Quitting has felt like madness sometimes...

15 months and counting--no smokes. It hasn't been easy to quit, but I guess I am in a sizable minority regarding this. When I first quit, I thought I'd spend five weeks or a few months kicking the habit then I'd get back to my comfortable old routine just with out the smokes. Didn't work out like that. I discovered that I have a seemingly bottomless well of resistance to change!

And just when I think I've got a foothold on what it means to get on with life without the smokes, I find myself anxious and unfocused--not really wanting to smoke anymore, but "life" just doesn't seem quite right either.

The degree to which I sometimes miss my old life is somewhat discouraging. But I was a smoker since the age of 17, and I quit at the age of 54. I take solace in the fact that perhaps it is best to follow my dear mother's wisdom, 'Give it time." She always was right.

I imagine myself hoisting my spiritual sails...hoping for a good wind.

A Reminder That TOBACCO is an Industry: Caring about the outcome of smoking is not a part of the industries business model

I stumbled upon an hour long documentary on YouTube that reveals why an increasing number of folks in India are taking up smoking--turns out regulation is low, activism is in its infancy, and the tobacco industry is "enjoying" great freedom in advertising tobacco through all forms of media.

I liked my smokes,and I miss em' BUT watching this documentary reminds me that the tobacco industry is only concerned with earning a buck from my smoking. No more than that. 

Given this truth, I really do have to be my own activist...

And I owe a debt of gratitude to those activists who have lead the charge to change all the laws that have lessened the impact of tobacco industries ability to sell itself in the USA--

List of AWESOME quit smoking videos available online

1.Quitting Smoking is a Journey

DocEvens Youtube

Evans, a Canadian, offers his take on quitting cigarettes...and it is full of common sense...

2. Quitting Smoking Timeline

The video bellow is an offering be Quitsmoking.com via Youtube and it

calmly proceeds to explain all the good things that come to the body after quitting smoking...

It's like a lullaby for quitters!!!!

3.The Many Faces of Smoking: the effects of nicotine on brain and behavior

A lecture by Marina Picciotto, published by tildecafe on Youtube

This lecture puts the emphasis on how the brain works...easy to forget that this impressive organ can get hoodwinked into acting NUTS...the lecture brings this fact home. 

More about this lecture...."Published on Sep 22, 2013

Professor Marina Picciotto opens the sixth season of Tilde Cafe discussions. While nicotine is a plant alkaloid, we (and even the electric eel and insects, among other organisms) have nicotinic acetylcholine receptors where nicotine can bind. The native molecule that binds to this receptor is acetylcholine. But we have two types of acetylcholine receptors, both of which respond very differently when acetylcholine binds to them, so in order to distinguish them, they are referred to as either nicotinic (binds nicotine) or muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, binds muscarine, which is also not native to our bodies. 

Broadly, nicotinic acetylcholine receptors while located primarily in the nervous system and skeletal muscles, they are found almost everywhere in our bodies. More specifically though, the details of the receptor makeup varies with where the receptor is located, and consequently, when nicotine binds to it, the receptor response is dictated by its makeup. Further, the receptor is not a single protein, but made up of multiple subunits, and nicotine does not bind all the subunits, only some, and with varying degrees of affinity -- the highest affinity binding subunit (beta-2) is a component of the receptor found in the brain, in the specific regions that are part of the reward circuitry. And from reward circuitry, a term one sees associated with excessive eating, we also learned a little about how chemicals that resemble nicotine have been shown to play a role in reducing food intake -- and for the rest of the story, check the footage of the afternoon."

description from tildecafe Youtube

4. 

Frasier Season 3 Episode 21 "Where There's Smoke There's Fired April 30, 1996"

This episode is good for belly laughs...Frasier  must get Phoebe to quit smoking...craziness ensures....

Google the show, and show title and you are bound to find the episode somewhere onl;ine.

Checking In 14.5 Months of NOT SMOKING

  Fourteen and a half months. That's how long it's been since I put down my smokes. I quit almost out of the blue, AND I quit with a 51% desire to do so,on the one hand, and a 49%  desire to keep on smoking, on the other hand. It seems as if that 51 for--49 against-- center of gravity (after all, 2% is a slim margin) has shadowed me ever since I took the challenge. Yet, it is 14.5 months later, no smokes, and I do have days when I feel down right happy about quitting. 

  To calm my inner addict beast, I toss it a crumpet of hope by agreeing to pick up smoking sometime way, way, way down the road if I really, really, really, really, really can't stand being a non smoker. Rationality has no room in my addict mind.

  I had my last smoke on Oct 2, 2013, and I said then what I still believe today; I can't quit by being a hero-- being anti smoking, feeling sorry for folks who still smoke, exclaiming "free at last" won't work for me, for I grew too old and set in my ways to quit with ease and grace. 

  Still,  I've discovered that even in the face of 51/49, in the face of being a big baby, I can succeed in finding my way through one day, one month, one year...and counting... of staying away from the ciggies--

  My inner addict might even be growing less angry and pissed at the world!!!

Photo taken Jan 2013 during one of many cigarette free walks--

--yammering inside my head like a crazed addict all the while.

When am I going to feel better!!!! That's how I cried, like a helpless addict baby!