The hefty cost of quitting

Igave up smoking a couple of years ago. For 20 years I slogged away on those bloody coffin nails. It was the first thing I did when I woke and the last thing I did before I went to bed. banged away on the darts all day, every day, a pack-a-day for so many days that I started to laugh like Mutley from Catch the Pigeon.

When I started my career, as a foot-up into the world of smoking, you could buy smokes in packs of 10.

If 10s were a bit pricey, dairies also sold singles. At 30c a pop, you could scab that sort of money from the tuckshop line.

I remember when warnings first emerged on packets, one industrious dairy owner used to sell us singles in 20c mixturebags with ‘‘Smoking kills’’ scrawled across the front in Sharpie.

I took to smoking with the relentless dedication of an addict. There wasn’t a point in the years that followed that I didn’t have a Stuyvesant hanging from my lips.

Peter Stuyvesant was my ciggie of choice – it was what the Beatles smoked and only one of them died from a smoking-related illness.

I loved to smoke. I was good at it. I made friends. I met women. It made me feel less anxious in groups. It gave me something to fidget with to alleviate my compulsive personality.

I’d have smoked forever if it wasn’t for the lack of fitness and the grisly death-by-cancer bit. I’d put up with the stink, the cost, the social pariah stuff, all for a glorious puff on that saintly tobacco. But . . . death by cancer.

So I quit. All it took was my GP hassling me for a year and a drug that was invented as an antipsychotic. Champax – the drug that sounds like a tampon for dogs – was what worked for me and, aside from the wallowing, dark, suicidal thoughts, it was a great experience.

So I gave up smoking and took up eating and, boy, can I indulge when I get my eat on. I ate so much that I added 20kg to my boyish frame.

At 100kg I realised I was going to have to do something. So I took up the rich person hobby of wellness and exercise.

Now, with the amount I smoked I’d be spending about $10k a year in today’s market. But if I add up the cost of not smoking, it gets expensive real fast.

First cost: breakfast. I’ve spent two decades having little more than a couple of butts and a coffee to get my day started and now I find myself eating pretentious granola.

Second: a new set of clothes. The old rags stank. The third cost is the most expensive of all: staying active.

Have you seen the price of a gym membership? If you’ll pardon the pun, staying fit is a costly exercise. There seems to be a specific, expensive, shoe for each new sport I dabble in. I tried weightlifting and they told me I needed to eat this and drink that. I tried running and before I knew it I was looking at travelling the country running in some remote locale with a bunch of other wealthy whiteys.

I find myself wondering if being fit is more expensive than being fat? If being smoking-hot costs more than smoking?

Maybe I got it wrong? Maybe the most costeffective strategy is to get back on the durries and lose some weight the supermodel way?

Then at least I could spend the rest of my life looking like a cool-as-all-shit middle-aged smoker.