stop smoking

and having someone to keep you honest

okay so today is officially thirty days no smokes. It’s great but I am under no illusions that I am now a non-smoker just because I am not smoking. Cigarettes feel like an invisible enemy lurking around every corner just waiting to jump out and ambush me. I am constantly on my toes. I have to learn how to do things all over again – this time without cigarettes. As long as I stay alert, I will stay smoke free. I must never relax my vigilance – okay I’m sure at some point I will be able to resume some of my more normal activities – a glass or wine with a smoking friend for example….for now it’s enough not to be smoking myself

well I think there were a few moments today when I wasn’t thinking about smoking, wishing I were smoking or trying to figure out some way that I could smoke and not have it be a bad thing. there might even have been about ten seconds when it felt good to think of myself as a non-smoker – the rest of it was just me and the little voice saying don’t smoke, don’t smoke, don’t smoke…does it ever get better?

Okay so I’m using the gum to help and it does but honestly it’s so expensive. Am I the only one who feels that we smokers are caught in a horrible web? Cigarettes get more and more expensive as the government takes a bigger and bigger cut – to offset health care costs yeah right don’t even get me started. But then the stop smoking aids are twice as expensive. the cost of the gum it takes to get me through a day without cigarettes is roughly two and a half times the cost of the cigarettes. I feel like I’m caught between two giant entities fighting for my dollar and neither of them really cares about my health.

So I’m trying to use that anger as the incentive to keep me not smoking. five days and holding – a day at a time, a day at a time

It’s hard, but not quite as hard as I’m sure it’s going to get. right now I’m sitting here just wishing that the surgeon general would interrupt all world television and radio broadcasts to announce that they’ve been wrong all along and cigarettes are really really good for you… yeah I know deluded but that’s where my head is at the moment.

so I found a doctor who specializes in addiction couselling – cause let’s be honest, cigarettes are an addiction – and as of Tuesday September 5th I start not smoking. I think that sounds more positive than quitting. I’ll let you know how it goes