Today marks my 5th smoke-free month. Yay! Woohoo! Bring out the fanfare! Send in the clowns! Give me a cigarette! Hihi just kidding about the clowns.
Hehe.
Quitting has been both kind of difficult and remarkably easy.
I’ve made several attempts at quitting before, only to return to my filthy ways, couple of months or, at worst, mere days later. I always knew I wanted to quit at some point, I believed it in my heart I did, but I never really set a date, or if I did, I always pushed it off and had myself another cigarette to ease off the stress of worrying about it.
I didn’t want to quit at all when I did, which I realize is the best time for me really. I needed to know that I could quit whenever I wanted, and not just for a few measly weeks. I think that was around the time I was high on productivity and gung-ho about changing my hedonistic ways. Problem was, I also knew that I would eventually crumble in the face of finality. The idea of never smoking another cigarette for as long as I live puts me off going off smoking. Even now, and I’ve been a nonsmoker for months. Hehe. Having been a smoker for nearly a decade, I simply found that difficult to imagine, much less sustain.
So I compromised and set myself an attainable goal: 1 nonsmoking year. Immediately I liked the idea. I had already started cutting down from a pack a day habit to 3 sticks a day after resigning from my unhealthy glamorous-by-association job anyway and I was quite proud of that achievement. This led me to pursue a more ambitious goal: that of quitting altogether…for an extended period of time. You’ve got to appreciate the attractiveness of the custom-made program. If you don’t, well you can eat shit.
It’s difficult to quit when you love smoking as much as I did. For me it was more of a psychological addiction than a physical one. After a meal, I always wanted a fag. While I’m waiting, it’s nice to have a smoke to pass the time and it’s great with a lovely afternoon tea. When I’m with friends and drinks are flowing, convo’s going well and everyone’s having a ball, the familiar itch to light up will eventually follow. I get all excited for one marvelous moment and then I remember with a pang: oh yeah shit I’ve temporarily quit. Unpublishable scenes and dialogue in the lines of why is this happening to me? would follow shortly. But once I figured out how to effectively distract myself whenever I craved a cigarette the most (which, at the time, was every chance I got), it was easier to stay strong.
Personally, the hardest thing to cope with has been the social exclusion factor. When I’m at an indoors event and there’s a lull in the excitement, guess what happens — everyone I know heads out the door for a smoke break. I know from experience that smocialising is a different kind of encounter, almost always interesting and one that can be incredibly satisfying. I bask in this atmosphere, friends abuzz with unspoken opinions accumulated over the past hour or two. Everyone’s relaxed and open, brimming with news to share and gossip about. Always terrified of missing out, I have joined in on numerous occasions. The urge to light up gets so strong though and I didn’t want to become known as the dreaded nonsmoking tag-along friend, so after a while I stayed behind and cried in my heart. Hehe. I can hehe about it now but that was (and still is sometimes actually) a veritably painful struggle for me.
Sometimes my friends will forget and invite me for a smoke. I have resisted each time as they praised and taunted me in turns, remaining strong in the conviction to stay the course. I knew that I didn’t want to waste the days I’d been so good and starting over would just be doubly awful. What has kept me faithful is the knowledge that I’ve set a relatively easy goal of 365 nonsmoking days as opposed to the option of never again. And I surmised that 1 year could be long enough for me to develop a strong enough dislike to the taste/smell. So it’s potentially effective in the long run.
Next January will be very interesting. Will I go back to smoking a pack a day? Will I want to? There are days that I mind smokers more than my nonsmoking friends do. But then again, sometimes I just really really want a drag. But that urge is growing less intense and surfaces a lot less frequently. So we shall soon find out.
My my, I live in exciting times.
1 Comment
June 28, 2007 at 11:05 pm
gooooood on ya it seems like everyone’s quitting these days. george has quit for 6 months. i am the only one left of the 3 citi sidewalk smokers. (citi sidewalks, citi sidewalks, dressed in holiday cheer?)