My girlfriend said my kisses tasted like an ashtray — it made me quit

In 1970, as an 18-year-old college freshman in Boston, I started to smoke and soon went from a pack a day to two packs, a cigarette about every 30 minutes. I choreographed my life around my smokes, savouring the cedar taste, the amber glow at the tip and the tendrils of vapour coiling under a reading light.

I knew inhaling nicotine was unhealthy and potentially cancerous, but I had no plans to quit. Then I met Elvira on a blind date and we got serious fast. She hated my smoking, forbade it in her presence and even banned it from my apartment. When she told me that kissing me was like licking the inside of an ashtray, that became the deciding factor.

I tried to quit more than once, lost bets and even smoked nonstop for a day to make the habit revolting, but finally, on 1 January 1977, about 14 months after meeting Elvira, I quit for good. Nine months after quitting we moved in together, seven months later I asked her to marry me and she accepted, and eight months after that we married.

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