FIRST PERSON: Running start on the no-smoking road

It's easy to stop smoking.

I stopped three times -- easily.

The catch is ingraining the quitting, which I was able to do 37 years ago when I stopped smoking for the third and final time. In my first attempt at freedom, I lasted a year; in my second try, I was smoke-free for only three months.
 

I have always hoped to have been of help to someone somehow in writing as a newsman for more than 40 years.

In preparing this piece -- more of a how-I as opposed to a how-to  -- I was reminded of one of the original Google engineers who years back had set as his goal to help at least one percent of one percent of the world's population in whatever way he could.

Ambitious, some of his American colleagues commented, but he showed them the math and it came out to 700,000 people. Achievable, if not already surpassed, by that Google genius (of Asian extraction, by the way) who is still helping others.

I started smoking in my senior year in high school, inveigled into the habit by a dorm mate spoiled by rich parents. The school was run by the Anglican-Episcopalian Church and smoking was forbidden on pain of expulsion. I made it through graduation (Brent School, Class of '61) and continued to smoke through two years at UP Baguio.
 

I quit smoking for the first time when I transferred to UP Diliman in 1964. Unable to afford boarding house rates, I had joined the cross-country team so I could stay for free at the Athlete's Quarters at the basement of the Molave Men's Dorm. I had to stop smoking in training for a dual meet with Ateneo. 

Permit me a small digression. The rivalry between UP and Ateneo runners in the early 60s was so intense it went beyond jostling each other as we pounded asphalt roads and cross-country paths.
It would exhibit itself in raucous put-downs in smoke-filled eateries frequented by both Maroons and Blue Eagles.

A favorite Maroon anecdote is of two guys urinating inside a toilet and the first guy to finish goes to the sink. The second guy zips up and heads for the door, at which point the guy at the sink looks at him contemptuously and says, "you know, in Ateneo they teach us to wash our hands after urinating." The other guy retorts, "in UP they teach us not to urinate on our hands."

On the other hand, the Ateneo long-distance runners were from upper crust families and  loved to portray us middle-class Maroons as coarse buffoons from the boondocks (accurate in my case as I am a native of Bontoc, Mt. Province).

The haughty Eagles would often tell of two newly introduced guys, one of whom comments after an exchange, "you're very intelligent, you must be from Ateneo." The recipient of the flattery smiles condescendingly, "... and you, obviously, are from UP." 
 

"Oh, you could tell because of my witty responses?"

"No, I saw your Oblation ring when you lifted  a finger to pick a booger from your nose."
 

For reasons I have forgotten, that UP-Ateneo cross-country contest got postponed indefinitely.

There being no longer a need to improve my aerobic capacity, I went back to smoking while cramming for exams. Fortunately, I could still enjoy free stay at the Athlete's Quarters because I had started writing for the Philippine Collegian sports page.
 

The second time I stopped smoking was in 1967 when I was a cub reporter with the Manila Chronicle. I was earning P268 a month which could not support a tobacco habit, much less bed and board in a crowded Ermita rooming house.

Every time I felt the nicotine urge, I would chew a stick of Spearmint gum. Bad strategy because in three months, the sugar had caused my waist to balloon from 28 to 31 inches and I couldn't afford to buy new pants on my below-minimum wage. So back to waistline-trimming tobacco.

That trim waist (I doubt it was my good looks) proved attractive to a brown-haired Zamboangueña secretary of the president of the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex which I covered as a sportswriter. I graciously allowed her to woo me and finally gave in to her marriage proposal six months later.

Four children and a tubal ligation followed in logical succession and in 1978 when the national economy could not support my monthly salary, I decided to quit smoking for good.

The first three kids were in elementary school, my youngest daughter was a milk-guzzling two-year old and the rising costs of education, imported cigarettes and baby formula could not mix.

It was a front page article in the Manila Bulletin, a two-column story above the fold beside the banner headline, which made me pull the trigger on tobacco.

I seem to recall it was the July 28, 1978 issue but after all these years, I maybe in error by a few days. The story was on government efforts to shore its finances (while killing mine) and I distinctly remember it carried the head "Cigarette Taxes Hiked 20 Percent".
 

From previous stop-smoking experience, I knew exercise would help and chewing gum was taboo. I went jogging regularly at the Cultural Center and paid homage to the spirits of workers entombed in Imelda Marcos' collapsed film palace.

I also informed drinking buddies at the Press Club of my resolve and, being  perversely contrarian newsmen (newshens included), they would blow smoke in my direction and display freshly opened packs of blue-seal Salems, Marlboros, and Virginia Slims to tempt me into breaking my vow.

Keeping temptation at bay is key. I learned this from an army colonel, a combat strategist whose office was at the 3rd floor of Armed Forces Headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo. He would lock his pack of cigarettes and lighter in the trunk of his car and climb the stairs to his office. He would give the car keys to his sexy secretary -- not to any military staff who would leap to attention at a stern look.

Whenever he felt the urge to smoke, he would go out to the corridor, look down at his car baking in the sweltering sun three floors down, and decide a smoke was not worth losing face with his secretary, enduring the heat and getting wet with sweat.

I was told by some former smokers that the number 7 is the most difficult to get through in a program to quit smoking. Supposedly, the first 7 days, the next 7 weeks, the next 7 months -- the first 7 years -- are the hardest. 

I was 34 when, echoing Edgar Allan Poe's raven, I said nevermore to smoking.

However, in the first few years of abstinence, I could not have written "non-smoker" with honesty and certainty in a resume.  But at 40, I could declare that the non-smoking habit had been ingrained in my lifestyle.

I am now 71 and have passed a road marker set by my father who died "young" at 68. A gun-handy policeman for whom risk to life was a daily occurrence, he once advised me that he would prefer I drank, rather than smoked. I took his advice to heart.

He didn't and died of lung cancer.

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Alex Allan was a  newsman for more than 40 years, most of that time spent on the beat. When he became managing editor, he convinced then President Cory Aquino to write for him and the People's Journal became the only newspaper in the world to have the sitting head of state as a columnist. He believes laughter is medicine and that one must aim to die with grace, with vigor and with dignity.