WEEK FIVE IMPRESSIONS

Name: Frieda Bush.

Age: 43.

Smoking history: Smoked since 18. Quit multiple times.

Method: The Free & Clear program, which combines nicotine fading and group support. Also using Zyban.

Tuesday: Once again, I'm happy to see my support group. Some members have succumbed to a cigarette or two. They are really struggling, and I am reminded that I can't have just one cigarette. Every time I've started smoking again it was one or two cigarettes at a party that kicked my habit into high gear again. But knowing and doing are two different things. As I write this, I'm remembering the taste of a cigarette and the rush of nicotine. All I can do is think that smoke through to the coughing, the smelly clothes and the chance that I won't see my grandsons graduate from high school. The urge to smoke has faded.

Friday: I'm cleaning house again. If I didn't have three other people messing it up, my house would be antiseptic by now. I am reminded that smoking was what I did to put off things I didn't want to do. Right now, I'm trying to avoid balancing my checkbook.

Saturday: My sister Diana is visiting this weekend. She's going to be 55 this fall, but she can walk faster and farther than I can and she never lets me forget it. We spend the day walking around Olympia, window-shopping and eating an occasional truffle. I'm not winded. I need to lose some weight and I thought it would be difficult to tell how much of my difficulty breathing was weight-related and how much was due to smoking. I know I haven't lost any weight, so the smoking must have been hurting me more than I thought.

Sunday: I'm amazed how few people in my life smoke. I ate breakfast with friends, went to a play and walked around town some more. No one I was with stopped to light a cigarette. What a change from days structured around when and where I could smoke.

Name: Jim Carlile.

Age: 24.

Smoking history: Smoked since 14. Quit twice.

Method: Hypnotherapy.

Wednesday: I feel my resolve melting. Slipping back into justification mode, I'm looking for excuses to smoke a cigarette -- and there are many. Last night, I realized I haven't read a book all the way through since I stopped and have somehow managed to blame not smoking.

When I smoked, I would sit on my back porch for hours smoking and reading with total concentration. Since then, I can hardly sit still in bed at night to read. Maybe it's what I've been reading, though. I'll just have to keep starting books and not finishing, reading short stories and reading magazines.

Friday: Girl Scout Cookies are a dangerous thing to an ex-smoker with an insatiable appetite. Especially the peanut butter kind and the Thin Mints.

And the shortbread cookies.

Every time I go to Ralph's, there they are out front hawking the cookies. I've tried just walking away or telling them I don't want any or both, but they can tell I'm lying. I keep looking for excuses to go back.

I also like the ones with coconut.

Monday: I went and saw some one-act plays put on by South Puget Sound Community College students this weekend and, in the first one, one of the actors lights up a cigarette on three separate occasions. Sitting in the second row and watching the whole process was like having a horrible itch with your hands tied.

When the actress exhaled, the clouds of smoke hung in the air over her like a zeppelin. It was maddening. I wanted to smoke.

The Olympian Copyright 2000

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