Screw you for not smoking

Last fall, after 13 years of pleasurable puffing, I smoked my last cigarette. I thought quitting would make me feel healthy and hale -- so why the hell is my body falling apart?

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Health, Addiction, Cigarettes, Smoking, Rebecca Traister, Life

March 14, 2007 | After having smoked cigarettes every day for 13 years, I took my last drag on Oct. 10, 2006.

Like most smokers, I'd considered quitting many times, set arbitrary dates for cessation, pondered patch-gum-Wellbutrin methodology, and never brought any plan to fruition. My choice to stop this fall took me by surprise; I hadn't planned it, and while the process was excruciating, the moment of decision was as simple as going to bed one night and realizing that "it" -- my life as a smoker, which I had really, really loved -- was over. Also unexpected is that so far, I have not backslid, though I'm not hubristic enough to pretend that this won't get harder with the return of warm weather and outdoor dining to Brooklyn, N.Y.

But what has truly floored me is what has happened to my body since I shocked it by taking away its daily feed of nicotine and tar.

This is not going to be a piece about how as soon as I put down the cancer sticks, my heart began pounding stronger, bringing rosy color to my suddenly smooth cheeks, or how my hair grew lustrous and I began tasting food better and my lungs expanded to gulp in billows of fresh air, like a princess awakened from her carcinogenic coffin after the evil Camel's spell was lifted. That's the tale I'd been told by many smug people who urged me to quit over the years. This is about what actually happened.

October

Unsurprisingly, I gained some weight. There are many explanations for why quitters pack on pounds: Cigarettes speed up metabolism; they are appetite suppressants; the oral fixation they satisfy can be sated only by French fries. Here's what was true for me: During those first weeks without smokes, I rewarded my daily virtue on a pasta-and-pork-product-based system. I also treated myself by trading in my loathed morning cardio workout for yoga. I'd previously prided myself on being the only woman in her 30s in New York never to have taken a yoga class, but I'd gathered that the practice might aid the post-smoking cleansing process. Or something. As it turns out, beginning yoga, while fun, does not torch calories.

I made my peace with the extra baggage. Except for the smoking, I am in relatively good shape: strong and muscular, I eat vegetables and lean proteins and I don't drink soda. As I shoveled in delicious dinners, I decided that 10 pounds was a reasonable price for kicking my wickedest habit.

I was less prepared for what happened to my skin. At 31, I have not yet become transfixed by the thin lines wending their way from my eyes, and I'd heard that quitting would brighten and smooth whatever imperfections might vex me. But a week after my last cigarette, things began to go very badly on my face. I broke out in angry blemishes, I got a canker sore inside my bottom lip, and my complexion ran the gamut from pallid to waxen. Perhaps, I reasoned, employing the kind of New-Agey logic that leads people to believe they need colonics, it was decades' worth of toxins being expelled through my skin.

They were certainly being expelled from my lungs! One of the knee-slapping ironies about smoking is that many people who quit promptly develop a scratchy throat and hacking cough, producing globs of repulsive substances as their scilia come lurchingly back to life after decades of nicotine-induced slumber. And as soon as they get back to their job, shooing bad stuff away from the pulmonary system and showing the stuff that's already there the door, it's a multi-Kleenex rainbow tour of phlegm.

November

The hacking quieted, the breakouts slowed. I was confident that the worst was over, until I felt a stinging in my throat. This was not the twice-yearly cold or handful of viruses that have afflicted me in adulthood. This was sharp yet lumpy; it involved swollen glands and white patches on my throat; it hurt when I drank orange juice, a sensation I remembered fondly from sick days ... in the third grade. I had strep throat.

At Thanksgiving, I was prescribed my first antibiotic in probably 20 years. It worked for 24 hours. I was prescribed stronger antibiotics. The sore throat came back again. In all, it took three weeks to rid my body of a bug that hadn't been able to take me since I was 8.

When I whined about the injustice of contracting strep after finally quitting smoking, my doctor laughingly suggested that the events might be linked. After all, the stuff I'd been inhaling for 13 years had been killing me slowly; apparently it had been chivalrous enough to dispense with other germy invaders as well. Now I was smoke-free, but my nicotine sentinels had abandoned their posts, leaving me vulnerable to attack.

December

The strep packed its bags by mid-month, and I went on a Christmas shopping spree with a young friend. We wrapped ourselves tightly in scarves, battled the throngs, and tried on hats all along Canal Street. Over dinner the next week, the night before I left for Christmas at my parents' house, my friend's mother recounted the serio-comic saga of discovering that the family had head lice. After a fascistic turn in a scalding shower later that night, I discovered I had them too.

Here I should be emphatically clear: I am not an insect person. I should also be clear that I was lucky to discover my tiny guests so early, when there were very few of them. I nonetheless staged a shock-and-awe campaign (using all chemical and biological weapons at my disposal) that ensured that the stray evildoers were eradicated. So unrelenting was my attack that in retrospect, I feel a little sorry for the lice. I think my mother -- nonplused, after 31 years of lice-free motherhood, at being asked to pick through her daughter's hair with a fine-toothed comb long after the beasties had been vanquished -- also felt sorry for them.

Over Christmas, it became apparent that the yoga was not doing wonders for my coordination. Physically, I was off my game: clumsy, distracted, jittery. One night, I descended barefoot into my parents' basement, my head swathed in whatever tea-tree-and-napalm cocktail I had concocted that day, and accidentally stepped on a garbage bag containing lamb-chop bones. A spiky protrusion punctured my tough sole and worked itself deeply into my foot; I limped upstairs, spurting blood. The next day, gingerly getting gifts out of my parents' car, I closed the trunk on my head, causing my already-raw scalp to bleed, and raising an egg-shaped lump that took a week to recede. Saddest was that I was unable to recover from these malfunctions of female grace with a contemplative cigarette.

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