If you’re smoking up a storm, now’s the time to quit

By Mike Lange Staff Writer
    October is one of those months that can be annoying. Snow lovers can’t wait for the first dumping while

the rest of us are grateful for any day that the furnace doesn’t come on.
    Halloween costumes compete for shelf space with Christmas decorations with a few Thanksgiving tablecloths thrown in for good measure. We still have Columbus Day on the calendar, but it’s a low-key holiday at best.
    But one observance in October usually falls under the radar. It’s also Stop Smoking Month.
    The National Cancer Society still promotes National Smokout Day on the third Thursday in November. It’s also been described by colorful nicknames like “Butts Out Day.” However, when some people saw that slogan, they only made sure their jeans were pulled up.
    I smoked on and off for about 40 years. In my high school days, about half the kids lit up and the rest of us played sports. If you were a varsity athlete and caught with cigarettes, you wound up doing a crab walk around the perimeter of the soccer field. So that was enough to discourage most of us.
    Nevertheless, I more or less got hooked on the habit when I went in the Army nine days after graduation.
    Smoking was almost a rite of passage in the military. The only places you couldn’t smoke on a military post were near an ammo dump or in church. A carton of Lucky Strikes was only about $3 or $4 at the PX and even cheaper in Korea.
    I was never a dedicated smoker. I didn’t reach over and grab one first thing in the morning nor did I have tremors if I ran out. I’d smoke more in taverns and at card games than I ever did at home.
    Eventually I saw the light, but only after a vicious coughing spell. I was on Army Reserve duty at Fort Devens several years ago when I promoted to 1st sergeant. Naturally, we celebrated; and for every can of beer I consumed that night, a cigarette followed.
  To make a long story short, I wound up in Sebasticook Valley Hospital a few days later puffing on a nebulizer.  My family doctor wryly told me that I had just beaten the odds. “Not many people get asthma at your age, but you’ve got it — big time.”
    I didn’t take too much convincing to wean myself off Marlboro Lights within a few weeks.
    Today, I’m still taking Advair – a steroid inhaler – in the morning, but I’m not showing too many ill effects. If I had continued the tobacco habit, you might be reading my obituary instead of my column.
    I’m not a militant anti-smoker. The smell doesn’t even bother me that much, unless I’m in an unventilated room. But after you attend enough funerals of smokers in their 50s and 60s, you have to ask why the nasty habit still prevails.
    And when I see a teenager light up, I feel like taking them aside and asking, “What in the bleep is wrong with you?”
    The bottom line is simple. If you don’t smoke now, don’t start. If you do smoke, make a decision to quit this month. You’ll save hundreds of dollars each year and an irreplaceable pair of lungs.
    And you’ll have something else to celebrate in October besides Halloween and Columbus Day.
    Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer. His opinions are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.