A lot of the people I help on the phones have a social cue to smoke. If their friends or co-workers light up, there they go. Some people have a trigger so strong that even seeing someone smoke on TV or in the movies is enough to cause an urge.

Though I’ve always had empathy, I never really understood an urge that strong until I watched Mad Men. A drama about the early 1960's New York advertising world, historical accuracy wafts over the entire show, and part of that accuracy means smoking. The first image of the first episode is a man lighting a cigarette, and there are very few scenes that follow, in that episode or any other, where at least one person isn't smoking. It's absolutely relentless.

But even so, the show doesn't present smoking as a positive. It's not something that any one character does because he's "cool" or any other character doesn't do because he's "a square." Characters rarely light their cigarettes at dramatic moments or to emphasize a point. They breathe out their smoke, but they're not wreathed in clouds of it as they make shady deals or having their eyes illuminated in the darkness by the glowing tip of a cigarette. There's no drama to the smoking; in other words, smoking is just something that these characters do.

In that sense, even though their fictional lives are separated from my participants' by 50 years, I feel the show's giving me a real window into the habits and addictions of the people that I help. Watching Mad Men has helped me understand a lot more what someone means when they tell me that they smoke "all the time."

With that realization, I've actually started watching each episode of the show twice. The first time, I watch it like any other person who likes good drama: I let myself get lost in the story. The second time I watch it, though, I step back and look at a few scenes with my "Quit Coach Eyes." Spotting triggers is tough - as I said, everyone smokes almost all the time - but one that stands out strong is stress. I don't think I've seen a character get stressed and not smoke. But, like my participants, it's not a dramatic point to drive home an argument. These people close the door, put down the phone or the letter, get away from the stressful situation, and only then do they light the cigarette.

And the cigarettes do effect the characters. One episode has two seemingly fit men climbing a flight of stairs. Six floors in and they're sweating, coughing, wheezing; they can barely continue. The way the scene's framed, it's clear smoking is the source of the agony here.

I wouldn't recommend Mad Men as a show to watch for those who struggle with social triggers to smoke. I wouldn't recommend it to close allies or supporters of smokers, either - you see what it's like to be around smokers, already. But for people who help provide the Free & Clear benefit to their employees, co-workers and constituents and are themselves a little divorced from the world of people who smoke, Mad Men might provide an interesting insight; a view to a world of smokers not so far distant from our own, and a world that doesn't either praise or overly condemn the habit; a world that presents smoking as what it is for many of our participants, a simple fact of life.