Dear Me; The letter I hated to write

As a way to shore up one's smoking cessation...

many quit smoking programs suggest writing a letter to oneself before quitting. So did NH Quits state site, my alma mater. I followed the suggestion reluctantly but I felt so stupid writing a letter to myself. Maybe the contents of the letter did not make a difference to my quitting cigarettes, but perhaps the willingness did. 

Below is a copy of that letter written almost three years ago...

No holy grail here, eh? But all the same, I quit and I got better. 
The adventure is still on.

Quitting cigarettes: not the most popular of topics

Smoking is an addiction, 

not a bad habit

I've watched and am posting yet another great Youtube video covering the true nature of cigarette addiction; this one covers how very important it is to the tobacco kings to catch the young. 

It was posted about four years ago, and  as of Sept. 7 2016  it has a meager total of 11,737 views. 

Suffice it to say, quitting cigarettes is not a highly 

popular topic. But, of course it should be.

Get 'em Young and Train 'em Right", Lecture by Dr. Robert Jackler

Quit Smoking Movie Night

Movie night at the Quit Smoking Lodge

This three part documentary on smoking and the tobacco industry  (moderated by Walter Cronkite) is an eye opener.

I'm  posting both episodes here as a movie night suggestion. I've watched the first, and will watch the second tonight.

Tobacco Wars - Episode One - Lighting Up

Tobacco Wars - Episode Two - Smokescreen

         

Tobacco wars - Episode Three - Smoked Out

Once upon a journey

The road to quitting cigarettes (a vlog about a special place and a few thoughts about addiction and quitting)

Portrait of Smoking

I Remember

This montage includes notes and records of my smoking history for over 10 years. I started counting my daily smokes when I ended up in an emergency room coughing up a lot of stuff from my lungs in Jan 2003. The doctor listened to my lungs, asked the inevitable question; Do you smoke? I said yes. He said,"You will have emphysema if you do not quit." I said nothing. But I remembered.

I quit October 2 2013...so it took about ten years from that moment in front of the doc in the emergency room to the moment that I, as it turned out, would say goodbye to the cigarettes.

I tried once in 2009 on the spur of the moment. Even bought nicorette gum. I lasted 12 hours.

I keep these quit records as reminders of my smoking life.

Moments to quit cigarettes for





























I took this pic in 2013 of a field of flowers near my house. It was along a busy route I often traveled and still do today. This particular day I was in a dense mental fog-- nearing my quit date, feeling the squeeze and feeling beyond uptight. Still, I was caught by surprise to see a crowd of thriving sunflowers by the side of the road as I drove along the highway. I had to stop. They called. (Others stopped too). After gazing and taking a few pics, I then went on my way back into the fog of quitting. 


Every now and then, I reflect on the sunflowers that charmed me into stopping.  My rear view mirror tells me  I was lucky to quit, lucky to catch the sunflowers singing when I could not.

Smoking is an addiction, becoming a nonsmoker is a journey

Smoke Break

I often go downtown, sit in my car and gesture draw referencing those I see out and about town. One day I saw this woman on smoke break at a door stoop. This (the drawing) is all I saw of her at first. She was about 20-25 years old. Puffing, looking down the street and up the street. After her smoke was finished, she stepped out onto the walk, revealing that she was pregnant. 

Note to self: smoking is an addiction, 'nuff said.

Note to self; don't forget to quit smoking

Mission Impossible

  
 I made this note as a strategy list for my tapering/quitting the cigarettes in Sept 2013. At that point, I was on my last carton, and my quit date was to arrive when the last smoke was smoked. The note is now a mile marker-- written about two years and eleven months ago.
  When I scribbled this,  I had no idea if I could/would quit--no doubt I was mentally wringing my hands, and deeply worried that would turn tail as soon as quitting got difficult. 

Yet, in spite of the stress of quitting, these days, I feel so relieved to see that I made it past my desire to quit smoking and deeper into not smoking as a way of life. Fussing and lost at times.
  There are lots of quitters just like me who felt crazy for a while. Cigarette smoking is not a simple habituation that one can so blithely walk away from; many struggle to quit and stay quit. So to those hoping they can, those new to quitting, those like me wanting to stay quit another day, "Fight for it, we can do it yes we can, if we can't do it, nobody can...hey, hey, ho, ho...fight for it, we can do it, yes...etc."

     Breath deep, onward.

  

Quitting, what's it all about, anyway?

It takes time to figure out

how to live cigarette free.

Confusion and wigginess

can run rampant. Even a 

sense of "this is not me"

or "this is not what I was

expecting" can lurk nearby,

ready to coax each one of

us back to the old and the

familiar. So easy not to try

a little longer, to get to the

store and end the discomfort.

Quite alright to be confused,

quite alright to wait til another

time to go get the cigarettes.

Just not today.

Give it time, and dig

a little deeper.

'Put the last thing first,

and the first thing last...'

How to quit smoking ... or how to get rich selling real estate ... or

Drives me bananas when I read headlines like this: "The easy way to quit smoking"...

There is no easy way to quit smoking, unless you are one of those who sees the light, are completely ready to let go, and will not look back once you quit. 

How many smokers are at this stage? Not many, maybe close to zero. 

Quitting was not the easiest thing I've ever done, but I've plodded along and gotten through the worst of it. Often I felt hopelessly addicted even though I was not smoking. There was no easy way to quit, not for me... a lobotomy might have worked...

Today I am glad I stuck with it. I still have mental pangs as if something is not quite right. The addiction lingers, and yet, I never reminisce about waking up to smoke or hacking during the night. I never think fondly about how much fun it was to plop 44 bucks down for a carton of cigarettes every ten days at the local gas station, nor do I get a warm fuzzy feeling as I recall emptying the ashtray. 

I just remember that one golden moment of having my smoke. Such is the power of smoking addiction. 

Quitting is a deeply personal journey for almost everyone. 
While it did help to watch quitters on youtube talk about there quitting,  much of the time I had to be resourceful--I felt so not up to the task! Yet, I kept not smoking. 

The willingness to quit is one thing, the sticktoitiveness is another. Honestly, I think I fell into quitting. Although, the one thing that did happen before I quit was a trigger moment.

The catalyst for this moment came about while I was figuring out if I had enough money to buy some piano supplies. It was morning and I was huddled over the kitchen table smoking, drinking coffee and adding up the cost of the supplies. By my figuring, it was not worth it to buy the parts (that was in Sept 2013). All settled. Budget wise, smart, eh?

That's when, for a split second, I understood my insanity.  $148 a month to smoke, but the piano had to wait a year for $135 worth of parts.

That split second was my wing and prayer. After that I planned my quitting which was a process of tapering off over a period of two and a half weeks. During those weeks I practiced not picking up a smoke at times when I felt upset. I specifically made this effort because it seemed my weakest point...a place where my resolve might melt without an approach in place.

The quit date (when the last butt in the last pack of the carton on hand was smoked)drew near, I was smoking about 5 butts a day at that point...I could smell the environment around me better already...

But I was on high alert, and though I stuck to my quit date, I soon felt completely out of sorts, uncertain...dangling in mid air, no safety net...

I stuck with it not out of heroic can-do will power, but with an ever so tentative will to stick it out just a little more. Words that came from my mother so long ago came back to me; give it time. Mothers know best, eh? So I gave it time. That's what I do today, if I need to.

I have great empathy for those who smoke, still smoking. And for those just taking the first step. It's a tough one, but by no means impossible.

Nothing wrong with the blues when it comes to quitting cigarettes

If I could turn back the clock and never have smoked at all, I would. 

Because sometimes I get the blues about quitting. I feel like some part of me is missing. But that is the thing about having been a smoker for so long, I've lost a bit of myself, gained something new for sure, --still, sometimes I get the blues. Nothing wrong with that, so long as I allow them to fade away.

Comedy has been my ultimate tonic for curing the blues. I've watched Harvey Korman  on youtube time and again...he so often played characters that get trapped in a crazy situation...
When I watch this stuff, I just can't stop laughing. At other times I listen to music to sooth my soul.

                            Harvey Korman and Tim Conway skit from Youtube

The long road to really quitting cigarettes; in the mean time I'll forego the smokes til I get there

I thought I'd get over the pull of my cigarette smoking within a half year...

As Ralph Cramden would say; "Hardee Har, har, har."

I have been off the cigarettes for two years and ten months, and at the age of fifty seven, I am in no rush to collect lots of years of non-smoking.

The road is sometimes still very tough (not nearly as often) --it's an inside thing...it's about feelings sometimes, state of mind at other times.

But bit by bit, my mind is being reformed into a non-smoking (I don't like to say that too loudly, after all, it has been a slow and painstaking letting go--in which clarity and heroic gumption were absolutely missing!)

I didn't believe I could quit smoking, too old, too tired, a habit too long, it's a part of me forever, I thought...til the day I die, I thought.

Somehow I made it through, and of course just for today, I'm off the butts.

To all in the process of quitting, thinking of quitting, or maintaining the quit, safe journey to you.