美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Nicotine,' A Longtime Smoker Confronts His Old Habit

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: 

Gregor Hens does not smoke anymore. He reminds us of that fact many times in his memoir 1 "Nicotine 2." It's kind of like the more times he says it, the more true it becomes. Hens joined me from the BBC in Berlin. And he said he started the book after about eight months of not smoking.

GREGOR HENS: I was trying to figure out how to deal with my withdrawal 3.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

HENS: I decided 4 (laughter) there would be two possible ways of doing it - either to completely ignore cigarettes and everything about cigarettes or to confront it head on. So I did and basically chronicled my struggle.

MCEVERS: As a - I'll just totally admit it - constantly on-again, off-again smoker 5, I was afraid to read your book because I thought, oh, God, if I read it, I'm just going to think about it all the time.

HENS: Right.

MCEVERS: And then I'm going to start smoking. But I didn't.

HENS: Good, great.

MCEVERS: So the book is broken into chapters. Each one is its own kind of wonderful little essay. Your earliest cigarette memories are really striking. I wonder if you could tell us about the New Year's Eve when you were five or six years old.

HENS: I was very young. I have two older brothers, where - we went out at night to light fireworks for New Year's Eve. It's a German tradition. We went out there. It was a cold night. And there was only one lighter 6. And my brothers were fighting over this lighter.

And my mother gave me a cigarette to light the rockets with, to hold the glowing cigarette to the fuse and then the rocket will go off. And of course, you do this a couple of times, and the cigarette starts going out. So my mother said, well, you have to take a drag...

MCEVERS: To keep it going.

HENS: ...To keep it going, yeah. And I did. And I had a coughing fit. The adults thought it was really funny. And that was my first taste. And then after a while, I looked forward to the cigarette more than to the fireworks.

MCEVERS: Wow. So a smoker was born that night, it sounds like.

HENS: Indeed.

MCEVERS: Knowing what you know now about spending a life smoking, would you change anything? Would you go back and change that moment? Or would you still smoke that cigarette on New Year's Eve?

HENS: Who knows? Who knows what I will be thinking in 20 years if I get cancer or something like that?

MCEVERS: Right.

HENS: So I'm just telling the story as is. It's part of my life. It's part of my personality. And that's fine. I don't complain about it in the book.

MCEVERS: Yeah.

HENS: I don't criticize anything or anyone.

MCEVERS: You don't preach.

HENS: I don't preach. I think it's part of my life, and it's worth telling as a story. And that's what I do.

MCEVERS: You conduct some experiments in the course of the book. At one point, you take a cigarette apart and sort of examine all its different pieces. Another time, you go to a hypnotist. And this is I think after you'd already quit smoking.

HENS: Yes.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) You were such a skeptic 7 about this hypnotist.

HENS: Yeah. Talking to him, I realized that he had himself never smoked, but he considered himself a smoking cessation specialist. And that made me suspicious.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

HENS: But I've relapsed many, many times. And it's usually been in moments of crisis, of trauma 8. So if something terrible would happen to me, like a bicycle accident or a breakup of a relationship...

MCEVERS: Yeah.

HENS: The first thing I would do is - oh, OK, I'm feeling so bad. I might as well have a cigarette. So that's why I went to the hypnotist.

MCEVERS: Did it work, though? Did you relapse after that?

HENS: No, no. I haven't smoked since (laughter).

MCEVERS: Oh, well, OK then.

HENS: It worked. I don't know which part...

MCEVERS: Give us the guy's number.

(LAUGHTER)

HENS: Yeah.

MCEVERS: I mean, it's so interesting. Yeah, you talked about in some ways almost fantasizing about something bad happening to you so you could have a cigarette. I...

HENS: Right.

MCEVERS: ...Have to say. That is a very familiar thing.

HENS: Isn't it amazing? I mean that tells you how strong the addiction 9 is...

MCEVERS: Right.

HENS: ...How much it means psychologically because you would actually think, like, oh, maybe if something bad happens to me, I have an excuse...

MCEVERS: Yeah.

HENS: ...To have another cigarette.

MCEVERS: You write about an Italian writer who has written extensively about the LC, the last cigarette, and how many LCs he's had. In fact, you even call it the LLC. Like, is this the last, last cigarette, you know? And, like, he sort of delights...

HENS: Right.

MCEVERS: ...On the idea of the last cigarette. I'm wondering if you could tell us about your LC.

HENS: The last cigarette I didn't really notice as a last cigarette. I was out having dinner with my wife and her friend. And it was a beautiful summer evening. And we were sitting outside in front of an Italian restaurant, talking, drinking wine. And this friend of my wife's and I shared a pack of cigarettes.

And then it was over. And I walk back home with my wife, and she said, oh, I wish I could have been part of that. I would have loved to share that pack with you. And she had been a heavy smoker herself earlier. And I didn't want that responsibility. I didn't want her to feel like she should be part of this sort of orgy of smoke.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

HENS: And so I decided, OK, you know what? This is it. I'm going to quit. I threw out all the ashtrays 10 and lighters 11 and cigarette packs and opened all the windows, and that was it.

MCEVERS: That was your LC, and you didn't even know it.

HENS: That was my LC - my LLC.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) Gregor Hens is a writer based in Berlin. His book, which is out now in the U.S., is called "Nicotine." Thank you so much for joining us.

HENS: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE STRANGE BOYS SONG, "BE BRAVE")