Within an hour of my earnest decision never to smoke again, I began to itch for a smoke, and that powerful desire would never subside or fade. When the phone rang, when a visitor came to my office or home, when I ran into a momentary work problem, when I was at a party, even when I first opened my eyes in the morning—I thought of a cigarette. Contrary to the wonders promised to follow my emancipation from nicotine, I did not sleep better, my food did not taste better, my thoughts were not clearer, I did not feel more vigorous—I was, in essence, 165 pounds of body and mind almost exclusively devoted to thinking about the cigarette I wanted but could not have.

In the fine tradition of people who have given up smoking, I gained weight whenever I stopped. In order to substitute something for the cigarettes I craved, I chewed gum at the rate of about three packages a day (which, after all, added only 60 calories) and kept some gumdrops at my desk (but they’re only 30 calories each). And as a substitute activity during moments at the dinner table that might otherwise have been occupied by tapping a cigarette from the pack, lighting it, puffing it, flicking ashes from it, putting it in and taking it from the ashtray, and finally stubbing it out, I ate a little more bread than usual at lunch and dinner. (But those extra rolls and slices of toast and even the larger-than-usual desserts didn’t add more than 300 extra calories daily.)


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