Post by Ann on Apr 30, 2009 7:55:13 GMT -5
BAKER: CONFESSIONS OF A CONFLICTED SMOKER
Source: Boston (MA) Globe
Date: 2008-12-14
Author: Billy Baker, billybaker@gmail.com, 326-4731
URL:
www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/12/14/confessions_of_a_conflicted_smoker/?page=full
ID: 275801
What makes me conflicted as a trying-to-quit smoker is the wimpiness of my rationale for trying to quit. The health risks from smoking are real and documented and horrific. They are the only reason anyone should need to quit smoking. They are not, I am embarrassed to say, the reason I want to quit smoking. The reason I want to quit smoking is that our society has made it so d**n shameful to be a smoker that I don't want to suffer that indignity anymore. . . .
It is all, all of it, part of the effort to "de-normalize"
smoking, and if you ask me, I think we deserve it. But I am a conflicted smoker, a secret smoker, who has wanted to quit almost from the day I started. I am weak for being unable to quit, but I am meek for letting others tell me what I choose to do is not something I'm supposed to do. . . .
Helfer is able to fire off selective statistics in an attempt to support almost everything he says, but his chief issue is one of control.
The Smoking Section is very public-access. Helfer's set consists of a framed black-and-white poster of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra -- all having a smoke and a laugh -- and his logo is a crudely drawn image of a cigarette burning in an ashtray. During the half-hour show I see, he rails against the Boston proposals, unintentionally hangs up twice on his only caller before finally getting him on the air, speaks lovingly of his "Smoker of the Week" -- a 107-year-old guy from Denver whose obituary he had read recently -- and works off a theme that plays on the line between leadership and dictatorship. When it is over, Helfer, who is an assistant at the Harvard Law School Library, goes into the lobby and rolls a cigarette. To smoke it, he has to move outside. . . .
The day after the Mad Russian tried to talk me out of smoking and Steve Helfer tried to talk me into it, I sit on my porch, smoking what I vow will be my last cigarette -- I have not had one since leaving Shubentsov's office, but I do not feel cured
-- and take stock of my situation.
My first thought is how much I hate myself for taking on this story assignment. . . .
When I was reporting, I really wanted to find that super-anomaly, the smoker who definitely shouldn't be smoking -- the marathoner, the cardiologist, the pregnant woman -- and ask why he or she stuck with the choice. I know they're out there, but I just couldn't find them. Or, I should say, I hit a point where I didn't need to. Because as far as anomalies go, I am in the lowest statistical category I could find on the CDC website.
Only 7 percent of people with graduate degrees still smoke. I have a graduate degree.
It's past time I smartened up. And I don't need anyone else to tell me that.
Source: Boston (MA) Globe
Date: 2008-12-14
Author: Billy Baker, billybaker@gmail.com, 326-4731
URL:
www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/12/14/confessions_of_a_conflicted_smoker/?page=full
ID: 275801
What makes me conflicted as a trying-to-quit smoker is the wimpiness of my rationale for trying to quit. The health risks from smoking are real and documented and horrific. They are the only reason anyone should need to quit smoking. They are not, I am embarrassed to say, the reason I want to quit smoking. The reason I want to quit smoking is that our society has made it so d**n shameful to be a smoker that I don't want to suffer that indignity anymore. . . .
It is all, all of it, part of the effort to "de-normalize"
smoking, and if you ask me, I think we deserve it. But I am a conflicted smoker, a secret smoker, who has wanted to quit almost from the day I started. I am weak for being unable to quit, but I am meek for letting others tell me what I choose to do is not something I'm supposed to do. . . .
Helfer is able to fire off selective statistics in an attempt to support almost everything he says, but his chief issue is one of control.
The Smoking Section is very public-access. Helfer's set consists of a framed black-and-white poster of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra -- all having a smoke and a laugh -- and his logo is a crudely drawn image of a cigarette burning in an ashtray. During the half-hour show I see, he rails against the Boston proposals, unintentionally hangs up twice on his only caller before finally getting him on the air, speaks lovingly of his "Smoker of the Week" -- a 107-year-old guy from Denver whose obituary he had read recently -- and works off a theme that plays on the line between leadership and dictatorship. When it is over, Helfer, who is an assistant at the Harvard Law School Library, goes into the lobby and rolls a cigarette. To smoke it, he has to move outside. . . .
The day after the Mad Russian tried to talk me out of smoking and Steve Helfer tried to talk me into it, I sit on my porch, smoking what I vow will be my last cigarette -- I have not had one since leaving Shubentsov's office, but I do not feel cured
-- and take stock of my situation.
My first thought is how much I hate myself for taking on this story assignment. . . .
When I was reporting, I really wanted to find that super-anomaly, the smoker who definitely shouldn't be smoking -- the marathoner, the cardiologist, the pregnant woman -- and ask why he or she stuck with the choice. I know they're out there, but I just couldn't find them. Or, I should say, I hit a point where I didn't need to. Because as far as anomalies go, I am in the lowest statistical category I could find on the CDC website.
Only 7 percent of people with graduate degrees still smoke. I have a graduate degree.
It's past time I smartened up. And I don't need anyone else to tell me that.