Just so you know-- I am somewhere in the process of quitting smoking-- haven't had a cigarette since a week ago today-- and have the attention span of a gnat. Should be able to blog again this weekend.
My sister and I took last week's long weekend to lock ourselves away so we could watch each other like hawks and quit together.
As Mark Twain said, "Quitting is easy. I've done it a thousand times." Actually, my attempts at quitting have always stayed in the realm of intentions. In 42 years!!! this is the longest I've gone without smoking. At my age, I don't expect quitting to add much time to my life, but it will certainly add to my self-respect.
Don't know if its because of detoxifying or what, but I'm waking up five and six times a night-- look at the clock, go back to sleep-- and lots of dreams but haven't remembered any.
Anyway, I will stop boring people now with this saga.
6 comments:
Aaa-mennn (Plagal cadence)
You go, girl!
A couple things I find help me keep away from the cigarettes:
1. When you feel the urge, take a heaping deep breath of fresh air and notice how good it feels.
2. Convince yourself (Lie to yourself) that you just had a cigarette, and that your ok until the next one.
Thanks for the tips! A hundred times a day I reach for a cigarette and then remember I've quit.
Breathing does help, doesn't it?
Don't give up. The cigarette companies are thinking up new ways to addict folks.
Wellllllll....so you are going to stash the stogies, eh?
Right On!
I, aka Me, Myself and My Little Voice...quit smoking almost two years ago.
And you know what that meant for me.
In and out of homeless shelters, thumbing rides for thousands of miles and exposed to smoking truckers and roadies all the time.
How did I do it?
Well, first of all I faced the fact
that I was addicted to nicotine...not smoking.
Nicotine...not the cigarette, itself...was what I had to beat.
And that realization really ticked me off.
So, I scraped enough money together to rent a room at a quiet motel for three weeks. And I told the staff there what I was going to do, when I checked-in. They supported me 100%.
They put me in a corner room in a non-smoking area. And they made sure the housekeeper didn't smoke around me.
I ordered in. I washed-out my clothes in the tub. And I did quite a bit of talking on the phone.
But...for three weeks, I never went out. At all. For anything.
By the middle of the second week, I was ready to tear the paper off the walls and shred the sheets.
And then I invented my help and it ended-up being my saving grace:
I took a wash cloth and soaked it in water. Then I wrung it out a bit, rolled it up halfway and put it between my teeth.
I kid you not!
Then I sat and watched tv, refusing to turn away from the smoking segments...and chewed on that washcloth...and pulled on it...chewed...pulled...and then soaked it and repeated that procedure all over again.
With no way to smoke in that room and my mouth full of cotton cloth...I quit.
And on the twenty-first day of my self-induced confinement, I walked out of that motel room nicotine-free.
I still am.
I know you will be, too.
Thanks, Michael and Ruthie. I'm not smoking but I'm not a nonsmoker yet-- but I'm hanging in.
Post a Comment