Oh, baby. My smoking days are over

Like the economy, or perhaps because of it, I’m up and down and all around with my tobacco addiction. Talk about a monkey on my back.

I’ve been on the wagon for the past day or so, meaning no smokes. It’s such a nasty habit.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em is how I always looked at it, and boy do I ever, to the point that it makes me sick. Then I stop smoking for a while — the longest period being four years following my trip to Holland.

Boy, can those Europeans smoke cigarettes, and boy did I have to smoke a lot to keep up. That was my excuse at the time, but I smoked so much I couldn’t stand to be around cigarette smoke without getting nauseous when I returned to the states.

Eventually that wore off, however, and one day, I found myself lighting up again. I blame stress.

Actually, I have a lot of excuses for my smoking, among them: 1) It’s good to support the Virginia tobacco farmer; 2) Quitting smoking makes you gain weight and I’m having a hard time keeping if off as it is; 3) President Obama smokes so it must be alright.

I admit, I’m taking it a little far, but that’s what cigarettes make you do — rationalize away the health risks in favor a long, cool drag of stress relief.

Being around friends and/or family who smoke is the worst.

Though I’ve never considered myself a follower, seeing them smoke gives me license to smoke as well — even if I don’t have any of my own cigarettes. I just bum one or two or three, depending on how much drinking is involved or how late the party goes.

That’s okay to an extent, but when a pack of smokes costs more than $8 bucks in my home state of Jersey, fellow smokers get kind of stingy. You won’t see me paying $8 bucks for a pack.

My dad always smoked, though never in the house, and I started smoking, on and off, casually in college. It was a social thing — yeah right. I never buy that, even when I’m saying it.

My grandmother died of emphysema 20 years after she quit smoking. She was a World War II-era Navy Waves gal, and back then, everyone smoked — a lot. She smoked a lot; I’m talking packs a day.

I remember when she quit, too and how desperate it made her to the point that she was rooting through the car ashtray for butts when my pop wasn’t looking. She eventually kicked it, though the damage had already been done.

Hers was not a painless death or process of dying either — I know, I held her hand as she heaved, desperate for a fresh breath, in those final days.

And yet, through the years, I’d put all of that out of my mind, turning to cigarettes when things got hectic, but, like in college, it was an on-again, off-again thing.

After my most recent two-year reprieve from cancer sticks, I picked the butts back up again when my two uncles died in March. The thing is — smoking is starting to take a toll on my health. I can feel it in my lungs in the morning, especially, and it catches up to me when I attempt to exercise. It gives me bad breath in the a.m.

I feel — and smell — much better when I don’t smoke and yet, I continue to do it to myself.

So, I’m back on the wagon for now. It’s been less than 48 hours and I can already sense an improvement in my overall health.

Yet, every time I pass by a store, I want to go in and buy a pack. My last one, I promise.

I understand why some people get hypnotized to stop smoking; it’s totally a mental thing. Me, I’m going cold turkey (again) and will be chewing lots of (sugarless) gum. I’ll probably be cranky.

But I’m going to continue to fight the good fight even as I realize the day is coming when I will have to quit. The day I learn we’re having a baby. That day hasn’t come yet, but we’re working on it, nearly five years into our marriage.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it: I’m quitting smoking for good for my baby and me. Getting healthy now.