Are You Mistress of Yourself? Or Is That Dry Cigarette?

— the one stuffed with dry leaf?..

The story of my struggle with "nicotine" began three years ago, when I was in the hospital. The doctor reassured me about my health, and told me that the one thing hindering its course was a disturbance and irregularity of the mucous membranes. He asked me how many cigarettes I smoked each day, and I answered: "Forty, or a little more." He said my cough would grow worse if I stayed as I was, and that within five years I would reach a condition that would not please me; but the doctor's words went with the wind!

The mere thought of giving up smoking spun in my head and turned my life upside down! How could I abandon the cigarette — I, the journalist, who had taken it as the companion of my every coming and going? Naturally I refused to listen to the doctor's advice, but deep within me I felt a certain shame: did I really depend to this extent on those fingers?

A year passed, and another after it, with the doctor's words in the wastebasket; but before long I felt his prophecy beginning to come true, for the cough grew worse and worse. I avoided going to the family doctor, who was as accustomed to smoking as I was — naturally his words would do me no good, and I would no doubt answer him: Physician, heal thyself! But he outwitted me where I least expected it. When I laid before him my string of complaints, he remarked that he himself had passed through this stage, and had been obliged to give up smoking. My heart sank at the news, and I began looking about me for a cigarette with which to forget what I had heard. He shook his head after examining my throat; he did not say I was threatened with cancer of the lung, but he hinted obliquely that my condition was unsatisfactory, and that the matter of saving my life came down to abstaining from smoking. And he decreed that I must stop completely for two months. Yet I went on smoking all that day, and every cigarette was a sentence of reproach and a reminder of my weak will. In the evening I was trying to light a cigarette when a wave of coughing took hold of me; I put it back in its place and told my wife that I would give up smoking that very night. And indeed I kept my word, and went about filling the ears of my family and friends with the effects that giving up smoking produces, remarking upon the weakness of everyone who smokes — not forgetting to hint at what an iron will I possessed... Yes, I had to choose: to smoke, and be weak; or to abstain, and prove truly what sort of character I am!

I followed the right road, and stopped for two days;

then a shameful stumble overtook me, and I went back to smoking half a dozen a day, for five days; then I stopped — and for the last time! Those first days in which I had tried giving up smoking were my best helper, for they gave me the first push and taught me that I was capable of independence from that dry, lifeless stuff!

Some think that giving up smoking is hard labor; yet there are those who accomplish it in a single day. Mention should be made of certain things that help the abstainer until he grows used to the new state: some use sweets, or chew gum; others take up means of diversion, such as games that occupy the hands; and some — I am one of them — repeat this phrase: "I loathe smoking, that foul-smelling thing." Food is a help through and through in this situation. There remains the persuading of oneself, so as to master the temptation; for the grip of this habit stands between you and the enjoyment of many of life's pleasures. And no doubt every human being longs to be delivered from slavery; so let him stop, without deceiving himself; and once he is free of it, he feels a precious reward for his struggle, and rises in his own esteem as never before.

I did not become a new person in my nature, but the ugly cough vanished, and in its place came an energy I had never felt before. I went back to climbing the hill without stopping halfway for want of breath! I felt the full savor of food and drink. It was like lifting a pair of dark spectacles from my eyes so that I saw the light; renewal ran through my nerves, making me feel youth stirring again in a body that had nearly broken down before its time; even the sense of smell came back from behind the curtain of smoke, and I could smell once more the scent of earth and flowers, and of nature!

The greatest test passed by the one who gives up smoking is the knowing of himself; for dependence upon the cigarette degrades the powers of the mind and demolishes them. Is it not a thing for shame, that the addict should go out into the storm to buy a pack of tobacco? Does his face not redden when he begs a cigarette from a stranger, as I once did and as many still do?

It is fear and cowardice, and they must be got rid of; and then there is a delightful feeling a person has when he knows that he — and not those fingers stuffed with dry paper — is master of himself!