P!NK GIVING UP HER LAST VICE

[JumpinJack AJ]

Pink Quits the Only Vice She Has Left

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Michael Loccisano, Getty Images

By Jordan Lite

Singer Pink, whose raspy voice is marked by cigarettes, has often referred to smoking as "the only vice I have left."

Now the R&B and rock artist, who’s smoked since the age of nine, says she’s trying to curb her habit.

“I've definitely cut way back,” she tells Women's Health in its January 2010 issue. “At night, when I'm out drinking my wine, I'll have cigarettes rationed to me. But I don't smoke at home.”

Pink, 30, described herself in the magazine as “an asthmatic singing smoker.” She’s been reported to be a pack-a-day and a chain smoker. “For some reason, I look at it as the last remaining bit of me before all of this [fame and success],” she said in the magazine.

Pink, who’s been reported to have quit in the past, is not alone in struggling to stub out that final butt. On average, it takes smokers four to five serious tries before they succeed at quitting, said Erik Augustson, Ph.D., a program director in the tobacco control research branch of the National Cancer Institute. Half of people who smoke are ultimately able to quit, he told Aol Health.

“There are some people who wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m done.’ That’s not the case for most of us: We struggle, fall off the wagon, dust ourselves off and try again,” said Augustson. “Many smokers I’ve worked with have talked about it being the most difficult thing they’ve done in their entire life.”

Trying to figure out where to start? Check out Aol Health's Smoking Cessation Center for strategies to quit smoking. Additionally, Web sites including the American Lung Association’s www.quitterinyou.org offers tips for people who are frustrated by previous failed attempts, and www.women.smokefree.gov explains how being depressed or having a smoking or nonsmoking spouse can affect women’s attempts to quit.

A free government hotline, 800-QUITNOW, will connect you to your state’s smoking quitline, where counselors will take your smoking history and help you come up with a plan to help you stop. They’ll even schedule times to call you back to see how you’re doing and refine your strategy; some states also offer free or discounted smoking-cessation medications.

There are also a variety of pills, inhalers, patches, gum and nicotine lozenges available over the counter or by prescription. All are designed to reduce the withdrawal and craving for nicotine, the addictive drug in cigarettes, while you focus on the behavioral aspects of quitting, such as how to have a drink without a cigarette.

But while a combination of medication and behavioral strategies work best, the majority of smokers try to quit cold turkey, Augustson said. Among those who do, less than 5 percent succeed, compared to a quarter to 35 percent of people who use a combination approach, he said. “That still means a lot of people don’t succeed,” Augustson said. “But if you use these combinations, your chance of success is four to six times greater than if you tried to quit cold turkey.”

While a 2003 article in Britain's "Observer" said that cigarettes have “given her a rasp which she likes: dirty, sexy, snarling,” Pink challenges that image now.

“Smoking isn't cute at all,” Pink told Women’s Health. “It's awful. I hate the smell, the taste. I hate being around people when I smoke. I hate everything about it.”

[VIsqo]

Good for her, anybody should be smoking.. It is disgusting, unhealthy and sooo out of trend, lol

[JumpinJack AJ]

Yeah, it's amazing that so many people do it. There literaly is no positive side to it. It makes you waste 100's of dollars a year. It makes u smell awful. It makes your hourse, car, and all your stuff stink. It can give u all kinds of health problems that lead to a long, slow, painful, pathetic death. And it makes you look old/unhealthy.

I have a co-worker who is just a year older than me. I think she looks young but maybe that's because I know her. I had a customer who was about 45 or 50 say that "the girl who was about my age was helping me..." and when I realized who he was talking about, it made me realize how that's effected the way she looks (or should look). P!nk's voice has gotten raspier over the years. She has looked more and more rough as well. Look at the pix from her 1999-2003ish stuff and look at her now. Hopefully quitting will restore some of that youth and preserve her voice because she has the kind of talent that will stand the test of time.

[Sandy]

I'm always complaining when somebody smokes next to me, I hate it!! Good for Pink to quit it.

I think this year you can't smoke in some clubs in Spain anymore, that's great for me!!lol

Edited January 4, 2010 by Sandy