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I started smoking at age 9.
Uh, my youngest sister introduced me
to smoking.
Uh...
It wasn´t something that was natural.
I had to learn to do it.
I had to learn to do it if I, you know,
wanted to feel grown up or fit in with other people.
So, once I learned to smoke,
then it became something I began to do
on a regular basis,
and the more I did it, the more addicted I became to it.
I smoked a total of 43 years of my life.
From age 9 to 52.
Uh...
The addiction was very, very strong,
to the point where,
whenever I didn´t have cigarettes,
I would look around at all the places
where there were cigarette butts
and would go out and collect them
and resmoke other people´s cigarette butts.
I mean, I remember a lot of my life thinking...
and wishing that I didn´t smoke, but I couldn´t stop.
Even after I started to develop
obvious health problems from it.
I mean, it´s...
it´s a horrible, horrible addiction.
It´s probably stronger
than anything I´ve ever known in my life.
You know, it´s...
taken sheer terror to actually get me free of it.
It´s my desire that you´ll hear this message
and you´ll take it to heart
and that you won´t come to this place, that you will stop,
one way or another.
Find some way, you know, to stop smoking.