The Last Cigarette…(?)

That cigarette in the picture above is the last (?) cigarette I’m smoking. Well, smoked. At 11pm on December 28th, 2007. I’ve changed the posting time and date backwards to the moment I threw that cigarette away, just so I’d have a timestamp to remember this possibly successful endeavour.

This is not a patronizing post on the harms of smoking and why smoking is bad for you. It is bad for you, everyone and everyone’s uncle knows this. Every single smoker has thought about quitting at one point or another, so I’ll leave that at what it is: a personal choice and issue.

My quitting started a year ago with a New Year’s resolution. Yeah, those never work. I know, I’ve tried it. Going cold turkey just like that didn’t work for me the first time ’round. Allowing the thought to simmer and marinate for a year helped. Smoking not being allowed in bars etcetera as of this last June helped. (The idea was my girlfriend’s, and she’s in this with me…)

Whatever your reasons may be for quitting or not quitting smoking, I have something to boggle your mind on: Statistics.

I started smoking on my Saturday, April 28, 2001 (my 18th birthday) and quit on Friday, December 28, 2007.

That’s 2436 days, if you count the start date and the end date.
Or 6 years, 8 months, 1 day.
Or 348 weeks.
Or 58,464 hours.
Or 3,507,840 minutes.
Or 210,470,400 seconds.

So, for the sake of argument let’s call it a pack smoked a day. A pack has between 10 and 30 cigarettes, so we’ll average it at 20 cigarettes per pack.

That’s 48,720 cigarettes.

That’s a lot of cigarettes.

Let’s talk money then, shall we? I once calculated that every cigarette, depending on the price and size of the pack of cigarettes (and a few other factors), a single cigarette in the Western world costs in the ballpark of 0.20€, give or take.

That’s 9744 euros.

That’s a lot of money.

Alrighty, there’s my rationalisations on the matter. I shall now go to sleep with unavoidable anticipation of the next few days, the days which’ll be the worst. Jolly good.

Good night!