become a non-smoker

i’ve been trying to quit since last thursday. almost a week. at one point i was almost smoking a pack a day. i have been allowing myself four ciggarettes a day. it’s getting easier. and next week i will taper down to about three. i’ve found that a lot of my smoking comes from boredom! sitting in traffic….things like that. and then of course, when i have a stressful moment and things like that.

I can’t keep punishing my body anymore. After reading Allan Carrs book I no longer have any dillusions about the ‘joys’ I thought I got from smoking.

Somehow an occasional smoke after dinner has turned into a 30+ daily habit, and three years have gone by! I’m only 21, I don’t need to age prematurely or die a horrible death because ‘nows not the right time’.

I will do this.

Let’s try this again!

My New Years Eve plan failed.

However, a few classmates and myself decided that we are going to try quitting together on February 1st. I am thinking that I’m going to quit sooner than that. I know it is approaching slowly, but I’m really starting to dread the thought of running out of cigarettes, and that’s not the mind frame that I need to be in right now. I need to be thinking positively on a regular basis about becoming a non-smoker.

Good Luck Me!

OH MY GOODNESS! 8 months ago
When I went to click on the link that I have FINALLY become a non-smoker….. it said that I had given up on this goal! I completely forgot about that. I tried for so long to quit smoking and just ended up smoking even more….. until this year. Something felt different about the entire way I approached it this time. I was more committed to having patience, compassion, and humor with myself rather than actually quitting smoking. This made the experience so stress-free that I eventually stopped smoking for good! It took 6 whole months. BUT I DID IT! No more intense and irrational cravings. No more smelly clothes and yellow teeth. I feel so good inside and out. I have my sense of smell back. Which I didn’t even realize I had lost. I can taste everything. Becoming a non-smoker really pays off in big ways! I truly did not believe that I could do it. that’s the weird thing. There was no belief involved. I just kept going, even if I smoked. I would just get up the next day and keep moving forward with the goal. Until one day, I realized….. I am a non-smoker. How the hell did that happen? I prayed everyday to an unseen force that has proven itself to be one of my closest friends now. God is now the fresh air that I breathe. And I don’t mind at all. Life is beginning to bloom all around me.

... That I want to “quit” smoking… but “quit”ting has a negative tone to it.

So instead, I would prefer to be positive and look forward to something great, the life of a non-smoker.

As much as $10 a pack in nyc now….all the more reason to bid adieu.

But I’ve tried so many times, using every possible method, and really, I’m just pissing myself off at this point.

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.