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Mind Games
Alex Leo, a 25-year-old editor in New York City, started smoking during the summer she spent in France when she was 14."Everybody smoked. It was just a habit I picked up," she says. By the end of the year, she was up to a pack a day and continued to puff away for the next ten years. But her reason for quitting is more psychological. "Smoking is a way of removing yourself from the reality of a situation. You don't really take care of yourself as a smoker," she says. "You're always waiting for your next cigarette. My apartment was smoky, so I never cooked, and I'd sit around and smoke as opposed to joining that guitar class or dance class I'd always wanted to take."
Leo has tried to quit "dozens and dozens of times." This time, she's also cutting out alcohol, since the two are intertwined for her. "I realize now how much of my life has been dictated by smoking. You have to arrange your schedule to make sure you have cigarettes and that you can be in a place where you can smoke."
Quitting isn't really about her health. "It's always there in the background, but it's harder to quit for a negative reason," she says. She's going cold turkey, as she has in the past. "I've gone a month or two without smoking, but I always knew I was going to start again, like when I quit before I ran the New York City Marathon. I told myself I just had to stop for a while, which made it easy, because I knew I wasn't giving it up forever."
She's trying not to focus on the possibility of weight gain. "I read in Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking that when you see quitting as a deprivation, you're going to want to replace it with something, like food. If you don't, you won't," she says. So she's staying positive: "I see it not as something I'm denying myself but as something I'm giving myself. It's much easier to quit when you realize there's something hopeful in the future," says Leo. "And the hope for me is having a better life."
Progress Report
When she was interviewed for this article, Katie Laster had gone a week without smoking. But three weeks later, she'd fallen off track. She's still trying to quit. Victoria Tucker went back on the prescription drug, and two weeks before her 30th birthday deadline, she was down to one cigarette a day, and none on some days. And Alex Leo had been smoke-free for a few weeks, but she slipped only weeks later, "just falling back into old patterns," as she says. "It's hard to form your life without cigarettes when you started smoking at age 14." But at press time, Leo had been smoke-free for three weeks and remains determined. While it's a tough road ahead, all three women are confident they'll succeed.
Success Story
Jessica Rowbotham's nine-year habit came to a screeching halt last year when she learned she was having a baby. "Being a nurse," says the 29-year-old from Verona, New Jersey, "I knew the health ramifications. But it was still appealing. I was nervous about weight gain, and I truly enjoyed smoking."
Still, she always made mental quit dates: when she finished nursing school, when she took her boards, when she got married and the one that worked: pregnancy. "I'm doing it more for the baby than for me, but I would love not to go back to smoking," she says.
Her daughter was born on October 2, and a month later, Rowbotham was still smoke-free. "I've been too busy to smoke," she says. "If I have a free second, I'd rather eat, sleep or go to the bathroom."
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