There it is, bitches! One year without a smoke! Who’s the man?I intend for this to be the last time I talk about smoking here on Bonius.com, so let’s have a quick look at how this all went down:

1993-1996:

I started smoking my freshman year of college. I was up to a pack-a-day in a few months and stayed there.

1997-1999:

I got a real job and moved away from home. Lots of stress, and lots of binge drinking/partying. I was up to about 1.25 pack/day, but on nights out, I would sometimes burn through two packs.

1999-2000:

Finally had enough of it, and managed to quit for about 6 months. An ill-fated trip to New Orleans broke my resolve. The French Quarter has a way of making all manner of dastardly deeds seem perfectly alright.

2003-2004:

Up to 1.5 packs/day. A friend of mine announced that he had esophageal cancer. I continued at 1.5 packs/day.

My friend died.

All of us at work went outside for a smoke break to discuss this news.
It seemed like a pretty fucked up thing to do, given the circumstances.

One week later, I decided to quit smoking and to get my ass into good enough shape to ride in a cancer charity ride. I started this blog to track my progress.

After a few false starts, I smoked my last cig on August 23rd 2004.

The Bottom Line

1. Smoking is fucking lame.
2. Don’t do it. It will kill you.
3. If you are already doing it, stop it.
4. I smoked for 11 years, and I quit, so you can too.
5. I have not had the slightest craving for a smoke in probably 4 or 5 months, so it is possible to return to normal.

Now that the sermon is over…

When I started this blog, I said that I wanted

1. to quit smoking
2. and to get into shape

I defined ’shape’ rather loosely as the ability to ride my bike 100 miles in one shot. That definition probably needs some work, but for today, I’m happy to have one of those two items crossed off my list.