I'll confess, I am a less than secret smoker.
"And shocked to find gambling going on."
Posted on 08/09/2005 8:37:14 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Are you a secret smoker?
By JOSEPH P. KAHN / THE BOSTON GLOBE, The Virginian-Pilot © August 8, 2005
THE PENULTIMATE episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” outed one of the series’ recurrent characters – Pat MacDougall, played by actress Georgia Engel – as a secret cigarette smoker. Family members were stunned, if not amused, to discover Pat had been puffing away for years, concealing her habit with the aid of breath mints and air freshener.
One viewer who found herself laughing on the outside while cringing on the inside was Mary, a Massachusetts bank employee. For Mary, Pat’s dirty little secret was more than an uproarious sitcom subplot. It was an awkward slice of life. Her life.
At home, Mary (like others interviewed for this article, she requested that her full name not be used) leans out her bathroom window, blowing smoke into the sky so her boyfriend won’t smell it. When smoking in her car, she rolls down the windows, no matter how cold or rainy it is outside. On visits to her parents’ house, she’ll duck behind a backyard tree to grab a quick cigarette, praying she doesn’t get caught. Forty-five years old, not breaking any laws, Mary acts like a teenager sneaking her first Camel behind the school gym.
Oh, what some people will apparently do for a date with Mr. Butts.
“I don’t want to hear the grief, mostly from family and friends,” Mary explains when asked why she’s reluctant to light up in front of people who know her. “They’re very judgmental.”
Mary is hardly alone in preferring to smoke in secrecy rather than run afoul of societal attitudes toward cigarette smoking, which are negative enough by now to drive Joe Camel into the witness protection program.
Health issues notwithstanding, 46 million Americans continue to smoke, openly or not. According to one study, 70 percent have a desire to quit, and nearly half make an attempt to, yet only 10 percent enjoy much success.
While no study has quantified how many are “secret” smokers, the number may be higher than most suspect. Following the revelation that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, a former smoker, is being treated for lung cancer, New York magazine polled 100 smokers about how often they smoke, where they smoke and other aspects of their habit. One-third confessed to hiding their smoking from parents, bosses, children or spouses. In at least one state, Georgia, teachers and other public employees risk losing their health insurance for a year if they’re caught lying about their smoking habit.
“I understand the health part,” says Donna, a receptionist for a home-supplies company. “It’s feeling like a criminal that’s disturbing.” Secret smoking isn’t just sitcom fodder. No less a public figure than Laura Bush was pegged as a secret smoker (her press secretary would neither confirm nor deny press reports) as recently as last year, long after she supposedly gave up cigarettes in the early 1990s. According to an October 2002 Washington Post article, the first lady has been known to reach for a cigarette in times of stress, provided no photographers are there to catch her in the act.
The White House Weekly published a February 2004 article suggesting Bush was still struggling with the habit. According to the report, a White House waiter admitted scrambling to find the first lady a cigarette during a fund-raiser at the presidential residence.
And yet the Republic somehow still stands.
Donna can relate. She loved that “Raymond” episode, too, for much the same guilty-pleasure reason. Having tried to stop dozens of times, she can’t quite seem to quit her Kools for keeps. Yet Donna never smokes around the office. She only does it on her lunch breaks when she’s far from the workplace, where nobody she knows might catch her in the act.
“I feel like the office drug addict,” Donna confesses. “They all think it’s nasty. They’d look down on me if they knew I smoked.”
A few close friends share her secret habit, says Donna. Fortunately she’s single and doesn’t have a husband who’s antismoking, as many of them do. Or she’d be bathing with Listerine and chain-chewing Altoids.
“How do you hide it completely?” she wonders. “If you can’t smoke in the car, do you pull over and light up? Come on. If you can hide something like that from your husband, you can hide anything, I guess.”
Anecdotal evidence suggests not all closet smokers fit into one neat carton. Some resumed smoking recently, after going years without cigarettes, and seem unsure of what to do about their situation. The enjoyment they get from smoking is frequently undercut by guilt about compromising their health, they say, not to mention the health of their most intimate relationships.
Mark, an Orlando, Fla., dietitian, doesn’t smoke at home or at work but still manages to go through 10 to 15 Marlboro Lights daily. Friends call him a closet smoker, he says, because he’s so discreet about it they’re amazed to see him smoke at all.
“I don’t really hide it, but I certainly don’t brag about it, either,” Mark says. “I have a daughter who knows I smoke and doesn’t like it, though, so I don’t do it around her. My intentions are to quit.”
Still others say they’ve lied outright about their smoking and are prepared to do so again if it means avoiding an ugly or embarrassing confrontation.
Joan, a Boston-area college administrator, started smoking again recently after quitting a two-pack-a-day habit years ago. Her boyfriend, who’s never seen her smoke, stopped by her apartment unexpectedly one day and smelled smoke. He asked suspiciously who’d been smoking.
“I had no one else to blame, so I told him I enjoyed one every once in a while,” says Joan. “It was totally untrue. Actually, I smoke about half a pack a day.”
Then there was the couple’s vacation weekend together, Joan says, when she didn’t touch a cigarette for three days. As soon as her boyfriend dropped her off at home, however, she lit one up. “I’m struggling with this,” she admits.
What drives some smokers to cloak their habit in such secrecy?
One point on which most agree is that the social stigma around smoking makes it a hard habit to manage, and thus more tempting to disguise. Smoke-free office buildings, hotel rooms, bars, and restaurants have driven smokers into quasi-legal exile. Relatives and co-workers don’t just frown at the habit, they recite scary statistics about secondhand smoke. Public-education campaigns and rising taxes on cigarettes have also helped make smoking both riskier and more costly than ever. While most smokers recognize that cigarettes are bad for them, says clinical psychologist Maryann Troiani, they may be less than truthful with themselves when it comes to measuring the harmful effects of secrecy.
“Psychologically, it’s as bad as cheating on your spouse and hiding it,” says Troiani, coauthor of “Spontaneous Optimism: Proven Strategies for Health, Prosperity & Happiness.” “When you’re not truthful, it’s a big wedge in the relationship.”
Whether it’s having an extramarital affair or habitually visiting strip clubs or overeating in secret, it’s “all the same can of worms,” according to Troiani. “Some people view it as risk-taking behavior, as living their lives on the edge,” she says. “However, most feel uneasy and uncertain about keeping secrets.”
Even Joan, when pressed, acknowledges that if she’s forced to choose between smoking and her relationship, it would be a tough call. That’s one reason her next vacation won’t be with her boyfriend. Instead, Joan plans to meet a girlfriend in Europe, where smoking is a more accepted – even cherished – custom.
“When I get home,” Joan says, “we’ll see what happens.”
My father suffered a massive heart attack six years ago when he was 57 while helping me move to Florida. He lost 2/3 of his heart function when all was said and done.
My father was thin, active, and we thought healthy.
After my husband arrived home to watch our children, I went to see my father in the Intensive Care Unit of the closest hospital. He looked very scared and there were tears in both our eyes.
I said to him, "Daddy...are you still smoking?" His reply to me was the same da#% thing he's been saying for decades..."Nah...I quit years ago."
I placed Daddy's pajamas and a few other things he'd requested over by his bedside without saying a word. My thoughts were enough this time..."Tell that to the pack of cigarettes in your suitcase, Daddy."
It just breaks my heart.
Hang tough my friend! I'm watching my father slowly die from Emphesema and it isn't fun. Good luck to you!!
I'll confess, I am a less than secret smoker.
"And shocked to find gambling going on."
Rush Limbaugh, is that you?
And, yes I watched my father die from disease that was caused by his smoking.
And there you have it. The attitude. :-)
I pointed out that if it were as dangerous as the "experts" say then no one from the "babyboom" would still be alive. in the 1950's with 75 percent of the population smoking and pregnant women smoking packs a day, the babyboomer generation should have been born retarded and died in their twenties and even the ones that escaped the afore mentioned landmines shouldn't have had the health or intelligence to actually go to college, invent computers, all modern technology, etc...
Great post. I smoked only when we went out when our kids were little. Smoking with a glass of wine is like cake with icing. I told them the same thing you did.
Man, I wish you well. Cold turkey must be the worst of the worst....
There's a lot of nonsmokers that will have to feel pretty silly someday laying there in a hospital bed... dying of nothing.
"concealing her habit with the aid of breath mints and air freshener."
You can't conceal it with candies, especially if one smokes, 10 or more cigs/day.
Anyone out there who watches or lets his/her children watch the "dummy box?"
Sure, we are all going to die but why take part in an activity such as smoking that will only increase the odds that you will die sooner?
please don't then. I promise not to pester you about it.
You stink. I hope you rot in.... :)
KMA indeed. Friggin smoking nazi's. I tend to think of the smoking areas as leper colonies.
But I'm trying to quit. Trying the patches. Not having much noticable luck, but I'm working on it.
I've never really hid that I smoke. Like you, they don't like it, they can just KMA.
I do try to hide it from my kids though. Least I did when they were still with us. Didn't want them to grow up to be ostracised as well. They're grown now though so I don't have that worry.
Yeah, I think some of the people in this article need to grow up though. 40-50 yrs old and still hiding it for no reason at all is sorta silly. I just didn't want my kids to be constantly thinking about it with smoke in the air all the time, ashtrays etc. So I usually went to the basement or attic. I had a reason to hide it it at least.
But, as smoking goes, so goes the other sin vices. Drinking is next on the list, for all the same reasons. Too many accidents. Too many public hospital bills. Too many alcoholics. Too much money that can be plundered by trial lawyers.
Then prolly coffee. Carcinogen ya know.
The smoking gestapo got away with it, it'll encourage other gestapos to sprout up and do away with other peoples pleasures next time.
Godspeed
quit smoking after 30 years, 2-3 packs a day. Made it for 28 days.
started, stopped, started again and stopped, I am on day 15.
I will make it this time. But it is hard!!!! the patch helps ALOT.
good luck to those quitting, keep quitting again if you slide.
To those who keep smoking I say you have the RIGHT to make that decision and I will defend it till I die!
that 2nd hand smoke is BS!
Yeah, food's a whole new thing.
Lots and lots of food, ha!
Gained 40 pounds when I quit smoking. Have taken it off several times.
Been there. Quit after 22 years after I could not carry my three-year-old daughter up the stairs at the Santa Monica Palisades. They are quite a hike, yes, but I was only 39.
I must say, this 57-year-old me could beat the crap out of even the 30-year-old me. MUCH better shape, much more wind, and a lot less hair to catch in the wind.
Try to MOVE.
Go for a walk.
Best advice I got: Failing is not FAILURE. If you slide back, quit again. Keep quitting till you...quit.
If I gotta go, I'd rather go slim and smokey instead of chubby and miserable. :)
Just teasing you.
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