I've made no secret over the years about which Joel Spitzer article is my favorite.[1] It's called "I can't quit" or "I won't quit"? It's a story about a woman terminally ill with stage 4 lung cancer who attended one of Joel's two-week stop smoking clinics.
A long story short, on the third day the spoke. "I have terminal lung cancer. I am going to die within two months. I am here to stop smoking. I want to make it clear that I am not kidding myself into thinking that if I stop I will save my life. It is too late for me. I am going to die and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. But I am going to stop smoking."
But why now? "Well, I have my reasons. When my children were small, they always pestered me about my smoking. I told them over and over to leave me alone, that I wanted to stop but couldn't. I said it so often they stopped begging."
"But now my children are in their twenties and thirties, and two of them smoke. When I found out about my cancer, I begged them to stop. They replied to me, with pained expressions on their faces, that they want to stop but they can't."
"I know where they learned that, and I am mad at myself for it. So, I am stopping to show them I was wrong. It wasn't that I couldn't stop smoking, it was that I wouldn't!"
She'd taught her children a falsehood and as her final lesson she corrected it.
I too was once totally, totally convinced that I couldn't quit. But it was a lie, a lie born inside a hostage mind, a mind convinced that that next fix was almost as important as life itself.
Success is not only possible but likely! Here in the U.S., 61.7% of adult smokers had quit smoking as of 2018.[2] That's 55 million ex-smokers and none more worthy than you.
Truth is, quitting is vastly easier than trying to live and breathe with the consequences of not. By the way, the woman in Joel's clinic, she died 6 weeks after graduation. But, think about it, what greater act of twilight love could she have possibly have shown? And yes, it worked. Her son immediately quit upon finding out.
Remember, it's impossible to fail so long as all nicotine remains on the outside.
References:
2. Creamer MR, Wang TW, Babb S, et al. Tobacco Product Use and Cessation Indicators Among Adults — United States, 2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68:1013–1019 [accessed 2020 May 21].
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