before. He just laughed—that was 17 years ago. The next day, before starting home, I threw away the cigarette pack I had in my pocket.

I really DID NOT have a problem quitting. My motivation was my wife. I joked that if she died on me, I would go back to smoking and I still have a collection of pipes stored away. I do not think I will ever start smoking again because of the money I am saving and it would probably be harder to quit again. We DO NOT restrict our house and some of our children and friends smoke when they come to visit us.

We are around smokers quite often. We sit in the smoking section of restaurants when we are with smoking friends or the no smoking section is full because it does not bother us. The fourth day after I quit, I met with an engineer at work in a dedicated smoking room for about thirty minutes. We had always met in the smoking room when I needed information, so that is where he asked me to meet him.

When I can give up 40 years of smoking as easy as I did, it has to be motivation and the help of the Lord. I cannot help but think that anyone else can do the same thing if they are motivated and allow the Lord to help.