Not smoking

I have stopped smoking on around April 1st 1978. I am not sure exactly when I smoked my last cigarette, but deciding it was on April Fool day made it easier for me to remember.

When we were teenagers, our parents allowed us to smoke only when we had reached the age of 15. Neither of them had ever smoked. I think that the reasons they did not forbid us completely to smoke were that they were not really aware of the health risks at the time and also that they probably guessed it would have been counter-productive.

So, I started to smoke at the age of 16. Up to 19 years old, my consumption of cigarettes was mostly limited by the lack of money.

When I enter the Naval Academy at the age of 19, I enrolled in the program to buy sixteen packs of cigarettes every month for the equivalent of one US dollar! This program has been cancelled since, of course. I also got more money so I was able to buy more cigarettes.

Five years later, I was smoking an average of 25 cigarettes a day. I realized that smoking was bad for my health, but I was addicted and unable to stop. It took me five more years and several failed attempts until I finally did it in 1978. For more than a year, I thought every day about smoking. After two years I only thought about it when I was in the presence of other people that were smoking.

I am now completely free from this addiction and I have never regretted stopping.