My dad died of lung cancer after 60 years of Camel straights. I was a smoker too, until I came down with viral pneumonia. It gave me so much lung damage I couldn't walk a quarter of a mile. I had a pack and a half a day habit, and had quit a couple times before. I learned that the drug withdrawal was over fairly quickly, but the habit was a monkey on my back forever.
One day I figured out how many times I had practiced that habit. 30 cigs a day, times maybe 10 hits per cig, times 365 days a year, times 25 years. I had practiced that habit over 2.7 million times. No wonder it was a problem. So I switched to smoking a pipe.
Pipe smoking was wonderful. I trained myself not to inhale, but it is a tough way to get nicotine in our modern society. It takes about an hour to finish a pipe, no quick dash out the door for a nicotine fix. I loved it. I had about an hour commute. I could light a pipe when I left work, fight rush hour, and by the time I got home I would be decompressed and relaxed.
Smoking a pipe let me (mostly) break the cigarette habit. After a year of that, I went cold turkey. That was 30 years ago this August. After about 5 years I gradually quit wanting a smoke. I don't think of it any more. My lungs have pretty much recovered.
There's a sad coda to this. Pipe smoking requires several pipes. You have to rotate them, or they go sour. You have to clean and air them at least a day, two or three days is better. I had a friend who was a chain smoker, so I gave my pipes to him after I quit. He never got the hang of getting nicotine through his mouth membranes, and kept right on inhaling. It killed him. He died of lung cancer about 20 years ago.
