become a non-smoker

It’s so damn simple… It’s just a matter of cutting the bullshit and actually doing it.

I got called on it today:

“I thought you quit smoking”
“You don’t understand. It’s difficult. It’s like taking your life apart piece by piece and relearning to do everything”
“Some things are easier to do when you’re not smoking :)”

And… I gave it deeper thought than I ever have before, because it was like I had been lying, and in a way I was: I was telling myself (and everyone else) the same standard crap and making the standard half-assed attempts to placate friends, family, and myself. Never once had I ever decided “this is my last cigarette” and believed myself. No wonder it never worked.

I had started reading “Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking”, and it was a revealing read, even if I didn’t get past the introduction: “It never seems to occur to them that smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn’t smoke. The real problem is to remove the reasons that they do”.

Today, I decided to have my last cigarette and used that NLP trick to attach some revolting images to the act of smoking, which seems to have worked: I got a gust of smoke in the face today and almost threw up.

So… even though my last cigarette was at 1.03pm yesterday, and I’ve only been a non smoker for 13 hours, I feel justified in ticking this complete: I actually believe it this time.

Quite apart from the fact that that goal is mired in the language of defeat, this is a different goal, though it is basically all in how you look at it, but hopefully the use of a different term will be enough to shut up the whiny kind of non-smoker who would make me want to light up just to blow smoke in their faces.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to avoid most of the patronising crap about health (listen to Bill Hicks - non-smokers die every day!), money (I can afford to smoke, thanks), and will power (I’ve managed to avoid punching every non-smoker who has ever tried to lecture me - I’ve got lots of will power).

Mostly, I think I’ll just avoid thinking about it as a pleasure I’m denying myself, because that hasn’t been true for years. That’s why I’m doing it.