RUMFORD – Elise Caswell was 15 when she started smoking. It was cool. It was the thing to do. It helped her filter out her adolescent anger.

Then, for the next 30 years, she tried to stop.

She finally succeeded seven years ago.

Now, her essay describing the addictive habit and how she broke it, has won top honors in an essay contest sponsored by the River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition.

“I finally got to the point where it was only me making choices. I had to decide to choose not to smoke,” she said.

Along the way, she and her husband, Stephen, tried the patch, nicotine gum, hypnosis and just plain cold turkey.

It was during one of those cold turkey times that she succeeded.

“I tried to get my attention focused on something else, on doing something pleasurable. I had sort of taught myself that this horrible smoking is pleasurable,” she said. “I’d be afraid to have a cigarette now. It’s very tricky, a very insidious thing.”

She and her husband and their two teenage sons moved to Gilead from Massachusetts about three years ago. She writes a column for the Bethel Citizen and is a former children’s librarian.

Sarah Coolidge is coordinator for Project NOW, a program aimed at helping improve the health of area people through smoking cessation classes, advice on good nutrition and by encouraging physical activity. The day she called Caswell she was sitting on the porch, writing in her journal about whether she should make more of an effort in her writing.

For her essay, she received $250, which she plans to use to buy a new computer monitor.

Grace Goodrow of Dixfield received $50 for her essay. Ten were submitted.

Caswell and Goodrow’s essays, along with the other eight submissions, will be compiled into a booklet and distributed through area libraries, businesses and smoking cessation classes Coolidge offers at Rumford Hospital in August.

“We want to help those who use tobacco by providing stories of success from others,” Coolidge said. “They were wonderful essays with many different ideas.”

For Caswell, she relied on strenuous physical exercise, munching on unsalted, in the shell peanuts, and writing in her journal. In fact, she said, she spent 10 to 15 years ranting and raving on paper about smoking.

But most importantly, she said, a person has to believe that they can do it.

She ended her essay with, “Be patient and kind to yourself and know that you are bigger than the addiction. Know you are free and divine. Believe!”

eadams@sunjournal.com