I needed to pay the mortgage for my mother’s home. But even with that incentive, I couldn’t quit until my mental health was sorted
‘The addiction came first, always, and honestly I’d do the same again. Not because I ever particularlyto be a smoker, mind you, but because my mental health was abysmal and it wasn’t being treated effectively.’‘The addiction came first, always, and honestly I’d do the same again. Not because I ever particularlyto be a smoker, mind you, but because my mental health was abysmal and it wasn’t being treated effectively.’First published on Tue 23 Aug 2022 18.
I quit smoking and all I have to show for it is this beautiful house where my amazing mother can retire early and in peace, free from the financial pressure that had come to define our lives. By the end, in early June, the cost of my habit was more than $1,000 a month – more than half the cost of the monthly mortgage, which I’d entered into just weeks before. It’s a shameful number, though not the reason I stopped smoking. However, it is the reason I can never go back to smoke.After smoking openly for 17 years and hideously since the pandemic, my apparent need for tobacco was taking control of even my social calendar.
When I heard my friend’s four-year-old son went to the back of the house one night yelling “Riiiiiick” while he looked for me in the yard where I always hid to have a dart, I was disturbed. Somehow, I had become one of those sad old men from the Quit ads who just wanted to play cricket with their boy one last time but couldn’t on account of the emphysema. And I wasn’t even a dad!
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