Image by bondidwhat via Flickr
I stopped smoking on Wednesday after Anna got on the plane. I didn’t want to stop while she was here, she had her trip back to Prague planned for a while and I had it in my head to stop while she was away. This was my plan – Anna would have preferred to be around to give me support. I don’t think it works quite like that when stopping an addiction.
In many ways it is really simple – smoking is an addiction. My body has become used to having its nicotine fix many times a day since I was 15 years old – a long bloody time to give to the tobacco industry. I am trying to understand why the craving continues for so long. All the information I collected and read told me that nicotine would be out of my body within 48 – 72 hours. So why do I still crave a cigarette?
The first and obvious answer to that question is that all the information lies, it is one of the biggest cover-ups of all time. No-one I have ever known has found stopping smoking easy. It would be even more difficult if people were told that it takes 10 weeks before the nicotine is completely removed from your body and during that ten weeks you will live in hell – oh and make everyone around you live in hell when they are near you, (my main reason for doing this on my own while Anna is out of the country).
This may be slight hyperbole – no it really is not. I have been so seduced by nicotine and cigarettes over the last 30 years that I feel like another best friend has been lost. And then I look, in my mind, at me smoking and think how barbaric the whole thing is. I take fire, some weeds that have been roasted and dried, the weeds I put the fire to and then do my dam best to breath in as much of the resultant smoke.
Feck, why do I not run into burning houses – I should have been a fireman, (or an arsonist).
Added to this crazy state of affairs I have to go outside in all weathers to perform my smoke ritual – hot, cold, lashing with rain, 10 degrees below zero, it amazes me what I did to smoke. Would you go outside to eat a bit of chocolate? No, but because I have been a nicotine addict, well you know – you see us huddled around street corners, trying to keep warm in the gale – making as if the non-smokers are kill joys.
Really which is the real kill joy…
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=7ff42aa4-aa81-4eae-8d65-a128cfc74512)
I quit smoking non-filtered Camels after 40 years. It was pure hell for me, too. What made it so hard? I really think the nicotine covered up a deep dark depression that had lasted for YEARS. When I quit I sat in a chair rocking back and forth for three weeks with tears streaming down my face… I thought I was losing my mind. The least little thing would set me off in a vale of tears; if I stubbed my toe I “had to have a cigarrette!” But I never did, and after three weeks it went away. The feelings to smoke came back for the next three years whenever I was under stress, or worse yet, whenever I gave in to my sugar craving! I tried to eat sugar as a substitute for the cigarettes and it made me go mad for a smoke. Giving up sugar was actually harder than the nicotine, I think, but I did both at once since if I was going to be miserable, I might as well get it over with quick and get over both at once. It worked. Now, I only want a cigarette on those rare occasions when depression beckons at my door, but I know if I give in ONCE I’m gone forever, so if I don’t take that first puff I will ALWAYS be SAFE. And so cigarettes have been gone for many years and my health is finally coming back. Just in the nick of time!
Hang in there… there’s nothing like breathing fresh, clean air. And that’s a Promise, with a capital P!