Giving up Smoking
19-Nov-08 - This is a true story. It's not a new story because the colleague who told it to me wants to remain anoymous in case people think he's weird, so it happened a few years ago. This is what he told me (these are not his exact words):
"I'd been trying to give up smoking for years, but I could never take the withdrawal symptoms, and time after time, I relapsed. Then one night I woke up in the small hours and went to the fridge to get a drink of cold water. As I opened the fridge door I heard a voice behind me say 'isn't it about time you packed up smoking?' For some reason this didn't seem particularly odd, and I replied 'I've tried, but what about the withdrawal symptoms?' The voice said. 'You just give up. I'll take care of the withdrawal symptoms.' I turned around and saw a glowing spot of orange light hanging in the air, which faded as I watched. I went back to my bedroom shaking my head and saying to myself 'this is the weirdest dream I've ever had!' When I got to the bedroom I stopped for a moment, and picked up one of my socks. There were two chairs, one stacked upside-down on the other, and I put the sock over one of the upside-down chair legs. 'We'll see in the morning if it really is a dream.' I said to myself. I woke up the next morning and the sock was on the chair leg, so I really had been awake at the time. And I wasn't gasping for a fag. The craving had simply disappeared, and I haven't had a smoke since. Later that day my son, back from school, logged on to pick up his e-mail (it was in the days when we only had a primitive dial-up system, and we had to pay, of course, so he only picked up mail once a day). He had a message from Australia, saying that my brother (who'd emigrated there years ago) had died the previous day. Allowing for the time difference, I worked out that the time of his death was the same as the time I heard the voice in the kitchen. I've never been able to figure it out."
I saw him again recently, several years on, and he still hasn't had another cigarette.
"I'd been trying to give up smoking for years, but I could never take the withdrawal symptoms, and time after time, I relapsed. Then one night I woke up in the small hours and went to the fridge to get a drink of cold water. As I opened the fridge door I heard a voice behind me say 'isn't it about time you packed up smoking?' For some reason this didn't seem particularly odd, and I replied 'I've tried, but what about the withdrawal symptoms?' The voice said. 'You just give up. I'll take care of the withdrawal symptoms.' I turned around and saw a glowing spot of orange light hanging in the air, which faded as I watched. I went back to my bedroom shaking my head and saying to myself 'this is the weirdest dream I've ever had!' When I got to the bedroom I stopped for a moment, and picked up one of my socks. There were two chairs, one stacked upside-down on the other, and I put the sock over one of the upside-down chair legs. 'We'll see in the morning if it really is a dream.' I said to myself. I woke up the next morning and the sock was on the chair leg, so I really had been awake at the time. And I wasn't gasping for a fag. The craving had simply disappeared, and I haven't had a smoke since. Later that day my son, back from school, logged on to pick up his e-mail (it was in the days when we only had a primitive dial-up system, and we had to pay, of course, so he only picked up mail once a day). He had a message from Australia, saying that my brother (who'd emigrated there years ago) had died the previous day. Allowing for the time difference, I worked out that the time of his death was the same as the time I heard the voice in the kitchen. I've never been able to figure it out."
I saw him again recently, several years on, and he still hasn't had another cigarette.
posted by John Radford at
06:46
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