‘Maybe it’s a little death wish, OK?’

Strangely enough, the cancer was a relief, Ron said.

His business was going down the tubes and he was involved in a rancorous divorce. “I’m up to my . . . in alligators and facing bankruptcy. Along about then my wife decides to use Gloria Allred as her lawyer and I’m contemplating suicide.

“So when they told me I had cancer of the lung, it was like a mitzvah, a blessing. Something greater had taken over.”

The cancer put his problems in perspective, he said, because then he had real troubles.

His audience, seated around a hollow square of lunch tables in a basement room at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, listened with rapt attention. Maybe partly because Ron is an articulate, hip-looking guy and most of them were women. But primarily because Ron, despite having a third of one lung removed two years ago because of cancer, had the same problem they did: giving up cigarettes.

The American Cancer Society sponsored the four-session course over eight weeks for the hard-core nicotine-addicted, a “Smokers’ Anonymous.” This was graduation night, when, ideally, they were supposed to tell the others that they hadn’t smoked in two weeks and saw a new day dawning.

It wasn’t that easy.

One after another the 14 women and four men, using first names only, told tales of agony, fear, humiliation, tension, triumph or failure.

Even Ron, after the surgery, went right on smoking.

“I had pneumonia and smoked right through it,” Selma said.

“Actually, I’m not concerned about cancer or dying,” Ron said, although he conceded he “didn’t like the feeling I’m getting in my chest again.”

“It’s a matter of keeping my word,” he said. He had promised himself he was going to stop and it had been two weeks since his last cigarette. “I’ve gone through so much suffering to get this far, that I can’t bear to have to go through all this crap again.”

Also, he said, when friends saw him smoking again after the operation, “they’d get in my face.” It was a nuisance listening to them calling him a fool.

But, he admits, “I find myself hoping for a crisis in my life so I’ll have an excuse to start smoking again.

“Maybe it’s a little death wish, OK?”

He is still an inspiration to the others, or at least his experiences are.

“Your description of the surgery you went through got to me,” said Jeannie.

“When I got up the next day and wanted a smoke all I could think about was the tubes hanging from my body and the pain you described, and I haven’t had a cigarette since.”

The group cheered and clapped. The group’s “facilitator,” Lynn Cohen, gave Jeannie her certificate of completion.

Cohen, a legal secretary, has been leading the sessions as a volunteer for 10 years “for personal gratification,” she said. “My father died of lung cancer.”

She also had a hard time quitting, she said. “I stopped in 1972. Cried every day for four weeks.”

The group started with 28. Ten dropped out, 14 said they had stopped and four just couldn’t.

“I’ve been weak,” said a college professor from a health-related field who begged that her name not be used outside the group because she is embarrassed by what her colleagues might think. She cut down from a 20-year, two-pack-a-day habit to 10 cigarettes a day, she said, but it was impossible to stop altogether.

“I’ve been hiding the cigarettes from myself in the house,” she offered as a sign of good intentions.

Cohen suggested she keep them in her car trunk and smoke only outdoors to make it as inconvenient as possible.

“I’m down to six or seven a day,” said Joyce. “But this is just the worst time to try. My mother passed away, my best friend died and I just had a new grandchild. As soon as I get my life in order. . . .”

“Today is my 10th day without a cigarette,” proudly announced Natalie, who appeared to be the youngest. “I’m 31 and I’m getting married this year. I want to have kids and I have to get my body in shape.”

“My son made me stop,” said Laurie, who manages a small business. “He was on my back so constantly it wasn’t fun to go to his house anymore.”

Art recounted a small triumph. He asked for a seat in a restaurant’s no-smoking section, “a first for me. I was with some friends. They all cheered.”

Selma sounded on the verge of tears after going five days without a cigarette.

“I’ve been to at least 10 clinics like this and I flunked every time. I paid $800 for one of them. I’ve had hypnosis, acupuncture, everything. I owe you all a debt. But I’m not very easy to get along with these days.”

“I have to learn to think of it as an enemy,” said Mary, who got down to five cigarettes a day but backslid to 10.

Too depressing, protested the others. “Better to think of it as a friend who died.”

Cohen urged the group to stick together, telephoning each other with encouragement.

“Ninety percent of those who get partners are still off six years later,” she said. “Some of you are going to be friends for life.”

She suggested they write no-smoking poetry and read it to each other over the phone, reading an example that began: “Farewell, my queen. . . .”

She invited the four who couldn’t quit to her next clinic at Granada Hills Medical Center. “You all know each other. You can car-pool and have coffee together afterward.”

“Goodby,” they shouted to each other at the end of the evening.

“Good luck. Hang tough.”