Never to smoke when asleep, never to refrain when awake

T Minus Five Days

So here I go.  Five days from now I will make an attempt at quitting this habit, giving up an old friend that I've had in my life for far too long.  I haven't tried to quit in over four years.  That time, I made it a few months and then let my guard down.  A road trip to San Fran took away my willpower and I gave in to the urge.  This time I have to remember that even three months without doesn't mean I'm over it. 

But where to start?  Just thinking about it, mental preparation, knowing that in five days time I will have to break the associations.  Coffee, meals, work, waking, bedtime, sex, reading, breathing. 

I'm choosing nicotine gum as my gateway out.  I used gum before and it seemed to work.  At least it gave me enough to ease the physical cravings.  The hardest part--the mental--will be another ball of yarn.  I'm sure it and I will unravel.  I'm sure I'll walk past smokers on the sidewalk and want to kill them for their cigarettes. 

But it's time.  And it starts in five days.

Five friggin days.

Habits

I have an overflowing ashtray full of last cigarettes, a thousand thoughts of if only I could snuff this one out and it would be my last.  You would think that a guy who could take one final sip from a beer and without ever stepping into a 12-step meeting would five years later have that as his last sip would be able to muster up enough willpower to get through a few weeks of nicotine fits.  But smoking is different.  The habit embeds itself with so many pieces of your existence, so many daily tasks, that you can't imagine doing one without the other.  Waking up: cigarette.  Driving to work: cigarette. Lunch: cigarette.  And on and on.  Sure, some of these connections could be disentangle mostly through necessity, but others will need serious consideration.  In other words, I'll have to reevaluate my other habits.

A Quitter Starts

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.--Mark Twain

I've just finished smoking another cigarette.  Ten on a Sunday morning and I've already smoked half a dozen.  That's what I do.  First thing when I wake up, last thing before I go to bed, cigarettes.

With the exception of a few months in which I tried to be a non-smoker, I've had this habit for eighteen of my thirty-four years.  I wish I could add up the number of cigarettes I've smoked, the packs I've bought, the money I've spent.  I'm glad I can't accurately calculate the weeks or months or years I've trimmed from my life.  I'm happy my lungs can't speak.

I don't know why I started.  I remember the day: a church youth retreat, two dozen of my fellow young soldiers for the Lord entertubing down a creek in northwest Florida.  Somehow one of my friends managed to smuggle a pack of unfiltered Camels and at some point we managed to pull ahead of the chaperones, sneak into the woods, and I couldn't resist.  Maybe I thought I could change my image from boring, all-American kid to rebel with the flick of a Bic.  Maybe I was just curious, felt the peer-pressure, wanted to impress my friends.  Whatever it was, it all began that day.

I didn't cough up a lung or vomit or fall down and ask the Lord for forgiveness.  I smoked it like I knew what I was doing and later that day I convinced my friend to give me a few to take home with me.  I taught myself how to be a smoker. One or two a week became three or four a day and before I knew it I had a habit.

Eighteen years later and I'm still hooked.  Despite all of the warnings, the frequent illnesses, the fact that I'm as good as a leper in this increasingly nonsmoking society, I sit defiant in the relative calm of my porch and light one after another, interrupted only by the need to resume that portion of my day that I can't or don't smoke.  I enjoy those three or four minutes it takes to burn one down to the filter.  I love smoking.

But it's time to quit.  I could spout off the dozens of reasons why I should, but only one matters.  For Christmas last year, I gave my wife the gift of a promise, that by this Christmas I would be a non-smoker.  To her credit, she doesn't stay on my case about stopping.  Only on rare occasions does she even bring up my habit.  But I know she wants a long life with me, and every cigarette I smoke is a potential minute or two I won't be able to share with her.

I don't know when the actual start date for my stop date will be, but I'm running out of time.  Over the next few weeks, I'll be coming up with a plan: the whens, the hows, the whats.  That's why I've created this blog.  I plan on sharing what promises to be an agonizing experience with everyone.