The Mad Russian

Smoking. One of the great vices mankind has ever created. Sure, it's a habit that will eventually kill you, but lots of things can kill you. Everybody dies of something. Just the dirty looks we get from the healthy and self-righteous, our nonsmoking moral superiors, silently castigating us for indulging the habit outside of our workplaces, our bars and restaurants, can sometimes kill. But that's not the point...my 20-year love affair with the demon weed (well, one of them...) is over.

Last Saturday, I QUIT SMOKING! (Again. I quit for 3+ years in the late 90's, early 00's before resuming the habit during an adventurous, drunken week in Buenos Aires.). How? A visit to The Mad Russian did the trick.

Some of you may have heard of the Mad Russian; some of you may have seen him yourself. If you haven't...he isn't Rasputin. No long beard, no Czarist ghosts floating overhead, no mysticism whatsoever. Yefim Shubetsov is a rather avuncular Russian emigre with a unique ability to cure people of their vices, primarily smoking, drug & alcohol addictions, anxiety and depression, and weight loss. There is sometimes a month-long wait to attend one of his sessions, all due to incredible word of mouth. The man doesn't advertise, has no website, yet has people from all over the country coming to Washington Square in Brookline seeking a miracle.

My appointment was at 3p. Naturally, I was 15 minutes late. Chainsmoked all the way there, hurriedly crushing out the final one in front of the nondescript Brownstone that houses his office. The sidewalk in front of the place littered with butts, the last nervous puffery of the latest group seeking smoke-free salvation. As I headed up the stairs, I feared being shut out of the session, of being sternly disciplined for my tardiness by some wild-eyed Russian mystic. "I wonder if he can cure my chronic lack of punctuality?" I thought. Anyway-the secretary at the front desk greeted me in Russian, and when I quizzically looked up at her and responded with "huh?" she switched to English and said "you look Russian, sorry." No need to apologize; I am of Russian ancestry. I just don't speak it. So she leads me into his office, crowded with 15 people sitting on ordinary hardwood chairs forming a U. He stops his speech as I enter, feeling my face go red with embarrassment at interrupting with my lateness (you'd think I'd be immune to it by now). He says "that's ok, there's traffic and rain and life supposed to be miserable!" And then, like a teacher scolding a misbehaving 3rd grader, he gets another chair and places it to the immediate left of his desk, the teacher going to keep an eye on this new, trouble-making student.

Once settled, he resumes. "Life supposed to be miserable!" he exclaims, a few times. He's hard to understand, the accent very thick and the pace of speech quite rapid. All 16 of us lean in, trying to concentrate on what he's saying, and trying to ignore the nicotine cravings we're all feeling. He fleshes out the life-as-misery thesis, that because of all the rogue nations harboring nuclear weapons we're all doomed anyway. The history of wars, of mankind's cruelty to mankind from the beginning of time right thru that morning. The millions of deaths due to religious zealotry, the rise of communism in the land of his birth, of Lenin killing 60 million people. Shit, I was beginning to agree with him!

Then he moves on, speaking faster...he asks each person if they have any pain, anxiety or depression. For pain, he holds up his hand and waves it in their general direction, apparently imbued with the ability to manipulate energy and, as he claims, "I do not create pain, I remove pain." A few people claim that their pain is suddenly lessened or gone altogether. Myself included...I don't know if it was a psychological trick or just a way to get him to leave me alone or whatever, but I did feel the usual dull ache in my right knee dissipate. For those who acknowledged anxiety and/or depression, he asked if they were on medication. He hates medication, says he'll cure it right then and there, all the power to cure any disease is in the brain. We only use 6 percent of our brains, after all. So much more power there to harness. Told an anecdote of a teenager with terminal cancer curing himself with the power of thought. It starts becoming clear, that we're going to stop smoking thru sheer brainpower...

After the healing game (thank you, Van Morrison), he moves on to another long lecture, a lot of it hard to understand as his pace of speech quickens again, but the gist of it coming thru. His success rate, treating 134,000 people over the last 29 years or so, and only 1% ever coming back for a second treatment...so he claims. This being the only time we'll ever have to pay-we can come back again, call him anytime, never be charged another dime. But the gist of it: "Nothing instead of cigarettes," "do not try, do not give it your best, just do it. DO IT!" and "when you crave cigarette, think about something else." Seems simple, right? It is. Don't replace one addiction with another. "No carrots, no gum, no fruit, no water, no patches, no nothing!" Um, ok. "Just do it" is so deceptively simple, yet it applies to so many areas of life. Just do it-no qualifiers, no bet-hedging. I can do that. "Think about something else! Humans can only focus on one thing at a time!" Again, sounds so simple, but it does work, and since there was a really, really attractive older woman in the group, I concentrated on her when I got the urge to smoke. It worked! Except I was really horny and she was really, really not interested. Not that I'd have acted upon it, but still...hey, there I go again, thinking about something else and not smoking!

At the end, he ushered us all out of the room, lining us up single file for a brief, one-on-one consultation. When my turn came, I sat down as instructed. "Close your eyes," he said, "and think to yourself 'I am smoking.' When you picture this, nothing fancy, raise your hand." I did, and he made some weird noise with his mouth, waved his energy-field-manipulating hand over my head, and that's that. Then asked if I had any other problems. Buddy, you have no idea. But I copped to anxiety, which is true to an extent. Same thing, close eyes, picture an anxiety-inducing situation, weird noise and the hand wave again, and it's over. I shook his hand, he said "you have good body for a man, do this and be healthy" (as opposed to having a good body for a dancing bear?) and he opened the door to his waiting room, where the secretary stood waiting to collect my $65 fee.

I drove home feeling eerily calm. No craving for a smoke. Got home, and after a few hours felt the DT's settling in nicely. It is still a major drug addiction, after all. Got a good strong dose of nausea, the shakes, and sweating profusely. Remember the scene in "Ray" where he falls off the bed in the rehab place? Yeah, kinda like that. But I toughed it out...the last few days have not been easy, in that I'm still really jittery, but I'm also smoke-free. I'm also afraid to eat, which is a side effect of his "most important! Next 10 days, you do this wrong you get fat as an elephant!" speech. Fuck. "Nothing in place of cigarettes! You eat normal meals, that's it. No snacks, no nothing!" So I'm smoke-free and manorexic. It's always something. Anyway-I don't know how it actually works, I just know that his Russian Voodoo Shit took hold of me and I don't smoke anymore. Truth be told, I have chewed a couple pieces of Nicotine gum per day, usually at night when the jitters are at their worst and I'm shaking like Michael J. Fox in that stem-cell ad he did last year. Whatever. As he said during his monologue, he's saving my life. I'm saving my life. Best $65 I ever spent. Dos Vadanya!