Smokers Diary: Now's the time for some cold turkey

OPINION: SMOKER'S DIARY WITH PETER FOWLER
I have smoked an average of 35 cigarettes a day for the past 23 years or close enough to 300,000 fags and counting, spending an average of $12 a day for 23 years or $100,740 on smokes to date.
Quite astounding really. All that money spent on the pleasure of becoming addicted to tobacco and then being persecuted for it. That's the first way people try to convince you to give up. "Think of the money you would save."
In my particular case, the amount of money I have spent is truly embarrassing, but this is not why I am going to stop.
One of the common methods suggested for smokers wanting to quit, or give that impression, is Allen Carr's book Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking. I read the introduction which said something like "don't stop smoking until you have finished reading the book". I never read past the introduction.
People often explain to me over a borrowed smoke at a party that this method does in fact work, however, and it helped them become a non-smoker.
I have been a hardcore 60-a-day nicotine addict for about half my life and I don't consider what it is doing to my lungs and body. Ironically, my doctor tells me my most likely cause of premature death is organ failure such as a heart attack, due to a complicating factor called diabetes. Giving up smoking, according to the doctor, would halve my chances of having a heart attack within 24 hours of the last cigarette.
And to live a long and healthy life all I have to do is exercise, change my diet (no more beloved fish and chips) and stop smoking. Yeah right.
I sneak around buildings and pretend I'm not smoking, using an array of smoking anti-detection measures I have evolved which are mostly delusional and don't work. Cigarette smoke really does stink and no matter how much I scrub my face and chew gum after a smoke my wife always seems to detect it.
All this is a far cry from the late 1980s when you couldn't see colleagues in the newsroom for the smoke.
My biggest concern is my son, soon to turn 3, will grow up thinking the smell of dad is tobacco smoke and if dad does it then it's okay. I don't want my son spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on polluting his body with toxic chemicals with an outcome of premature death. And, of course, I want to be around to see him grow up.
I am going to stop smoking because I have promised my wife, several times now, that I will, and if one thing is important in this world, it is that we keep our promises to those we love.
I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. If you are going to do something you should just do it and, besides that, I'll probably wake up tomorrow with a hangover and a pack of smokes in my pocket and the temptation as in the past has been too great, so there's no reason why it should be any different this year. Especially when I have just stocked up with my "last" five packs.
My not-so-subtle mother-in-law, Philippa Yorke, once gave me a frozen turkey out of the blue and the hint took awhile to sink in but, at the end of the day, cold turkey may be the only way.
Cancer took her this year and I told her on her death bed that I would quit, as she chastised me for stinking of smoke. If life has regrets, this was one for me. So then this is also for her. Life is too short, so let the torture begin.
Peter Fowler's progress will continue to be monitored. Send your tips on giving up smoking and feedback to peter.fowler@hbtoday.co.nz