Quitting smoking: sometimes laughter is the best medicine

Bebe of Fraiser explains what's so great about smoking (while she is trying to quit)... This clip is good for laughs, great for seeing why it is hard to quit.

Quitting tobacco: A bag of tricks is not such a bad thing

   This jar of cigarette butts is now two years and seven (almost eight) months old. It contains my three week goodbye to my treasured old habit. Treasured then, and sometimes even today.

   I cut back day by day for two and a half to three weeks ( now I can't remember how long it was) toward the end of September 2013 before I had my last cigarette on October 2 of that year. In this cut back phase, as I was testing the waters (did I want to quit or was I kidding myself) I'd dump my butts in this olive jar. Seeing this bank of butts grow day by day, helped me stay focused on the reality of my smoking--lots of butts a day and their ashes added up quickly--nothing pretty to look at at all.

   I also kept another bank: in that one I kept adding money for all the butts I was not smoking as I was cutting back. That added up to about 25 cents for each butt...so the money quickly grew. Quarters turned to green backs, one dollar turned to five and so on.

   Neither of these tactics convinced me to stop smoking, --yet having substitute "to dos' "  went a long way in distracting my mind from cherished habit... 

  As I look back to that pre-quitting time, I see now that I was even less confident about quitting, than I thought at the time. I was fearful that I would get too wiggy and so give up trying--who likes feeling nuts?

   But it was tools like the olive jar butt stack that gave me a fighting chance.

  This jar will go back up onto the top shelf of  my laundry cupboard, where, as before,  I will not see it very often. I want to remember the struggle from time to time, but I do not want to stare too hard at the butts in the jar. I'm still an addict--if I stare too long at the butts I might get hungry for one.

Holy smokes, Batman, Are you telling me I gotta quit the smokes and learn to cope at the same time?

Long ago and far away in my magical little smoking world, which I no longer inhabit, but sometimes wish I did, I always had my smokes to rely upon whenever I got upset. I'd puff and huff, and huff and puff...somehow smoking made anger easier to feel.

 Now, as a slowly reforming smoker, I am learning to live with negative feelings, even find positive solutions, rather than huff and puff.

It sure is difficult work, in my case. But it is not all cheerless effort--from time to time, I get a glimpse into the fact that I really do cope a great deal better more and more often. That gives me hope that I am not incorrigible.

More cigarette addiction film recommendations, shorties for mental health

I found the two short films posted below on Youtube. Watching these makes me feel angry that I ever think of smoking --even now--2.5 years later. Alas, addiction is a tricky, tricky, tricky thing.

How Teenagers Get Hooked On Cigarette Smoking

by David Hoffman

Uploaded on Jun 30, 2009

To stop smoking visit https://www.createspace.com/204462 . This helps teenage girls and others quit smoking. You can see my documentaries at www.theHoffmancollection.com. This film was made to get smokers to quit. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society. The girl speaks frankly and reveals about her feelings in part because she is my daughter, videotaped quite a while ago. She doesn't smoke any more and is now a well-respected emergency-room nurse practitioner
David Hoffman -- filmmaker

Another short film by David Hoffman

Published on Dec 10, 2014

To get this entire program - https://www.createspace.com/204460 . I made this film for teenage smokers and those considering smoking. It doesn't look at the health issues. It looks at the industry that makes billions from getting kids to smoke cigarettes. Thousands of schools use this program today.

Once upon a time quitting the smokes was suppose to be fun and exciting said absolutely no-one ever!

The link below will bring you to day #7 of iscahstar's  Youtube Vlog which bravely logs the first difficult days of her quit smoking journey.
I found it very reassuring to listen to iscahstar's story, because she talks in detail about her desire to quit and about the hard side of quitting --in real time. Somehow this makes me feel a little braver about continuing on with my own quitting journey.

Check it out, if your new to quitting or want to freshen your resolve!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VXqBJ4BiwM&list=WL&index=46

I so love the internet highway, I see more good in the world then bad.

How much is that dream in the window

Welp, it's been 2.5 years since I ditched the smokies-- those dear old friends.

These are certainly not the words spawned from an inspiring heroic journey--that of quitting. I really do miss the smokes, and I am not a hero. Yet, I'm also a quitter for 2.5. My dependency on the butts was deeper than I could imagine back in the fall of 2013 when I fell into quitting. Thereafter I got lost. I thought it would take a month or two to come to my senses, then I'd be liberated from my addiction.

I did not smoke, but I was not liberated from my addiction. It turns out that during all of this time, the most important change that occurred is that I've been learning to live without the smokes everyday, right up to today.

I've got my own running joke every time I calculate how long I've been smoke free; basically I say (how ever long it happens to be) the years/months in a growling, grudging monster like way. Then I give a cackle. Because I know it is for the best.

At times, I've felt like a complete nut job. And wondered what in hell is wrong with my mind. I think support would have helped-- maybe. I guess I am in the process of learning coping skills that I had previously assigned to my smokes. They did all the coping, all I had to do was light up. And I road that trick solidly from age 17 or so until I quit 2.5 years ago at the age of almost 55.

Everybody finds their own way in coping, both with the stress of quitting and then the daily stresses that naturally come and go.

I've changed from raging  (for example, such as the time when a printer failed me in 2014) to learning to figure out solutions to problems in a calm manner. The change is real and deep, but, like the quitting, it has taken, and is taking time and repetition to learn this new trick.

I've also coped by walking a lot, and sometimes, I've coped by avoiding problems altogether (especially first 1.5 years) when I did not feel fit enough.

My coping mantra is:
If you can't get through it, go around it. There is a follow up joke to this--Don't worry about what you won't deal with today, because it will come around again and you will have another chance to deal with it.

I'm still dreaming of a full liberation from the addiction, but for now I trust that I stumbled upon a good decision 2.5 years ago.

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!