“What do you mean?” I was asked.

“I mean, for example, that if I want a glass of wine, I might pause to check whether I am drinking for myself or for some of the dead drunks who might be in the room, hoping to get another taste through me. And if I want to smoke, I might check whether I’m doing that for myself, or for some of the dead smokers connected with me, or my family, who are craving another drag.”

He didn’t say much after that. But in the evening, as we gathered for a ritual of fire cleansing, he came prepared. I had told the group that everyone needed to reach down deep inside and find what they really needed to release from their lives – like a dead relationship, a fear or anxiety that was constantly in the way, a self-defeating habit or addiction. I asked them to write or craft something that would burn to represent each of the things they were seeking to cast out of their energy fields and their lives. In the ceremony, they would announce what they were releasing, and place these tokens in the fire, and then blow or spit out the heavy energy they wanted to purge.

The smoker came with a love poem. He had written it on a huge, thick piece of art paper. It spoke of his passionate and constant devotion, over thirty-five years, to a mistress who had never failed him: cigarettes. He read it to us in front of the great fire we had blazing in the hearth. Then he shook a cigarette out of the pack, bit off the filter, and stuck the tube in his mouth. Now he was eating the tobacco without swallowing it, letting the flakes and the cigarette paper slosh around in his mouth.

He wasn’t done. Now he started eating the love poem, which meant biting off chunks of the thick paper and chewing on them until his cheeks bulged. He got all of it in before he had to throw up. Now he was puking out his addiction. 

When he was done, and stood before us, we applauded him. When you have found the courage to burn a crutch, you deserve to be saluted.

Much later, when the group ceremony was done, I sat with him by the fire and spoke of my admiration for what he had done. He said quietly, “What you said at lunch made me realize I’ve been smoking for my father. He’s still alive but he’s on a respirator. He was a lifelong chain smoker until now. Smoking became the only thing we shared, but I’m not going to smoke for him any more.”

Silence fell, and I thought of other smokers who have tried to quit, and then relapsed and been consumed by a bitter sense of failure. “If you find you need another smoke,” I said carefully. “I suggest you go outside and light a cigarette. If you need to take one puff, take it. But leave the rest of the cigarette to burn in a safe container, outside, and tell anyone who has been trying to get a drag through you that this is for them, and they only get to enjoy it outside.”

He was following this with keen attention.

“If you find you still need a smoke when you go inside, make yourself wait ten minutes. Time it. If the need is still there, you can have one cigarette, for yourself. If the need continues, go outside and light the next cigarette for the hangers-on, for your father and any dead smokers that may be hanging around. Leave that one outside. Get into the habit of choosing, every time, what you do for yourself and what you do for the others.”

“That’s the most practical advice on quitting smoking that I’ve ever heard,” he commented.

It’s not just about smoking, or quitting. It’s about choosing, at every turning in life, to notice why we are doing things and what we attract or repel when we do one thing rather than another. It’s about checking what belongs to us and what does not.