Five years is a long time to do anything: college, relationships, whatever. And, having done it anything that long you tend to develop this hole where it used to be once its gone. It took me five years of smoking to decide to quit, and the straw that broke the camel's back was smaller than a millimeter in diameter.

I'd tried quitting before of course, every smoker does. We all go through these same stages; experimentation, addiction, denial of addiction, acceptance of addiction, and attempting to kick addiction. Every smoker worth their salt has tried to kick the habit at one time or another, and about 80% fail miserably.

I'd quit about halfway through my smoking career with my friend Miles, the two of us tapering off together up while we worked at summer camp. It was easy to do up at camp: you were the better part of half an hour away from the nearest store that would sell cigarettes and very few people up there smoked. If you were out, you were screwed. So rationing yourself was really easy since going over budget meant that you'd be completely high and dry later in the week.

We eventually kicked but it only took a few weeks after leaving the our smoke-free compound for me to start again. It started slowly, like it always does. That's the funny thing about smokers: unlike any other addict who has kicked, they never think that it will grab them back in again if they just have a few. Of course, no smoker ever thinks that they're going to be addicted in the first place.

I certainly never thought I'd become a smoker, not in a million years. My grandfather smoked his way into lung cancer and my grandmother on the same side into emphasema. It certainly wasn't glamerous. But it was something to do when you were drunk or your friends were getting high and you wanted to be sociable and not stoned. I started with cheap cigars and worked my way up into full-strength Camels. But I'd only had them at parties, and only to cut the taste of the cheap beer we'd drink in mass quantity.

I know with painful certainty when that turned the corner. It was on my 19th birthday, September 26, 1991. My friend Don and I were taking a break from celebrating and were out lying on the grass in front of the dorm smoking--lying since we were unable to stand--when Don gave me shit for not inhaling.

Any real smoker can tell the difference between that rich smoky cloud of someone just getting the taste and someone going for the deep inhale and expelling that thin grey smoke. I tried it a few times, coughing, but the buzz--the buzz was the thing. I tried it again the next day, having a smoke while I walked across campus to drop off my registration forms. I stumbled through the administration building, thanking the gods that it was deserted and no one was around to see my addled gait.

The high, oh the high. The high is why we all become smokers. That nice singing buzz, like a really clean alcohol buzz without the bloating or nausea. Euphoria and a bit of addled mindedness and a mild sense of spinning. And the best part is that it goes away fairly quickly.

After a while though, and not even all that long, that high lasts less and less. Soon, you're lucky if you get that buzz with that first cigaette of the day, and you're now having cigarettes to quiet that nagging itch that you know can only be quieted by cigarettes.

Smokers endure a lot of shit to get their fix. In this state, smoking is all but a criminal act with its practitioners huddled around doorways and under awnings, attempting to duck the elements while having the cigarette which is disalowed indoors. Nonsmokers make all manner of disparaging comments and sometimes worse.

As addictions go, it isn't a bad one. You've got paraphanalia and your favorite hook-ups just like any good glamourus drug, you can still operate reasonably well in society under its influence, and smokers share a fairly tight common bond, always willing to help out a brother in need.

In the end, what did it for me was a tiny sore on the tip of my tongue. It was a few days after Halloween when I cut my toungue a bit on some post-holiday candy and devloped the sore. Ordinarily that kind of thing would heal in about a day, but its location meant that every time I had a drag of the cigarette, it got more irritated. I couldn't smoke any way that wouldn't irritate it, but I kept going anyways.

Man, I was die-hard too. I'd smoke through colds, through infections, through all manner of things that I should probably have not. But this little sore was inescapable. And it underscored every single drag I took, every cigarette I had with a painful clarity.

And that's when I decided I had smoked long enough. I was done. Next time the sore wouldn't be from some devilish piece of candy but from some cancer that was going to eat my face, and I'd still be smoking. There I'd be with no hair and chemo sickness and my cigrettes. It was time to quit.

Fortunately for me, the Nicoderm patch had recently gone over-the-counter. At about $45 for the first two weeks, it was far more expensive than my habit. Oh, and were the first days rough. November 9, 1996 was the last day I was a smoker and the first day on the patch. The patch evens out the levels of nicotine, allowing you to work on the habitual side of smoking while it works out the addiction side.

But the patch is a harsh taskmistress. The even, flat level of nicotine it dumps into your system doesn't replicate the peaks and valleys of nicotine that you get from regular doses of cigarettes. So, in the beginning at least, you've either got too much nicotine or too little, leaving you either completely wired or edgy and depressed. For me, these cycles were hourly as I rolled along the the addiction rollercoaster. I certainly didn't feel like smoking, I felt more like dying.

A good thing too--smoking while you're on the patch is a good way to give yourself a heart attack, according to the box. Especially for an overweight couch-potato smoker like myself. The roller coaster flattened out in a few days, but the lethargy would return when each of the three steps down occurred.

Add to this the fact that if you wore the patch while sleeping you had incredibly vivid dreams and you made it just a wonderful experience. It took ten weeks and around $300 to kick. Midway through the process the lungs begin to heal some and recoat with a healthy layer of mucus. My lungs, unused to this layer which is usually flayed by smoke, began to produce unproductive coughing fits, as if I were constantly about to hawk up a mass of phlegm, but never did.

By the time I was done, I decided that I never wanted to go through that again and needed to be really careful in the future. I wouldn't smoke while drinking, I wouldn't have the "occasional cigarette". I would stay away from edges of the slippery slope. No other kind of addict would go back for a "little taste" after rehab and neither would I.

And, amazingly, it was easier than I thought it would be. The places everybody associated with smoking, such as bars and restaurants, never haunted me in my post-cigarette world. For me it was all the places where a cigarette gave me something to do: chilling out after a really hard day at the office, walking across my old campus for the first time, waiting in line. The cues were odd, but regular.

In time they faded, but the pangs come back. They're hard to fight too, kind of like sex with an ex-girlfriend: you know you shouldn't and you know you'll hate yourself afterwards, but you really, really want to and, hell, it's easily available.

In the three years since, I only succumed to temptation once, and really only as an experiment. After our moving out party someone had left a cigarette and a lighter on the edge of the table. After busting my ass to get a project done while at the same time I was closing escrow, I was sailing high on a feeling of closure and accomplishment. I wondered what it would be like to go back after all this time and taste the forbidden fruit after all this time.

And just like post-relationship sex, it wasn't as good as I rememberd and left me with a bad taste afterwards. Needless to say, I won't be going back to smoking anytime soon.