While all this was going on—the unfulfilled desire, the gaining of weight—I was neither a particularly endearing companion nor a productive co-worker. How could I be? If you tie the most rollicksome pup in the world just far enough from a bowl of food for him to see the dish but not taste its contents, hell rapidly become a barking, yapping, whining, snarling, jumping, lip-curling cur. Cigarettes were eternally on view for me—but, so to speak, "out of reach." So I barked and snarled and growled.

Not until the day you stop smoking do you realizethat we live in a world of cigarettes. In our newspapers and magazines and on television we see strong young men and radiant girls smiling and smoking, dancing and smoking, skiing and smoking, finding sweet love at the seaside while smoking. In real Me, as we walk on streets and into rooms, we instantly detect the pro­vocative tang of cigarette smoke. Posters, billboards, the movie screen, the stage, our radios, the advertising cards in our buses—these all remind us of the fun of lighting up and puffing. On planes, the passengers obediently light cigarettes on signal. So not only could I see and smell the cigarettes I denied myself—I was surrounded by them. I jittered and jangled—and I’ll bet that you did, too!