by Derotha Ann Reynolds

Created on: August 15, 2011   Last Updated: February 22, 2012

Stopping smoking will make you healthier. People will stop glaring at you, and your body will stop deteriorating at the current rapid rate, unless, of course, you have other obnoxious habits as well. But the best reason for quitting smoking is that you will get to know yourself better, and your life will become more tailored to who you are, rather than to who people perceive you to be.

As a lay counselor for the Freedom From Smoking program for the American Lung Association, I discovered many things about nicotine addiction.  I presented the program from 1987 until 1992.  It was a part time position, and it paid very little, in terms of making a living. The requirements for the position at the time were that you be willing to devote two or three hours a week presenting the program, and it was recommended that you be an ex-smoker.  A full presentation lasted six weeks at the time, and the meetings were for one hour a week, most weeks.  The “quit week” had two meetings, however: one meeting where you committed to quit, and then a meeting one or two days later to see how you were doing. (You were not doing well, especially if you had not smoked.)

At the time I took the job, I had been an ex-smoker for about a year and a half.  I had recently lost a full-time job because I had quit the job and then changed my mind, but I discovered that changing my mind was not an option. It had something to do with my social skills, although I hadn’t figured that out yet. I ended up taking two or three part-time jobs, and the job with the Lung Association required that I be available for various times of day, so this worked out. I arranged my hours with the other part-time positions so that I could accommodate the schedules of various employers who would buy a clinic from the Lung Association. I sometimes had as many as six clinics going at the same time.

The Freedom From Smoking program was an excellent quit program, and many very intelligent people signed up for the course as an aid in quitting smoking. I had not had the insight to realize that I needed help quitting smoking. After all, I was very good at quitting smoking, I had quit for two years several times.  I was approaching that two-year limit when I signed up to present the program, although I was oblivious to the implications at the time.

My first clinic was a public clinic put on at the “Y” and attended by random people who saw the program advertised

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