Happy, but cheating.

During the day, while I am work, and most evenings my happy nicotine patch has been tiding me over.  But every few days, I've been dipping into a pack.  This week I smoked a pack, except the one that is still in there taunting me.  This is because I haven't been able to stop fixating on the evil smokes, and if I let my myself go ahead and smoke once in a while, and my brain knows that I will let myself do that, then I can let it go and get my brain back in order.  Does that make sense?  I know from experience, however, allowing myself to do that, does not actually make me a quitter.  And over time, even if I quit smoking altogether in the next little while, if I do it by telling myself I can smoke if I really want/need to, then I will start smoking again eventually.

So I'm a bit adrift.  Which is why I chose the photo at the left, taken after our sandbar trip lunch during our barracuda fishing trip in Belize.  Wasn't at all adrift during the Belize trip.  I got to dive, and eat, and fish, and smoke all I want, even inside the clubhouse there.  Everyone on that island was a smoker, not exaggerating, and most of them were from the U.S.  I thought I was in some sort of Twilight Zone version of heaven.  It was awesome. 

Next week I have an appointment with a physician to try the Chantix.  You know, the drug I discussed many posts back that I was hesitant to try because of the increased risk of depression and suicidal thoughts.  But, on the upside in order to take the drug I have to start smoking again for a couple of weeks so that my nicotine receptors can be re-trained.  Today, I am not smoking.  Hopefully not tomorrow too.  I am not giving up on quitting, I promise.  Never surrender!!

It's Just Pretend.

Another problem preventing me from quitting entirely is the imaginary glamor of it all.  When I am smoking, I don't watch myself, so I can imagine myself being the very glamorous pretend me. It's only pretend, and it may be deranged, but it's fun for me.  Until I go to bed and my legs start aching and I start worrying that it's a blood clot and that I'll have a midnight stroke, or when my hands go numb and I start picturing the shrively old me with skin like tissue paper and packing my oxygen tank around with me, that I realize how truly unglamorous smoking really is. 

I have been feeling very unglamorous since I quit, and I like to be pretend glamorous, which has led to me having a number of...shall we say...relapses.  While I am relapsing (two packs worth in a week) I do feel very 1960's fantastic while my little smoking binge is ongoing.  The post-binge anxiety, however, is reaching a fever pitch.  Which, I guess is good since the goal is to stop smoking altogether.  So my new goal now is to make it 10 days with no relapses.  I also need to find a new way to pretend like there is some glamor in my world.  I'd go back to vintage clothes, but I'd have to lose about 4 inches off my waist.  Apparently no one in the 60's ate.  They just SMOKED and drank cocktails. 

Angry Papillae...

I think I killed my taste buds.  Smoking an entire pack of cigarettes in the span of about five hours did have the positive effect of making me really not want any more.  Now I am going to bed.

Wolf!

I may be Shelley Effing Davis, but apparently I can't do everything I say I am going to do every time I say I will do it.  You've probably seen the commercial with the man sitting on a pier with a shark attached to his arm who keeps repeating to himself "cigarettes, cigarettes."  Well, that has been pretty much my entire inner dialogue since Sunday.  That man pops a piece of lovely Nicorette (which I am not knocking, it is still good) and then he moves on with his day, and realizes there is a shark attached to his arm.  Well, I had the patch on, ate my citrus, took a walk, went and had some acupuncture, pressed the radish seeds she attached to my ear, chewed the Nicorette, chewed the cinnamon gum, I even ate some delectable M&Ms and still all I could think was cigarettes, cigarettes, so I got some.  Damn it!

Here is another thing about quitting for me.  Whenever I have a bad day, can't concentrate, can't sleep, or am generally out of sorts, when I quit smoking, I blame it entirely on cigarettes.  I realize that is entirely illogical.  During my eighteen years of smoking I had bad days, couldn't concentrate, couldn't sleep, and was sometimes generally out of sorts.  Then I did not blame it on not smoking.  I blamed it on something else.  So folks, I am as disappointed as you. 

At the store when I was purchasing the cigarettes I was carded for the smokes (which is lovely, and maybe another reason I keep buying them).  He apologized and I told him I didn't mind in the least, if he could deter some kid from ever taking up this horrible addiction it is entirely worth it.  Then I told him I was quitting, finished the transaction, saw the puzzled look on the man's face, and took my cigarettes home.  It is so perplexing.

Maybe hypnosis would work.  What do you think?  I was called on-stage at the senior class graduation party to be hypnotized with a bunch of my classmates, and I wouldn't go under.  That fellow told me I was not capable of being hypnotized, but perhaps he was just a hypnosis quack.  Maybe I could be hypnotized, and under hypnosis I'll discover a bunch of glamorous past lives.  If you don't get that reference and you have Netflix on demand, look up "On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever" the movie.  It's a classic.  Also about a gal who undergoes hypnosis to quit smoking.  It's hysterical. It's also a musical and one of my favorite shower songs.

All right, while you are all thinking "sure you are" I'm going to sit here and stew in my failure juices and hope that tomorrow is better. 

Needing Some Inspiration.

I wanted to smoke so bad today that if my car hadn't been trapped by the carpet cleaner in the driveway I would probably have smoked. Thank goodness for the carpet cleaner.  Instead of smoking I ate five clementines and chewed a lot of cinnamon gum.  So I am not feeling particularly loquacious this evening, nor can think of anything inspired or inspiring to share with you so I will keep it short.  I survived another day with my non-smoker status in-tact.  Hooray for the little victories. 

I do have a new favorite thing to share.  Lunch time walks with my friend Jill.  Thanks Jill.  See you tomorrow.

Some Really Big Numbers.

I've been smoking for eighteen years, give or take a few weeks.  Let's do the math, using eighteen years as the rough round number.

One pack a day for 18 years = 6,570 packs of cigarettes.

There are twenty cigarettes in each pack = 131,400 individual cigarettes smoked.

During the time that I have been a smoker cigarettes have increased in price from about $2 a pack to a whopping $5 a pack.  So I chose a rough figure in the middle, $3.75 a pack = $24,637.50 spent on cigarettes, roughly.

Here is the kicker, I approximate that it takes about 5 minutes to smoke an entire cigarette, although that may be a little on the long side.  In any event, if I multiply 5 minutes by 131,400, divide that by 60 and divide that by 24, the answer is 365.  I have spent approximately one whole year of my life with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth.

So, well...., there's that.  That's all the math I choose to do today.

Worst Fears Realized.

All right, not worst fears, but predictable negative side effects confirmed.  In the week since I quit smoking, I've gained 1.5 pounds.  So 1.5 pounds in and of itself is not alarming, but 1.5 pounds a week, if it continues week after week could become more alarming.  I guess it's time to baby step on from citrus to the gym. Blech.  The gym sounds bad enough on its own, but going to the gym without the satisfaction of that first post work out cigarette, sounds like even more torture. 

Aside from the minor weight gain, and having to go back to the gym, and still being a little jittery, and being more sensitive to the heat (a side effect I believe from not spending an hour or two outside smoking a day) I am starting (kind of) to enjoy being a non-smoker.  I had a great long weekend water skiing, visiting friends at their Donnelly ranch (complete with home-made bread and home-made strawberry/raspberry ice cream-Thanks again), and then home again to my kind and patient husband.  I'm trying to stay positive about this quitting stuff, but my mood has been unpredictable and at some times rather sour, and he has been very good to me about all of this.  I still haven't quite figured out how to mellow my brain out without the nicotine breaks, and Bryan has been very good to me while I continue to make sour faces, and silently sulk until I figure out a better, less deadly way to mellow myself out.

As a general rule, I have always been a bit of a stress case.  I rather enjoy that about me.  Cigarettes were my break to go outside and calm the hell down.  Guess what, the evil tobacco companies knew I would do that, as the following vintage cigarette ads prove.

Steady nerves for war time.  I'd probably still be smoking if we were in the middle of World War II.

Yes, I used to smoke anxiety away.  Spud cigarettes?  Wonder why that brand didn't last...

Who new contract bridge was such a stressful game?  I had to add this vintage ad just so I could tell this story.  About two years after I finished my undergraduate degree my grandmother invited me to join her bridge group, and when I explained to her that I did not know how to play bridge, she accused me of not actually having gone to college. Apparently she was under the impression that all nice young women go to college to learn how to play bridge and find husbands.  True story.

It does take steady nerves to be America's Greatest Stunt Girl.  I don't think the life expectancy of a wing walker made her overly concerned about the negative health effects of smoking.

Wishing you all an excellent week, and for myself, some calmer nerves and no more weight gain.