When I was addicted to cigarettes, from age 16 to 32 (and was a three-pack-a-dayer to boot) the ever-rising cost of cigarettes didn't phase me. I kept buying, even conniving ways to buy cartons from sales-tax-free New Hampshire, and I kept smoking my brains out....until - so until - it hurt my neck to bend it, it was hard to breathe on a humid summer day, my gums were running away from my teeth and this pain behind my upper left shoulder blade just wouldn't go away.

Would you call it rational to have decided to quit? Or would you call it scared as hell? I'm so glad I did find a way to knock it off, but I wouldn't say my decision was because I somehow deduced that smoking in my life wasn't needed anymore. I think it was because I was terrified.

If making a decision due to "terrification" is rational, then I was one mighty rational soul.

Your comments made me think about being a kid and seeing the lungs of a smoker displayed in the Children's Museum in Jacksonville, Fla. Blackened and disgusting.... I seemed to keep that image in my head over the years and even though I smoked during college and used cigarettes to cope with the stress, I knew I could give them up. And I did...after college. And it was a fear-based decision. I didn't want to need them and I didn't want a pair of those lungs!