It’s weird. For the past five or six years I’ve smoked on-and-off. A cigarette here, a cigarette there. Some weeks I’ll smoke one or two cigarettes a day. Some weeks I’ll just smoke one or two cigarettes in the whole week. Months might go by where I don’t smoke at all. And whenever I’m out drinking, I’ll smoke five or six cigarettes in an evening. But when not drinking, I rarely smoke more than two cigarettes per day.
I haven’t smoked at all over the past week because I ran out of rolling papers and just never had the motivation to buy another pack.
On average, during times when I am smoking regularly, I will have one cigarette in the morning when I wake up and one cigarette at night while I’m working (writing) or just relaxing. Rarely more than that.
I can’t even imagine smoking a pack a day. The idea of it is just incomprehensible to me. But I know people who smoke at least that.
My mom had a friend who at one point in her life smoked SIX PACKS a day!! Fortunately, she does not smoke at all anymore. But she looks about 20 years older than she actually is!
Get yourself over to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Allen Carr’sEasy Way To Stop Smoking. I’ll go to my grave extolling this book’s virtues (but it won’t be of lung cancer!).
Smoking taught me the hard way that different people have different responses to various drugs and addiction.
Me? I could (and did) do all sorts of drugs, drink, you name it - and I could take it or leave it. Cocaine? Booze? Pot? All okay, but certainly not addictive - at least, to me.
Cigarettes on the other hand … to me, that was the drug. The “oh shit, I’m down to my last three, gotta find the all-night store on the other side of town at 2 AM in an ice storm” drug. The “this important meeting to decide my future is going on too long, gotta find an excuse to have a smoke break” drug.
More to the point, the “I know this will kill me, but I just can’t stop” drug.
Quitting was tough. Been quit now 4 years, after having smoked a pack a day for a decade.
May 12th at 9:33 AM, last cigarette. Walked into the ER for something I thought would be, well, not trivial, but not really serious. Turned out to be really serious. They wouldn’t let me smoke in bed, and I was not able to walk outside. After a week, I decided to take it as a jump start on quitting, which I’ve been talking about but avoiding for years.
Today I have a cigarette craving at least once an hour. Just get through them one at a time. And, hey, it’s better than a month ago, when cigarettes came to mind at least every 10 minutes or so.
This is about thirty years since I re-started smoking, after quitting the first time. I’d better make this the last time. Quitting coke was easier.
Ah, trial litigation–the healthy lifestyle choice. I have a friend who is a corporate litigator, and her stories of what lawyers do building up to and during trials make a frat house sound like an organic health camp.
Yeah - a couple of months of 15 hour days, followed by 3 weeks of 18-20 hour days, combined with catered food three meals a day and the only time you leave the war room is to use the head or to smoke. The choice was to continue puffing or load up on horse laxatives, and I thought the former was the safer option, as well as the one kinder to my colleagues.
That said, if you are running a supposedly luxury hotel, and make it non smoking, can you for the love of God ensure there is some kind of sexurity where you usher people outside to smoke, so your guests are not harrassed non-stop by the homeless population of the city?
No time to dig it up, but please look up my ID and smoking… you will be led to some excellent info.
(KEY IDEA: I wanted to be FREE of the DESIRE to smoke. I wanted to go back to being the person I was before I ever smoked, even though she was only 15. After 2+ packs daily for over 26 years, I was set free. The day I quit was one of the best days of my life and I am thankful all the time. It’s been 8 years.)
You can do it even if you have to do it a minute at a time. It’s nearly twelve years for me and even though it was touch and go at the start, it’s well worth it now.
Hey villa, are you doing anything to address the oral fixation part of it? I have some friends who loved chomping on an unlit pipe while they quit, but sunflower seeds (in the shell, of course) stuffed into my cheeks like a chipmunk helped me a whole lot. This was years ago, and I still go through months where I’ll chew & spit bagfulls of the things. Awesome for road trips, too.
The bottom line is I don’t want to stop smoking. I want to stop smoking cigarettes. I want to go back to smoking 2 or 3 cigars a week. I don’t want to lost the DESIRE to smoke - I want to lose the NEED to smoke.
Not sure what you mean by that, and in my current state that could be deadly (i.e., a feather dropping in a pond on the other side of the world would piss me off. No reason needed.)
I wish that I could just smoke one in the morning with my coffee, and maybe one at night before I go to bed. But I can’t. I’ve never been an alcoholic, but I have heard that’s what it’s like- you can’t just have one or you won’t stop. That’s me with cigarettes.
Last night I was craving so hard, and I actually *found * an old cigarette in the house. Walked outside with it, lighter in hand, telling myself that I am smoking this mofo right now… then crumbled it up and threw it and went back inside.
If you really think smoking is wonderful and that’s why you can’t stop, I’ll have to second Hal’s suggestion of the Alan Carr book. That might help you. Good luck!
Wrigley’s DoubleMint gun- the real old sugared stuff, just that flavor, none else. It has helped many a ex-smoker get over it. Mind you the patch helps even more.
Thirded… I’ve fallen off the wagon again (found a pack in my drawer at work on day 4), but his book made quitting easy. I’ll be doing it again soon! Previous attempts to quit were what quitters typically report, but Carr’s book helps reprogram your mind. As he correctly states, nicotine withdrawl symptoms are just a slight empty feeling, and the rest is psychological bullshit you’ve been programmed with. Carr will change the way you think about smoking.
Rhythmdvl: Patches make no sense and have a terrible track record. All they do is switch who you’re paying to feed your addiction. What marketing genious thought of that one? Read Carr’s book for a complete debunking of the patch and other mainstream methods.
I heartily endorse this book too. I quit twice with it!
I keeed…
But that is kind of the point of the book though. Once you understand what the addiction game is about things change a lot. And this book really explains it all very well. But the best part is that it isn’t in a “shame on you! you know how bad this is for you?” kind of way.
What he basically does is explains to you that a lot of the supposed benefits that cigarettes give you are really BS, and learned behavior. Think about it for a minute. That first cigarette. Did you even enjoy it? It sure as hell wasn’t relaxing. There’s a lot of important stuff to think about there.
Here in NYC cigarettes are nearly 10 bucks a pack, you can’t smoke inside, so I quit. One way to make things easier (in my opinion) is to stop smoking inside the house. Go outside if you need to smoke. That little bit there is going to make it easier when you actually do quit. I’d smoke maybe 2 cigarettes a day when I didn’t go out. But when I did? Whoo! That was rough. I’d smoke a pack, sometimes more. Made me feel terrible the next day.
So i’ve quit for about three months now. It was easy for the first two days. I was really more in a nicotine-less state of shock to really crave it. The next two weeks were rough, I tell you, but after that it got a lot easier.
Now I have gotten into the habit of smoking a cigarette when I go drinking now, but I have decided to put a stop to that. I obviously don’t go out every night and spend at least a few days at home inbetween without smoking, but I just don’t want to go back to caring about smoking.
Oh yeah I think i’ve gained weight though. Kinda sucks but made me start exercising.
I have a friend who is a corporate litigator, and her stories of what lawyers do building up to and during trials make a frat house sound like an organic health camp.