"A Smokers Story; the Smoker’s Wall" Part 2 of 3

Synopsis;
This is the second of a 3-part article, which is about my battle with smoking. In this posting, I describe how the decision to quit was helped by my son. I describe what “The Smoker’s Wall” is and my first attempt to quit smoking. Describing my year from hell as I go through a year of repeatedly trying to quit and continually failing. And how, through a synchronicity, a twist of fate, I learned of hypnosis. How I found a hypnotherapist in Long Island, NY who finally helped me to permanently quit smoking.

"A Smokers Story; the Smoker’s Wall and my Year from Hell" part 2 of 3

A wall forms between a smoker and his loved ones each time they raise the subject of smoking cessation. They want him to quit and be healthy because they love him and even if he knows the dangers associated with continued smoking, the part of his subconscious that is designed to smoke, throws up his "Smoker's Wall". This wall is tall and thick, growing taller and thicker with each plea from a loved one to stop smoking.

My wall was reinforced with each fight over smoking between my wife, Chris and I. She was as aware of the dangers associated with smoking cigarettes as I was, but Chris was a non-smoker, someone who never smoked. My "smoker part" was so strong, that no matter who spoke to me about quitting, Chris, my mother (who quit smoking after my father died), my sister, my son, even if it was my own thoughts about quitting smoking, the wall went up immediately.

That wall is strong, immovable, and impenetrable however, in one loving, unexpected, non-premeditated conversation with my son, in the hallway of our apartment; my smoker's wall came crumbling down. I slowly turned to look at my son; his eyes darted from the cigarette, burning in my cupped hand to my eyes and back again.
"But you smoke, Daddy" he said "and if you get cancer and die, I won’t have anybody to play with". He put his small, soft hands on my cheeks with tears welling up in his perfectly blue eyes, looked into my eyes, shaking his head and said, "Please, Daddy, don’t smoke any more."

I found my "Last Straw". I stubbed out the cigarette I was smoking, took my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, crushed it into a ball and said,
"For you Aaron, I’m gonna quit, 'cause I love you'".

A smile came across his face as he took my hand and dragged me into our apartment and at that moment I truly felt that I was going to quit.
"Mommy!" he shouted enthusiastically to my wife who had just finished cleaning the dishes in the kitchen,
"Guess what?… Daddy is going to quit smoking! He promised!”
Chris dried her hands and picked up my daughter, Amy who was joining in on the excitement gave me the smile that always made me melt. The whole family was jubilant with my decision to quit. Although I thought I saw a bit of skepticism reflected back to me in the eyes of my wife.

Before Aaron went to sleep that night, he ran over to the recliner I was sitting in and jumped up on my lap. It was late so I picked him up and carried him into his room. Amy was asleep already. As I usually did, I tossed him on his bed as he put his arms up for his "kiss goodnight". As I leaned over him to kiss him on the forehead, he threw his arms around my neck and said, "I love you, Daddy… Remember you promised …no more smoking… OK?"
With a kiss to his forehead, I said, "Promise!" and I meant it!

I closed his door half way and walked into Amy’s room. The stuffed animals seemed to be smiling at me as I quietly kissed my baby daughter goodnight. She was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and I stood looking down at her. A feeling that every father of a little girl knows, enveloped me. This feeling of love, protection and pride filled me as I thought of not being there for her. I had to be there for my little girl, the way that my wife's dad, who died of a heart attack due to his smoking, was not able to be for his little girl.
Going to sleep that night, many things went through my mind.
“I really HAVE to quit…
I really WANT to quit…
I CAN do it…
I will never smoke again!”
This determination lasted 8 hours, until I was in my car driving to work the next day…

-“My year from Hell”-
I had finally decided to quit smoking but I didn’t know how I would be able to do it. The drive to work the morning after my decision to quit smoking was sheer torture. I was thinking of nothing but smoking and that torture continued for a year. The year was 1984, which was not only a very scary novel, but was also what I called, “My year from hell”. That year I became a professional “quitter”, I must have quit smoking 100 times, I was miserable and I thought the misery would never end.

I was at work at Pathmark one day towards the end of my year from hell and was speaking with Nick, the produce manager. We were both in the same situation, smokers who were married with kids and both desperately wanting to quit. We were both in the break room and as I usually did, took my cigarettes from my pocket and offered Nick one. He refused, saying that he had finally been able to quit!

“What!” I said with a shocked look on my face…
“How?”
He looked at me and with a smirk and a shrug, quietly said, “Hypnosis”.
“What the hell is Hypnosis?” I said, thinking it could be a way I could finally end this painful year.

“My cousin”, Nick began to say, “smoked for 25 years and just like you and me has been trying to quit for years. He heard from his friend, about a guy, who uses ‘hypnosis’ to help people, like us, quit smoking. He said that he went to this hypnotist and he quit smoking in only one session. I waited a month” he continued, “to see if my cousin would go back to smoking, like you and I always do but he hasn’t smoked in over a month and he even said that he’ll never smoke again! So, I got this guy’s number and got hypnotized! And Ga… I swear to God, I don’t even miss them! I haven’t smoked in almost two weeks, but the real crazy thing is that I really believe I won’t smoke anymore!”

I need to digress here a little…
At the time, I had not even heard of a synchronicity, which is, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity)
“the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. In order to be synchronistic, the events must be related to one another temporally so as to rule out direct causation.”
Now, what does that mean? A coincidence may be just that, a curious connection between events, a synchronicity is a coincidence that presents itself to you, for a purpose. That said…

My awareness of hypnosis was stirred, I had heard from a very reliable source, my smoking buddy, that he and his cousin were hypnotized to quit smoking, and it worked. So, my thought process was, if it worked for them, it could… hopefully work for me. However, this was well before the internet. Now you just Google, “Hypnosis + smoking” and you have a thousand hits to choose from. Then I looked in the yellow pages and found nothing.

So, when my niece informed me that she was going to a hypnotist in Long Island, to quit her smoking habit, I almost fell off my chair… What a coincidence! (NOT! No such thing as a coincidence… synchronicity yes; coincidence, no. This was the second.)

My mother won a small NY lotto; her ticket had 5 out of 6 numbers and paid $2000. It was the day after I told her about the hypnosis coincidences and she called and said that she knew I didn’t have the $350 for the session and that she was insisting that I should make the appointment and that she would love to pay for it; it would be my belated birthday gift. It was also the third “coincidence” and I was curiously amused by the weirdness of it all.

The next day at work, I went next door to the pizzaria for a coke and a slice and to look at the magazines Pete, the owner had behind the counter. Waiting for my slice to heat up, I flipped open an old Playboy it opened to a page with a quarter page advertisement which read;
“Learn Hypnosis and get all the girls you want!”
I wasn’t interested in “all the girls”, but the word “Hypnosis” seemed to be twice as large as the other words. I could not believe my eyes. This was the fourth time in so many days that I had been hit in the head by this hypnosis stuff! Now I may be a little thick headed sometimes, but even I had to acknowledge that something I didn’t quite understand was behind this.

I called my niece’s hypnotherapist and made an appointment.

The story continues next week…11/16/2008
"A Smokers Story; Trying Hypnosis” part 3 of 3