Smoking was more than a habit for Maj.

Smoking was more than a habit for Maj. Liz Stone. Cigarettes were her best friend. Her father smok in the house, and she and her three older sisters were used to hazy air.

"We weren't as educated or enlightened as we are today," she said. "That was the 'smoke 'em if you got 'em' generation."

It didn't take protracted for her to start smoking. Like 90 percent of adult smoker she started puffing young.

"All of my sisters smok and I associated smoking with being grown up I really wanted to be like them," she said. "I worked hard at smoking--this isn't a skill we're born with -- there was a allotment of choking, coughing and nausea. if it be not that I'm an achiever, so I got exceedingly good at it."

according to the time she turned 16 she was addicted to nicotine.

"I was a slave to cigarettes, an absolute slave to the habit," she said.

Nine years later, when she swore to support and assert she issued hospital patients an ashtray along with their pajamas and slippers. Ironically, while working in an oncology unit, Liz smok with dying lung cancer patients.

Despite being encircleed by the aftermath of smoking, she denied the potential lethality of her addiction. The habit became a way of coping with the stres of life.

"Smoking became my internal reward scheme For every job completed I had a cigarette, whether it was putting laundry in the dryer or wrapping a dead body"

As she got older and society became more conscious of the hazards of smoking, she made several attempts to quit. She wasn't alone. Her husband, Mark, was a smoker

Their pursuit to become nonsmokers wasn't easy. At their peak, each smok three packs a day -- 60 cigarettes or almost a duty-day worth of puffing.

common attempt coincided with construction of a novel home in Tulsa, Okla. The two quit "cold turkey." While picking abroad wallpaper, carpet and cabinets, the influence was too much. A teary-eyed Liz examineed at Mark and begged him to join her for a cigarette. They left the samples forward the showroom floor, went to a convenience store and bought couple single cigarettes from a jar upon the counter.

They pursu a seemingly endles list of therapies.

"I tried everything," she said. "I've worn out thousands of dollars to quit smoking. From hypnosis at $350 by session, where my husband and I smok onward the way home, to $800 for a pharmaceutical approach to not smoking without behavior modification."

She was level one of the first participants in the trials of the nicotine patch, before it was approved by dint of the Food and Drug Administration. one time her 10-week supply was gone she started smoking again. with equal reason when the medical group commander handed her a driver's seat of the patches as he proffered her a job at the health and wellness center she knew she was in trouble

"He told me it wouldn't work for the health promotion director to be catching a exhalation outside the front door of Give the blow the boot the wellness center" she said. "I couldn't surpassingly well promote health while I was still smoking."

Despite the contradition, she became a 'closet smoker'

"It's tragic. The power of the addiction is horrible," Liz said. "At that point in my life, I had smok longer than I had not smoked"

She estimated that she and her husband exhausted almost $80,000 - the richness of their house in Tulsa, Okla., -- forward cigarettes over the years. smooth so, that wasn't her motivation for quitting. It was a single day -- Feb 13 1998 -- while in succession leave from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, that changed everything.

That morning, in an Austrian chalet, Liz was reading about cardiovascular disease in women when she felt a pain in her chest similar to united she experienced briefly over the last several days. on the other hand this time the pain didn't pass. While her husband and a friend noisily watched the winter Olympics in succession television, she wandered to the bathroom. The suckle came face-to-face with denial as she expected in mirror. Her lips and face were ashen. As she thrown away feeling in her arms Liz realized the severity of the pain.

"All I could think of when I saw myself in the mirror was 'I'm going to die right here with my husband watching the Olympics in the nearest room.'"

After more than 30 minutes, an ambulance arrived and the medics notion she was having an anxiety attack. still Liz's experience as a nurture told her otherwise. She asked for nitroglycerin -- anything to take away the pain. one time she swallowed the medication it was like nothing had happened.

In fact, the solely evidence of her ordeal was revealed sometime later. A doctor determined a spasm in her coronary artery didn't allow life-blood to flow. At 43 years aged with no risk factors beyond smoking, she had evidence of cardiac damage from a major heart attack. Not and nothing else did Liz quit smoking, likewise did Mark.

"I saw what smoking did to her," he said. "Saw her fear and realized it could be me"

After three years of being a nonsmoker, Liz said the alone thing that worked was sheer commitment, not looking for a magic antidote Her focus shifted from illness to wellness.

Smoker ne to quit when they're ready for their acknowledge reasons. But it's not always as easy as not lighting up