I used to be a chimney

(October 27) - Obsessively obnoxious. I’ve been searching my brain for a two-word description of Canada’s insurance industry, and that’s the best I’ve come up with.

I am not saying they are crooks. They aren’t. They just get to follow a set of rules that couldn’t be better for them if they’d written them themselves.

Maybe they did.

I used to be a chimney. Smoke poured into, and out of, my poor old body for about 45 years. Every so often I would make an attempt to stop, but my heart wasn’t in it. The need for nicotine is desperately strong. It overrules the most thoughtful resolutions the brain can muster. I seldom worried about what made sense. I was far too dedicated a smoker. Like most, I would always have the pack I was working on and a spare in my jacket pocket. Or in the car’s glove box.

I tried several different brands – even Gauloises in the days when I thought I was a young sophisticate wandering the bars of Montreal. In the end, it was Export A that really took my breath away.

As the years wore on, there got to be fewer and fewer of us. We all knew that smoking was a dead end street, that smokers were a dying breed, but we hung in. Some days I didn’t have the will power to stop. Other days I was too stubborn to listen to reason. Those of us who thrived on the self-abuse would troop out to the sidewalk, rain or shine, and huddle together. We enjoyed our fresh air breaks, or so we thought.

In all those years, I never had any difficulty getting life insurance. It was an obviously self-destructive habit, but there wasn’t an insurance company in the realm that refused to put my money in their bank.

My wife always got lower rates, because she didn’t smoke. I was told that I would get them as well if I became a non-smoker.

Addictions are never about money, though. When you can light up a ten dollar bill every day of the week and stub it out in a grubby ash tray, you don’t put a lot of thought into saving fifty bucks a month on life insurance premiums.

Then, on Jan. 11, 2006, I broke the habit once and for all. It took a bit of a heart attack to get the job done, but good results don’t come easily. That was it. I haven’t had a cigarette since. Not so much as a cheater puff. Nothing.

I’m not saying I don’t miss smoking. It is such a pernicious addiction that it never goes away.

Almost four years later I still have nicotine fits. They don’t last, and they don’t beat me back into submission.

My health is a lot better now, thank you. Blood pressure is better than ever. Cholesterol is good. Breathing is clearer. No more gurgling noises on the intake, no more hacking cough with the outflow.

I get out for walks and can even make it up the Eramosa Road hill without stopping.

I felt so good that I contacted the insurance company about the non-smokers discount they talked about way back when. They have a questionnaire. I tell them about the heart attack. I tell them about my medication. I tell them I haven’t had a smoke in almost four years.

How do they congratulate me? They drop me like a spent cigarette butt.

Smoke like a fool and they’ll sell you insurance.

Recover from a heart attack and they don’t want to know you.

Like I said. Obsessively obnoxious.