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Alan Bonander, and other ex-smokers, and still-smokers, I don't really want to turn this into a SMOKER list -- but ---- We have similar stories, but I'm a little (?) older than you, Alan. I worked summers in a coal and lumber yard. At lunchtime, we would take up a collection of pennies, and I, the kid, was sent across the tracks to a small corner store, to buy a pack of cigarettes to share. Sometimes we bought a pack of cheap cigarettes for 8 cents, but some days we splurged and had the best cigarettes for 10 cents, like Camels (I'd walk, run, jump, swim, fly, your choice, a mile), or Lucky Strikes (before the green went to war). In town, the corner cigar store, with a genuine wooden indian (whoops! -- native american) holding a bundle of cigars, sold single cigarettes for one cent, any brand. There was a perpetual flame to light your cigarette, or cigar, or whatever. Later, I vowed that when a pack of cigarettes went over 25 cents, I wouldn't be able to afford it, and I would quit smoking. Just about exactly a year ago, I was in the hospital for the first one of two three-week sessions to remove a cancer on my colon. This was after a hernia and a hydracele, life-threatening hyper-thyroidism, and related double vision (Graves Disease), and a diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease, all within three years. For some reason, I decided that I did not smoke cigarettes any more. I told my wife where I hid my cigarettes, and I told her to throw them away before I came home. Over the many years, I had often wanted to quit, and tried to quit, or even had quit, (as some one else has said here, two or three times on some days), but I had never before *decided* to quit. And it worked. I think it is a case of self hypnosis. On two, or maybe three occasions, during the last year, I have tried to smoke a cigarette. I can't take more than two or three puffs. So take heart all you poor still-smokers, if Alan and I could quit, anybody can, even you. Parkinson's Disease is not our decision, but smoking cigarettes is. From: [log in to unmask] * SLMR 2.1a * McLean Virginia USA Fri 11-11-94 10:09 pm --- * KMail 3.00y