HI, I'm Bob," a no-nonsense handyman in his 70's said to the group of 18 sitting in a circle, "and I'm a nicotine addict."

"Hi, Bob!" came the enthusiastic response. Each of us had paid more than $1,000 and voluntarily imprisoned ourselves for five days at Hazelden, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center 50 miles outside Minneapolis. The demon we had all locked ourselves away from was cigarettes.

Being cooped up with 17 strangers seemed more than ridiculous as a way to stop smoking, but I was at my wits' end. So there I was, about three months ago, waiting my turn to discuss my Higher Power after a day of meetings at the country's only residential stop-smoking program based on the 12-step principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In keeping with the drug-rehabilitation model, the course was called Your Next Step. Many in the group had already conquered abuse of even less socially acceptable substances.

In a few minutes, we would all begin to spill our guts in this, our first Nicotine Anonymous meeting since checking in that morning. I sensed trouble earlier in the day with the program's heavy dose of spirituality. I had enrolled in Hazelden to kill my pack-a-day habit before it killed me, not to commit to soul-searching group therapy.

I had really come to Center City for the five days of acupuncture, massage, swimming and quiet away from stores that sold smokes. That was all I needed to stop, I had thought, as I drove onto Hazelden's bucolic 440-acre grounds, which since 1949 have served 70,000 addicts of all kinds, ranging from Eric Clapton to Bob Packwood.

At 36, I felt I was at the crossroads of quitting smoking. I had tried many times and ways, with varying degrees of success.

The lecture room in the residence hall where we would all be sleeping, studying and rapping was filled with a cross section of white smoking Americans between 25 and 72. They came from Manhattan to Miami to small towns in the Middle West.

One man said simply, "I feel this is my last chance."

I was less dramatic. I just said I had started smoking again a few years ago, after my divorce, and now that I was happy again, it was time to clean up this vice. I said I might write about my week, and I promised to adhere to the policy of anonymity.

That night, at the Nicotine Anonymous meeting, I fought back a laugh as my turn came to say hello. "Hi, I'm Neal," I said, beginning the litany of announcing our addiction. "And I have a tobacco jones," I added, using a slang term for a drug craving.

No one laughed, and not just because it was not funny. My need to break the rhythm with a lame wisecrack was proof that I had not accepted the first and most critical step of recovery groups. I had not admitted "we are powerless over nicotine -- that our lives have become unmanageable," as our study book, "Twelve Steps for Tobacco Users," put it.

Less than a day into my tobacco sobriety, I was still in denial. Never mind that I was in the midst of withdrawal; I was sweating, exhausted and irritable. My head felt as if it would pop off.

Our first Nicotine Anonymous meeting had ended with all joining hands and reciting the Serenity Prayer that closes most 12-step groups. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," we began, which meant, I learned from a work sheet, "that until we can accept our cravings for cigarettes, we will not stop smoking."

Whatever, I thought. After the meeting, I headed to my room feeling like an agnostic at church. I would quit without giving in to the 12-step army, I told myself. I started to read my copy of "Cigarettes Are Sublime," Richard Klein's 1993 meditation on the enduring power of tobacco in Western culture.

I WAS drooling with cravings by page 4, where Mr. Klein quoted Jean Cocteau's declaration that cigarettes "have with powerful charms seduced and conquered the world."

I then reached for my meditation book for smokers, the same volume I ridiculed earlier to one of our group leaders. "I will do whatever I need to, to live without a cigarette today," I read aloud three times, praying to something other than my Higher Power. I awoke every hour that night, drenched in sweat.

The next morning, I wandered over to the other side of the Hazelden "campus" where those in the clinic's monthlong, $12,000 chemical abuse program stayed. About 200 people are "enrolled" at any time, and at least a third seemed to be smoking. How lucky they are, I thought.

On the way, I stopped at the fitness center, as well as the "Serenity Corner," which served as the newsstand. Waiting in line with a candy bar, I saw a delivery man wheel in a dolly laden with cartons of cigarettes. "Oh, there you are," the woman behind the cash register said. "Everybody's wanting their Marlboros!"

I dropped my "Oh Henry" and ran.

The next few days inched by in a fog of detoxification. By Wednesday night, Lloyd, one of our two drug counselors, announced we were over the "hump day" signaling the end of the worst of withdrawal pains.

Still, we were warned. In lectures, Lloyd continued to give frightening statistics, the most striking being that smoking kills 430,000 people a year. Lloyd, in his mid-40's, had the been-there look of a reformed biker captain. "When I was smoking," he said, "I would have crawled over my dying grandmother for a cigarette."

Almost everyone nodded, and then told more save-me tales involving decades of smoking, mountains of tobacco, anguished family members and increasing social ostracism. "I just want to get healthy," I kept saying, still in control of my emotions.

Our brochures told the reality: "Abstinent smokers go into relapse at about the same rate as cocaine and heroin addicts; 80-95 percent of those who make a serious effort to quit will start smoking again, usually within the first year."

Hazelden's success rates for smokers were higher, Lloyd said, though adequate long-term surveys had not been conducted on those who had gone through the program in its four years. In any case, Lloyd emphasized, the first armament against relapse is that "we must admit powerlessness."

HERE it comes again, I thought, bracing for the sermon. But then, during the afternoon group session with Cathy, the other counselor, the Hazelden message finally broke through. "I don't hear you addressing your serenity," our group leader said to me. "She's right," one of our group members chimed in. "You seem to hide your feelings behind jokes."

"You don't even know me!" I spluttered, surprised at my own vehemence. But they did know me. Then, finally, I "shared," to use the 12-step term for telling true feelings. I'm not sure whether it was peer pressure, my distaste for playing class clown or the epiphany that I would never lick this vice for good unless I asked for help.

I confessed to the group that reaching this point of powerlessness had begun at age 3, when I had found a corncob pipe and kept it in my mouth for years like Linus's thumb. Since then, I went on, I had tried and failed in shame to quit smoking via hypnosis, self-hypnosis and three quit-smoking programs.

I told of the dusty stacks of literature from the American Lung Association scattered around my apartment, and how I had once tacked up pictures of celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Sammy Davis Jr. who had died of diseases related to smoking. I talked of failed relationships and cigarettes, and feelings and cigarettes, and how I felt as if I'd lost my best friend.

I paused, and the room remained silent. I was, I finally said, more than willing to accept that I was powerless over nicotine and would gladly accept any help from any available Higher Power. I had crossed a threshold -- for one day.

The next morning was our last. We all went over our after-care plans, which would include weekly meetings of Nicotine Anonymous. Only 1 of 18 had dropped out during the week: a middle-aged woman who had suddenly left the night before.

For graduation, I chose Bob, the handyman, to give me my diploma: a pin showing a forest, the sun and the motto "Breathing Easy." Bob had always laughed at my jokes, even the ones everyone else hated.

"I'm Neal," I whispered to Bob as he pinned me, "and I'm a nicotine addict."

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Bob whispered as the pin went on.

Yes, very. Almost three months later, a day at a time, the journey continues.