This has all been a terrible mistake. I want to go home. I feel like my head
is going to explode. I feel like I am drowning, suffocating, imploding. I
don’t care that I am on a Virgin Atlantic flat bed bound for an elite spa in
California, because I keep imagining myself in a squat, chain-smoking, and
it seems so cruelly seductive.
It has taken me 18 months to get here. Or, depending on which way you look at
it, 15 years. I have a long history with self-medication: I sniffed, flew,
shopped, smoked, puffed, hailed and sipped my way through my trust fund when
I was young. In late 2005, I went to Brazil to drink ayahuasca with
shamans and came back with a plan to curb several addictions.
Six months ago, I finally kicked them all — bar one. I decided to spend the
£4,000 a year I usually donate to Philip Morris and Co (or might otherwise
have splurged on a new pair of boobs) on Golden Door’s smoking-cessation
programme, which has an 75% success rate. Hypnosis, cognitive behavioural
therapy, acupuncture and lymphatic body massage are incorporated into the
week-long programme at this smoke-free retreat, alongside craving aids such
as cinnamon gum and carrot and celery sticks.
A Zen retreat, mainly for women (Nicole Kidman, Alicia Silverstone and Barbra
Streisand are a few who have checked in), Golden Door is ranked among the
world’s most exclusive destination spas. Nothing is too much trouble: there
are four staff to every guest, the food is gourmet organic, the following
day’s programme (averaging four exercise classes, two beauty treatments, one
motivational seminar and, in my case, two dedicated smoking-cessation
sessions) is delivered on a fan each evening, and everything — from skincare
to clothing — is provided. The setting, in a canyon in the San Diego
hinterland, is exquisite. My bedroom overlooks a pond full of plump, darting
koi carp; elsewhere there are waterfalls and a labyrinth.
“We’re gonna keep you so busy, you won’t even think about smoking,” says Cindi
Peterson, the behavioural therapist who acts as my mentor during the week.
In addition to the reams of questionnaires I complete, including the
“smoke-watch” charts, where I chronicle each cigarette and its triggers,
Peterson asks me to quit before my arrival. I go with the last-chance
scenario and bid a poignant farewell to my cigarettes and lighter in the
Virgin Clubhouse before my flight.
“Think of yourself as a non-smoker,” she says when we meet. I think that
nothing could be further from the truth.
She had told me to cut down beforehand, but I couldn’t. Having spent six
months cursing every one of the 30 cigarettes I put in my mouth daily, once
I knew that I would be quitting, I cherished and adored those little white
sticks. My intake rose to 40 a day, as smoking became my lover, my
confidante and best friend.
My first night’s dreams are like Vicky Pollard does Requiem for a Dream. I am
smoking. I am having sex. I am in rehab. I am in rehab with my parents. The
dream analyst gives her Jungian spin: all addictions mask a hurt we cannot
face. My subconscious is using the sex and the smoking as painkillers, the
rehab symbolises my recovery, and my parents are the cause of my addictions,
which not only makes me want to reach for the Marlboro Lights, but a bottle
of whisky, too. A big, hard lump develops inside my mouth.
I feel like a frump in my spa wardrobe. I can’t stop eating, my head is
pounding and I keep snarling at the other guests. All I can think about is
smoking and different ways of buying cigarettes. I freak out in the Funky da
Vinci aerobics class and then walk out of Cardio Box.
All I recall of the ensuing episode is the receptionist screaming: “We need
three cans of Diet Coke and chocolate for A11 NOW!”
When I ask whether the house shopper could grab me some cigarettes, she says:
“We’re not even going to go there, Victoria.”
I contemplate whether this is what rehab feels like as I seek salvation in my
suite. Peterson looks at my life history and causes of my addictions. My
daily in-room masseuse is a hulking Mexican who works wonders on my lung
meridian, then the acupuncturist arrives and makes me feel like Hellraiser,
with pins protruding from my ears and scalp. He tells the kitchen I am to be
delivered pear juice, and I can’t help thinking that I didn’t travel 4,000
miles to be prescribed fruit juice twice daily. Kim does my lymphatic body
massage at 9pm, and I fall asleep, broken and exhausted, under her touch.
It’s a great treatment, and I suffer few cravings the following day.
I swim, tap and jazz dance my way out of the previous day’s shame, then
Peterson starts rescheduling my life. Instead of waking and lighting a
cigarette or three, I will have breakfast (attainable), then go to the gym
(ambitious). We make a list of rewards, which cannot include alcohol,
cocaine or spontaneously spending large sums of money (significantly, I am
craving alcohol for the first time in 18 months). We also draw up a “kill
file” of friends and family to avoid for the first 10 weeks following my
return home.
My lungs feel clearer and I no longer carry that toxic halo. The regime and
diet here have made me lose weight. The problem is, I would love a
cigarette. My sleep pattern is wrecked. Five days in, and I am still getting
cravings every 10 minutes. I can’t concentrate on conversations. I don’t
feel like me. The cinnamon gum that was so effective to begin with has
become just a placebo. I can’t realistically see myself doing the exercises
I have been given — tapping my wrist and saying, “Although I am craving a
cigarette, I love and accept myself,” and taking deep, controlled breaths —
40 times a day for the foreseeable future. I start romanticising smoking,
forgiving its sins and exaggerating its virtues. I am beginning to accept
that I will probably be a smoker for the rest of my life.
On the penultimate day, Peterson hypnotises me, taking me back to the first
time I smoked and the emotions I felt. She asks me to visualise the
personality driving my addictions, and to love and change it. She programmes
me to feel sick when I think of smoking. The session lasts for more than an
hour.Afterwards, I feel both lifted and drained. For the first time, my
cravings subside and I think of myself as a nonsmoker. All the motives for
quitting that I had mysteriously forgotten flood back — waking up choking in
the night, avoiding kissing, those little rasping noises in my thorax as I
drifted off to sleep and, when I had really overdone it, the stabbing pains
in the base of my lungs.
I had been terrified of slipping beyond the safety of the spa, but being back
in the real world just strengthens my resolve. I stay in LA for a few days’
readjustment before returning home. I have thrown away my smoking
paraphernalia and rearranged my living quarters. In the worst-case scenario,
Peterson is always at the end of the phone. She has done enough, though. If
nothing else, I don’t ever want to go through that again.
Quitting is like losing a lover. Initially, you don’t know how to survive.
Smoking is the first thing you think of when you wake, then there is that
terrible sorrow that it has gone. It pops into your head throughout the day
and reminds you of its attributes over its flaws. But, after time, you learn
to live without it, to push it from your thoughts. And, eventually, you
wonder what the hell you saw in it in the first place. On my last night,
someone asked whether I now hate cigarettes. “It’s not hatred, more
indifference,” I explained, and that’s the best mindset of all.
Golden Door: www.goldendoor.com.
Where else to go
Canyon Ranch, Arizona; www.canyonranch.com.
Pritikin Longevity Spa, Florida; www.pritikin.com.
Mayo Clinic, Arizona, Florida and Minnesota; www.mayoclinic.com.
Hills Health Ranch, British Columbia; www.thehillshealthranch.com.
Kurotel, Brazil; www.kurotel.com
