He returned to the smokers' clinic, this time as a counselor for the group sessions. This role helped to "focus attention on preventing relapse and maintaining my abstinence from smoking," he said.
Today, when he counsels smokers at Mayo's nicotine dependence center, Dr. Hurt points out that smoking "brings an end-of-life experience that none of us want. The end-of-life experience all of us want is to live to be 85 or 90 and die in our sleep after having had a good meal, a couple of drinks, and sex," he said.
"None of us want to die in a hospital, in an ICU, or in a nursing home with a protracted end of life. The message is that nonsmokers and ex-smokers have compressed morbidity. That means that nonsmokers live longer and die shorter. Smokers live shorter and die longer," Dr. Hurt said.