Jail Me So I Can Quit Smoking, Says Iowa Woman

Aug. 6, 2007 — -- An Iowa woman who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day became so frustrated with her addiction that she called the sheriff's department last week and asked officers to jail her for several days — just to help her kick the nasty habit.

"I've tried everything," Jodi Perkins told ABC News' Law & Justice Unit. "I'm only 39 and I smoke two packs a day and I just can't breathe. I would do anything in the world to quit smoking. I would go to jail. I'm just so sick of it."

The jail wouldn't take her.

"I called last week and I said, 'Hi, I am interested in being admitted to Polk County jail and I'm willing to pay any fees that it would cost you to keep me there for a few days.' The lady [who answered the phone] was really surprised, but she said they couldn't help me."

Neil Shultz, a spokesman for the Polk County sheriff and a former smoker, said he sympathized, to a degree.

"Ironically, most of the people in, want to get out," he said. "We've got about 1,000 people incarcerated in our two jails here in Des Moines and between the two of them they were designed to hold about 514. So as sympathetic as we can be, we're not able to help her."

Perkins, a clearly determined woman, then turned to her family.

"I went out and got handcuffs and then I got hold of my sisters and I said to them, 'OK, I want you to handcuff me inside my bathroom for a week.' They would leave me food and water and everything, and then not come back for a week."

"They agreed to do it, but then they changed their minds. 'What if someone broke into your house?' they said. Or 'What if there was a fire and you couldn't get out?'" Perkins said, recounting her sisters' concerns.

She said she and her sisters then hatched a plan to handcuff her in the bathroom with food and water "and then they'd leave me a hacksaw," Perkins said, chuckling as she recounted the conversation.

"But then I'd just be at the store trying to buy cigarettes in handcuffs,'' she said. "Well," she concluded with a sigh, "then maybe they'd arrest me."

Perkins said she's been trying to quit smoking for seven years and recounted some of the indignities American smokers increasingly face in a society where the habit is becoming as unpopular and disreputable as narcotics.

"I've crushed packs of cigarettes, only to go back and buy more right away. I've tried cold turkey, the patches, the pills and the gum and nothing's worked for me," she said, adding that she's aware that her habit can be distasteful and harmful to those around her.

"I never smoke in my house. I only have a dog, but I don't smoke around him or near him. I go outside."

New rules at the financial institution where she works in Des Moines prevent her from smoking anywhere immediately outside the building, which can be tough, she said.

"There are 6,000 people in my company, so it's a pretty large parking lot, and you can only smoke inside your car. You can't smoke anywhere outside the building, which I understand, but when it's 20 degrees below outside, I will bundle up and walk out to my car, which can be a pretty far walk in a parking lot that big."

But nothing, she said, compares to the shame she said she feels smoking around children.

"I have three nieces and nephews and my sisters don't want me smoking around them. They don't even want the kids to see me smoking, so I will go out and hide behind the garage and smoke," she said. "But when I come back they can smell it."

"It's shameful, and it's just a torment," Perkins said. "I would do anything in the world if I could just quit for good."

She said she feels it's hard for people who have never smoked to understand the discomfort of nicotine withdrawal. "People think it's a want, but it's a need. It's a physical craving in your body."

Perkins said a supervisor at her workplace learned of her plight and offered, only half-jokingly, to lock her in his basement for a week.

Perkins said she's so frustrated that she considered it.

"But then I said no. This very nice man has a new baby at home and I said to him, 'Thank you, but between your new baby screaming and me screaming from the basement, you would never get any sleep!'"

But Perkins' plea to get into jail may lead to help elsewhere.

Shultz, the Polk County Sheriff's Department spokesman, said he got a call from the famed Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which said it had heard about Perkins' plight and wanted to help. He has been unable to reach her to pass on the message

"A Powerful Addiction"

Smoking cessation experts say Perkins' attempt to be jailed is understandable.

"I think unfortunately that it's not that uncommon to feel that level of desperation,'' said Dawn Wiatrek, director of the American Cancer Society's QUITLINE (1-800-ACS-2345 or 1800 QUIT NOW). She said a common mistake smokers' make when they try and quit is to underestimate the habit's more subtle consequences.

"You can normally get over the physiological addiction in 48 to 72 hours,'' Wiatrek said. "It's the habits - it's finding a way to replace all that time you spend smoking. That can become a huge challenge."

At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota Dr. Taylor Hays works with dozens of nicotine addicts each year as associate director of the clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center , one of the nation's few inpatient nicotine cessation programs.

"The basic components of chemical dependency treatment are there'' in the nicotine cessation program. Hays said that the program runs one week, and that for the first 48 hours patients are basically locked down.

"We don't have rubber rooms,'' he said, but patients are expected to remain inside the facility for the first two days. After that, they are allowed outside briefly, but only in the company of either another patient or a counselor. After about five days, patients are allowed to leave the grounds on their own.

But when they return, Hays said, they've got to blow into a CO2 machine that can tell if someone's been smoking.

The program offers medication and nicotine replacement therapies like nicotine patches and nicotine gum to ease the early symptoms of withdrawal. Patients undergo intensive group and individual counseling as well.

"We want them reasonably comfortable so they can engage in the cognitive therapy sessions,'' Hays said. "We talk a lot about relapse prevention."

Hays said the weeklong program is at least partially covered by most insurance plans, though without insurance the cost is about $5,000. He said 50% of patients are still smoke-free a year after the program.

While rehab centers appear to be paying increased attention to nicotine addiction, there are still not many options for people like Jodi Perkins, who feel they need to literally be locked down in order to kick the deadly habit. For the past year, the Caron Treatment Center in Pennsylvania has made nicotine cessation a requirement for the adolescent drug or alcohol inpatient treatment program, which includes patients from 12 and 19. A spokeswoman for the facility said that Caron is aiming to make their entire campus smoke-free within a year. But neither Caron nor other well-respected facilities like the Betty Ford Center currently offer inpatient smoking cessation programs.

"For a long time tobacco was never viewed as an addiction in the same fashion as other chemicals,'' Hays said. "We now know that it's a powerful addiction. But the consequence curve is much steeper for people having trouble with alcohol'' or drugs, he said. "If you smoke, the consequence curve rises to a very high level - but it's a long and gradually inclined curve, so people don't view'' nicotine addiction as a reason to seek inpatient medical care. In comparison to alcohol, smoking is not an intoxicant. If you have a problem with alcohol and get in your car and drive drunk, that consequence curve can be very steep and very fast. But with nicotine it's gradual."

For more information about the Mayo Clinic's nicotine cessation inpatient program, go to http://www.mayoclinic.org/ndc-rst/residential.html.You can find information about the Caron Treatment Center in Pennsylvania at http://www.caron.org/ and the Betty Ford Center at http://www.bettyfordcenter.org/.

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