A little poetry helps a lot. My poems communicate to me a sense of urgency, and the meter and rhyme help preserve the focus. Then the verses wait like silent sentinels in my mind. When summoned, they become forceful messengers of conscience who restrain my urge to smoke.
The close of 1964 finds me successfully avoiding the habit. The smoking lamp is out, but it remains to be seen whether the scenario of defeat will replay anytime soon.
It is now approaching seventy years since that impromptu Yokohama ballet precipitated my first smokeless intermission. And it has been half a century since I last touched a cigarette.
Yes, self-administered poetry therapy can cure. It is not merely theory. It is a smoke-free fact.
Psychologist/poet Irwin Flescher, PhD, is smokeless in Roslyn, Long Island, New York.
Copyright © 1996
Updated 2013
Calling it Quits
A touch of flame
And puff of shame
To feed the gyp of gyps,
But I for one
Will ever shun
The curse between my lips.
And if I lie
I prophesy
A dread apocalypse,
For should I smoke
My heart would choke
And simply call it quits.
Now begins a new episode in the attempt to rid myself of this tobacco dependency. I memorize the twelve lines and have instant recall whenever I want. The words murmur in my mind’s ear and trigger a heightened awareness. Anytime an inner longing for the taste, aroma and visual haze of a glowing cigarette emerges, I self-administer the remedy—and resist. This mobilization of rhyme and reason soon becomes an automatic response.
Bad habits die hard, and more than likely they have nine lives. Although I continue to avoid those lethal tobacco fumes, the Sword of Damocles looms over my poetic defense. My cigarettes are asleep, but my aroused nicotine craving lingers. The armistice is shaky. Doubts persist.
Defeated twice, why would I not fail again!
Feeling uneasy, I take a critical look at my poem. I note that a cease-fire represents a temporary cessation of hostilities, and that a stay of execution means a postponement or delay of the inevitable. Have I built into my poem a subliminal invitation to fail? Looking further, the boast that abstinence doesn’t bother me is certainly a self-deception. Finally, the equivocal “if” in the last lines frightens me that I may smoke that first cigarette and rekindle my self-destructive war.
It becomes evident to me that something more is necessary to make my resumption of smoking unthinkable. I liken the memorization of my poem to an inoculation of a verbal vaccine to produce a resistance to the smoking disease. Yet it needs a powerful booster shot to maintain that immunity. As before, I commit new lines to memory.
Cease-Fire
The very day I called a halt
To personal pollution,
My lungs were granted by default
A stay of execution.
My cigarettes remain unlit
While I remain aloof,
And it doesn’t bother me a bit
That they are fireproof.
With outstretched arm and sudden burst
The blazing butane beckons,
But if I do not smoke the first
I cannot smoke the second.
[The recovering addict] excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, “I won’t count this time!” Well! He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.
Intent on not violating my renewed vow of abstinence, I borrow a phrase from James and title the excerpt “When the Next Temptation Comes.” I keep a copy of this selection on my office desk and refer to it whenever I feel the desire to smoke.
With sustained enthusiasm I refrain from smoking for a number of months. But one vulnerable day I am abruptly caught off guard, rendered defenseless—and capitulate when the next temptation comes.
Given to writing verse, I decide to compose a poem that captures my intention to end once and for all my stupid, dangerous addiction.
After a turbulent time on the choppy seas all military personnel were informed that the SS Marine Marlin would reach its destination on the following day. As it did each night the loudspeaker emitted the audible command: “Now hear this. Now hear this. The smoking lamp is out.” Everyone hit the sack, but it was nearly dawn on the North Pacific before I fell asleep.
Our first view of Yokohama’s busy harbor catches all of us unawares. As we peer over the side of the ship at the wharf below, the sight is impressive, enchanting, mystifying. Surely this must be Halloween, but it isn’t. The festive pier, like an enormous theatrical stage, features a group of men and women clothed in a variety of costumes. The women are wearing brightly colored kimonos adorned with ornamental obis; the men are attired in funny-looking jackets with quiet patterns and an assortment of caps and strange headgear. Many of the people scurrying about wear thick wooden clogs. Some Japanese faces are partially concealed behind unmistakable surgical masks. Nevertheless, the bewildering events that unfold have more to do with behavior than with dress—and everything to do with cigarettes.
Responding to repeated requests from center stage, a soldier tosses a handful of cigarettes into the crowd below. Like a sudden shift in tempo in a choreographed ballet, the players scramble for the little offerings. The dynamic scene is captivating and contagious. Suddenly, clouds of cigarettes begin raining down on the seductive dancers by the choreographers of this production. The tempo quickens with a dramatic burst of energy when a cigarette pack is hurled toward the enthusiastic performers, followed instinctively by a shower of packs from an audience of gleeful, yelling benefactors in the balcony above the fray.
How paradoxical, I thought; here I am in 1945, a radar specialist in high altitude bombardment preparing to invade this country, and instead of viewing descending bombs, observing squadrons of American soldiers with outstretched arms carpet-bombing the harbor with flammable weed at the urgent request of the enemy below.
The lesson of this stunning demonstration in port is not lost on my buddies and me. The evident premium placed on American cigarettes, hitherto unavailable to the Japanese, offers tempting possibilities. During my service with the Allied occupation forces, I barter my cigarette allotment (one carton biweekly) for a variety of possessions: Japanese camera, binoculars, silk kimono, samurai sword and other exotic souvenirs.
It comes as a surprise to me to learn that I can set aside my tobacco craving and quit cold turkey. In point of fact, throughout my tour of duty in Japan I never smoke again.
In the summer of 1946, I am transferred stateside and receive my discharge from the Army Air Forces. I am twenty years old. My cigarette habit, so long comatose, is revived. It is as though I had never stopped.
The month of February 1964 arrives with my tobacco addiction intact. Except for the interlude in Japan, I have been a pack-a-day smoker for over two decades. My wife (who doesn’t smoke) is expecting our third child. We have two sons. Our daughter is born on Valentine’s Day.
Coincidentally, just one month earlier, on January 11, 1964, the first Surgeon General’s report on the detrimental effects of smoking is released. I am shocked to consider that limiting the number of cigarettes smoked to only a few a day could be lethal. In February I quit the habit.
Unfortunately, the day comes when I grab a smoke and am caught once again in the addiction trap. Overwhelmed by a deep sense of failure, I am forced to confess: I am a chimney!
What to do? I cannot let my family down. The weight of obligation and responsibility requires continued efforts to quell the lure of that tenacious weed. As a practicing psychologist I consider what therapeutic intervention to employ. In a chance reading of William James’ classic, Psychology, published in 1892, I am struck by these remarks in a relevant passage on habits.
A Memoir
IRWIN FLESCHER