Braunstein Speaks

No smoking

I smoked my last cigar on May 17th, 1988. That was the summer that I had blood pressure problems. I had been taking meds for hypertension for years, and my pressure had always been under control until that summer, when it got to 180/120 for no apparent reason. Six weeks of tests and treatment accomplished nothing, and as suddenly as my runaway hypertension started, it stopped—but I never smoked another cigar.

I never smoked cigarettes. When I started college in the early 1960s, pipe-smoking was cool; and as I imagined myself an intellectual, I smoked a pipe. Over the years, I got rid of the pipe because pipe-smoking requires at least two and preferably three pipes if you smoke throughout the day. In addition to a tobacco pouch, you must also carry a pipe tool of some sort, wire pipe cleaners, and a lighter.

When I started working as a field engineer, I switched to cigars. In the 1970s, any meeting you attended had at least three cigar smokers among the dozen cigarette smokers. In addition, in the steel mill, I wasn’t allowed—not being a member of the union—to touch a tool, or use my hands in any manner, so having a cigar gave me something to fidget with.

Back to May, 1988. When I told the doctor that I smoked four or five cigars a day, he put down “two packs.” “I don’t inhale,” I protested. “No matter,” he answered. “The nicotine is absorbed through your palate. One cigar is the equivalent to half a pack of cigarettes.”

These days, if you tried to put a cigar or pipe into your mouth, you’ll probably be shot on sight. I can’t even remember the last time I saw anybody with a pipe, and cigar-smoking is rare.

When my wife was pregnant with our last child, some 30 years ago, she stopped smoking although she started as a teenager. She had smoked for over 20 years, but stopped like that!

I suppose that cigar and pipe smoking is not as addictive as inhaling cigarettes, but when I stopped smoking 22 years ago, I never felt even a twinge, except for the fact that I no longer had something to do with my hands until I left the mill.

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