cathleen's place: Quitting smoking

Today marks six months of no cigarettes.

I've done my share of whining and complaining about not smoking, but I must say it's getting easier and easier to ignore the little urges I still get. Fortunately, I have vivid dreams of smoking and when I wake up, I feel satisfied. How odd. I wish I could learn to do that with food. Oh well.

image by duchesssa at sxc

I can't believe I quit smoking. I didn't want to quit. I wanted to want to quit. I wished I wanted to quit. One day I just couldn't keep doing it any more. It's the weirdest thing: I can't bring myself to smoke even though I really really want to. Sometimes I get this strong urge to have a cigarette. STRONG. Know what I mean? Ever been addicted? That book (Easy Way to Stop Smoking) is spooky. I didn't even finish it. I knew there was something strange because I was only about a third of the way through it and I wasn't wanting to smoke very much. We took a trip to Portland and stayed in a hotel that didn't have any smoking rooms left and we had a non-smoking rental car. When I made the arrangements I was pissed -- I couldn't figure out how I was going to enjoy the trip. Once we got there (and I had read more of the book), it was no problem. It's just too weird. I don't understand it. I want to know what happened, how it works. How could I be a smoker one day, with no intention of quitting, and then wake up the next day and say "I'm not smoking ever again?" What is that?

I've been dreaming about smoking. It's so real -- it feels like I AM smoking. When I wake up, I feel guilty, but I also feel like I've satisfied any craving I had for a cigarette. It's weird. I expect to smell smoke in the room. I worry that I've actually started smoking again without knowing it. Can that happen? It's so X-files.

So I can breathe.
So I don't stink.
Better health overall: circulation is improved, teeth and gums are healthier, less toxins traveling through my entire body (and goodness knows I don't eat enough foods high in anti-oxidants).
No cigarette butts to worry about when I'm out (even though my sweet husband keeps buying me portable ashtrays).
So our house doesn't stink. When we lived in San Diego, I only smoked outside. Here in Florida I had been smoking inside. Yuck.
No ashtrays to clean.
Save $$.
To impress people.
So my clothes don't stink.
To prove that I could do it.

Delicate. Lovely. Soft-looking. Always surprising. Flowers, wherever you find them, are wonderful. They fill the world with every color and the most delicious smells.

This is the quintessential Florida scene -- wet, wet, wet and green, with some Spanish moss thrown in for good measure, of course. Although Florida is not a great place for hiking, we decided to "hike" through this park. It's called John Chesnut Sr. County Park and it's located in Palm Harbor, Florida.

It covers about 255 acres and was built in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers. The reason Florida isn't a great place for hiking is because 7 months out of the year it's too hot and humid to move with any speed and there are no hills or mountains in Florida, so there's just these flat, boring stretches of path through the humidity.

And truly, in the months of June to October, the bugs will eat you alive in a close environment like this. The air barely moves at all. It's really amazing -- people who've lived here for years don't seem to notice that you can't actually get any air when you're outside. On our walk through Chesnut Park we were warned about the dangers of messing with the wildlife. We've heard stories, like everyone has, but we haven't seen anything scarier than a medium sized spider.
The park is built beside the rather large Tarpon Lake and is full of swamps, so the Army Corps of Engineers built these cool raised boardwalks. The boardwalks do two things: keep your feet dry and keep humans out of the marshy, swampy, somewhat delicate terrain.

Walking through the Florida jungle on these boardwalks in late October was almost pleasant. There was a tiny breeze, it was cloudy and the temperature wasn't much higher than 79 degrees. What kept it from actually being pleasant was, of course, the humidity, which was probably in 90% range. Yuck. But the marsh is full of wondrous life.

This is what fall looks like here. Pretty much that's it, the one leaf. We saw some orangish-brown needles on the pine trees. It was just some old dead branches.

It's really a lovely place and easy to enjoy. There are plenty of benches for relaxing, watching the wildlife and listening to the sounds of the water creatures. There's even a swing.

It's truly unfortunate that I still associate relaxing outside with smoking. I'm happy to say that the urges passed quickly and Kim helped me by talking through it with me. He's very understanding -- he quit smoking more than 30 years ago.

Today is all about air. I can't seem to get enough of it. I keep gulping and gulping huge deep breaths but I never seem to get full. It's such a relief today -- the idea of smoking a cigarette is disgusting, instead of interesting or inviting. I actually do NOT want to smoke a cigarette. I'm pretty sure I didn't want to yesterday, but I was simply feeling the urge intensely, to the point of distraction. I was watching people smoke today on my way to the gym. I didn't envy them. I really meant what I said about never wanting to have a first day of no smoking again. It truly is the hardest, although there are moments when the idea of NEVER having another cigarette sends me spiraling into despair. Fortunately I found a perfect solution to this particular nastiness. I visualize a foul, poisonous creature that's trying to kill me. So I'm fighting back. It's a fight to the death. I must kill that little sonofabitch before he kills me. And if I keep breathing and I keep fighting, I can get through this. I imagine a day will come when I won't even think about smoking or cigarettes or other smokers. At least I hope that day comes. But I won't hold my breath.

It's only been eleven days. It feels like years. It feels like I lost something I really needed. How crazy is this? I know I've quit smoking and I made a vow that it's forever -- I'm never ever going to have another cigarette. Ever. Not one. But I keep feeling like if I just wait a little longer, it'll be okay to have a smoke. The urge, the drive, the god awful NEED, is really almost too much. I'm whining. But other quitters will understand.

There's at least one person who believed it's easy to quit smoking. His name was Allen Carr and he actually wrote a book called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. It's a very subtle book. It quietly and completely erodes the bubble of blissful denial that a smoker lives in. It tears apart the smoker's self-inflicted brainwashing. It keeps whacking the smoker in the face with stuff the smoker knows is true but has conveniently tucked far far away. Carr points out: Certainly no smoker started out to become addicted. Certainly no smoker said, "I want to be a slave to cigarettes for the rest of my life." I know I sure didn't. When we start smoking, when we're just 'experimenting,' when we're fighting with our parents and teachers over who will be the boss of us, when we're struggling with an identity idea, we certainly are NOT going to stop and say to ourselves, "hey wait a minute, this is nicotine we're talking about here, this is very very addictive stuff and the tobacco companies don't give a flying fuck about whether or not I die from smoking this shit not to mention that it costs a bloody fortune." Carr keeps hammering away, bringing up all the things the smoker wants to ignore. And he should know -- he was a 100/day smoker for 30 years. He speaks from personal experience.
As with any attempt to undo brainwashing, the important thing is to find the key that holds all the pieces in place. Somewhere there's a tiny shift that forces all the other denials and stupidities to crumble. I'm not sure I even know what or when or how, but I do know that reading this book thoroughly undermined any ability I had to delude myself another day.

When I woke up last Monday I thought, "This is the day I quit smoking forever." Kim made coffee, handed me my cup and I sat down in the dining room. I did not go to the patio where normally I'd chain-smoke through my morning coffee. I also didn't say anything about my decision -- too scary to say it out loud. It's hard to break a 40 year routine. At least it is for me. Maybe there are people who can just say "that's it" to something and change their entire life around and be fine with it. Not me. I'm such a creature of habit, and not very good habits at that. One of the things that's been a help this week has been thinking about how I never ever want to have a first day of not smoking again. Ever. Never. The first day is agony, although every day has been grueling for short periods. The mindless urge to light up a cigarette is so incredibly strong, almost irresistible. Lighting up is ingrained at this point. It's a matter of brainwashing. And I don't mean brainwashed by the tobacco companies, oh no, I did this to myself. You'd be appalled at what goes on in a smoker's mind. Like feeling relief to see other smokers outside by the ashtray; being sure that not coughing means that the 20 cigarettes/day aren't hurting you; thinking of smoking as a reward for hard work; believing that cigarettes make you feel calmer. I used to run a mile every day just so I could say, "See, smoking's not so bad," as I'd light up after my run. And here's the most ludicrous one of all: so what if it kills me? I gotta die some way. But that's exactly what brainwashing is -- thinking that insane things are sane. Denial and denial and denial. Refusing to look. Head up and locked.
I did it to myself. But it took me years and years, it was slow, gradual, insidious. There was a long period of no thoughts at all, just casually lighting up one cigarette after the other, not worrying about it. When you're young you can do that. You can take drugs, smoke cigarettes, drink as much booze as you want, stay up all night dancing and partying. When you're young you don't think about death coming for you. You don't see the stupidity in the things you're doing. You don't wonder about the consequences, what will happen later because I did this today. If you think about it at all, it's only to say, "don't be an old fuddy-duddy, have some fun!" It's a terrible dilemma: young and foolish and full of yourself or careful and self-disciplined and stodgy.
So I'm taking it one hour at a time. When the urge bites me, I take a few deep breaths and say to myself, "I'm free."

I've smoked since I was 13, started with Camel nonfiltered. They were really nasty. A person had to work hard to keep smoking after the first one. One cigarette should have been enough and would have been if not for the "gang." I hung out with a slightly tough crowd, not the really mean, really tough bunch. My friends might ditch school occasionally, might drink beer on the weekends, but they weren't bad kids. I don't think they even would have hassled me if I'd chosen not to smoke, but I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be like them...they were cool, Fonzie-cool.
Last week I celebrated my 59th birthday and realized how incredibly stupid it is to continue doing something I hate and that makes me ashamed. I had quit about 5 years ago and managed to go without smoking for 9 months. It was so easy to start right back into it; maybe I had just the slightest twinge of guilt and embarrassment, but that wasn't as important as having another cigarette. If you've never smoked a cigarette, or if you tried it and didn't stick with it long enough to become addicted, you cannot know how awful it is to be a slave to cigarettes, how horrible it feels to have to check your pockets before leaving the house because you can't leave without that pack of smokes, how disgusting it is to have that smell on your clothes all the time, how hard it is to enjoy kissing when you know you taste worse than garbage, how ridiculous it is to keep putting poison in your mouth hour after hour. You cannot know. And you cannot make someone stop by telling them these things.