December 7th is my one year quit date. I smoked for decades and had a love-hate relationship with it. I tried to quit maybe 20-30 times over those decades but was never successful nor did I follow a program through to the end. There was hypnosis, prayer, cold-turkey, the patch, the lozenge, and a very weird Seventh Day Adventist thing that involved ‘cold mitten showers.’
In the past few year I’ve had a life-threatening illness and continued to smoke; I smoked even more to calm me down while at the same time getting the nicotine high. Nothing anyone could say made me want to quit; as a matter of fact, I despised anyone who would challenge my choices, and in retaliation probably smoked more. I was smoking about four packs per day. Yikes!
In October, 2006, my daughter did one of those Intervention things where she told me that although she loved me and although I was ill, she wasn’t going to be a caretaker any longer, I’d have to fend for myself. I probably told her to fuck off, but the next day I called my health insurer and asked for a shrink recommendation, that I was probably crazy for continuing to smoke.
I saw a psychiatrist two days later (he could prescribe drugs whereas a psychologist could not). The guy was a tall gorgeus 40-ish naturalized East Indian-American who absolutely could not relate to me. He proceeded to ask me a list of questions that I think I learned in a Psych 101 class somewhere in the Eighties and knew how those questions should be answered. I passed the test and therefore wasn’t crazy.
The doc prescribed Wellbutrin which is primarily an anti-depressant but that also had a good record for smoking cessation. He told me to continue to take the drug until I was willing to make it work. No time limits, no promises.
Two months later, on December 7th, at 1PM, I saw that I had only 2 cigarettes left and had to go to the closest mini-mart to stock up. Rather casually, I thought, “Um. Maybe I can quit.” I smoked the last two and waited for the junkie cravings that usually happened where I’d probably assault someone in order to get some smokes. It didn’t happen.
Days went on; months went on. I haven’t smoked but I occasionally have a smoking dream where I feel the power of it all, but the odd thing is that I’m totally satisfied by the high in these dreams and don’t wish to smoke while awake.
I get my Wellbutrin scrips from my primary MD now and will probably not renew this last one - a year of Wellbutrin should be sufficient.
My Dad died of lung cancer at age 67; my grandpa died of a respiratory infection at age 53; my aunt died of lung cancer at age 73. For some odd reason I thought they’d lived long enough anyway, and they would have died of something else at the same age, not necessarily lung cancer.
Addiction brings about ‘Magical Thinking.’
Sigh.
