Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

… smoking, drinking coffee, and using my wonderful new vicodin-based cough syrup.

I was diagnosed with pneumonia last week, and let me tell you, even if I hadn’t already planned for the little pack of nicotine-laced stress-relievers that were in my car to have been my last, when I tried a week ago Saturday night to inhale and felt every coughed-raw inch of my lungs and throat cry out in agony would have made it darned easy to stop. For what it’s worth, I don’t consider myself a smoker, I consider myself someone who smokes when stressed out. It’s just been a stressful few months.

Then there’s the coffee. My ENT doc told me a while back that I needed to drop caffeine from my diet as yet another thing that might be affecting the polyp on my vocal cord. So I’ve been tapering off. Since I was going to be home sick for a few days last week, I figured that was the ideal time to taper on down to zero, since I wouldn’t have to worry about getting snippy with patrons and co-workers. So I haven’t had any coffee since middle of last week.

And last night, I decided to try to get through the night without the aid of my new best friend, vicodin-based cough syrup. I was prescribed this to ensure that I could sleep through the night without waking up coughing, but I noticed night before last that (a) I wasn’t sleeping through the night and (b) I wasn’t coughing at night, so I began to worry that my body was starting to tell me “Hey, how about a little more of that stuff?” and getting hooked on vicodin is way, way, way down my list of things I want to do before I’m 40. (It’s 4 spots below “host a rimjob party for the New York Yankees,” so trust me, it’s way down there.)

Anyway, I’m bushed.

2

Man, that’s tough. It’s got to be hard to give up all of that at once. I hope you are feeling better.

3

Ow. My mom once had to go through that - along with dropping alcohol and codiene. A massive bleeding ulcer sent her to the hospital - she had been taking ACC (Aspirin, caffeine and codiene) many times a day for years. She never even felt the ulcer.

She had to quit cigarettes (she was a chain smoker) coffee, and her little pills all at once. I made the mistake of trying to visit her, but only once. I stayed away at school until she got back on some of the stuff.

(She since quit everything, and is a much more even-tempered soul!)

Here’s to you, and good luck. Don’t mind me, I’m just staying away from you for a while!