Across the pond

……is not a happy one.

Waking each day to a fit of coughing. The dedicated smokers’ early morning cough. But now it goes on all day, probably because I caught a cold on my recent summer holiday in Brittany. Torture to smoke. Torture not to smoke.

But even when free of infections it’s bad. Cannot smoke in a seaside shelter, even when there is Force 10 gale blowing and the risk of making any other human being ill from passive smoking is nil. Cannot smoke after dinner in any restaurant or pub. Have to go into the garden to smoke at the houses of many friends.

And on top of that it costs. Now frequently six pounds a pack, so that soon smokers, like heroin junkies will be stealing in order to finance their addiction.

And it’s bound to get worse as each year goes by. I have never been one of those smokers who thought they never have to suffer the negative consquences. Even before Sir Richard Doll established that smoking probably caused long cancer, I had spent year’s listening to my father coughing every morning. Being confined to bed with bronchitis. And in later years getting out of breath when he walked up hill.

In the event he died, aged 67, of prostate cancer, before his smoking habit killed him. I have now lived eight years longer, and the chances that some smoking related disease will be on my death certificate increase exponentially every year. It will probably be emphysema or chronic bronchitis, or a mixture of the two.

So it is obviously about time I had another attempt at giving up. Today there is lot’s of help and advice available. But on my preliminary trawl of the web just now, I cannot find anything that is addressed at people like me.

Smokers who are also manic depressives. The healing effects of the nicotine drug but also in my view the other comforts of smoking. There is the joy of the long exhalation, where you get rid of all that nasty irritating smoke you have just taken in. Very relaxing and calming.

 Smoking helps to relieve the glooms, and, equally important, makes sure that we pause, and take a few deep breaths, before we get carried away by some particular manic enthusiasm.

Maybe there is another smoker out there of my irlk, who has successfully given up, perhaps found something as good as nicotine.

Meanwhile I am doing what the NHS tells me to do – making a plan to stop in a few days time. And drawing up that plan using the help available.

The nearest smokefree adviser to here is in Boots in Lyme Regis, so I am off there tomorrow to see what they advise, and maybe pick up patches or gum.

But, whatever happens, I count myself lucky to have enjoyed the benefits of smoking for so long. Unlike R. J. Reynolds the founder of the Reynolds tobacco company of the Camel cigarette which has brought me hours of enjoyment since I discovered it in New York in 1960. He got nasty emphysema though pancreatic cancer got him before it could kill him. However the son and nephew and several other members of the family died youngest of lung cancer or emphysema.

Patrick Reynolds, the founder’s grandson, has devoted most of his life to campaigning against smoking, not only working to save the lives of Americans, where anti-smoking legislation has been tough for many years, but working to persuade the governments of such smokers’ paradises as Greece and China to see the error of their ways.

Reynolds is the second largest US tobacco company and its Camels are one of the leading international brands. So far as I can glean from a quick trawl of the web, the Reynolds family is not currently involved in the management. The majority owner and the top management are from British American Tobacco (Ken Clarke’s lot) so its Brits not Yanks who are the leading merchants of death.

Thus far I have written this with two fags and am now screaming for more. So am not at all sure that I can manage without the weed.

Better men than me have tried and failed. According to a recent CBS report Barack Obama is still smoking despite what the White House press office has been asserting.