Alex James

Slow Life | 7 February 2009

Fit for purpose

issue 07 February 2009

I wonder how much of what we think we love and need is merely habit. It’s only ten weeks since I stopped smoking 100 a day and now I hardly think about it. For sure, I fancy one occasionally, but I suppose I could say the same thing about women, and I’m happily married.

Really, I’m absolutely astonished how quickly cigarettes ceased to preoccupy me, part of another life already, although lighters and papers, flints and filters are still turning up in coat pockets. Of course there’s always plenty of room for the wheels to fall off the no-smoking bus, but I hope they don’t. I think I’m over it. No regrets and more a feeling of growing up than giving up.

The main thing about stopping smoking that worried me, worries most people, is that I’d suddenly turn into Jabba the Hut, a blob.

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