To be continued

Well, it's been a while since I've managed a new post dear reader, and for that I apologize.  I've been tinkering with this post for a while now, and releasing it for unlucky week 13 seemed an appropriate gesture. 

What was the worst part?

I often wondered before I quit what the worst part would be.  I pictured my trainspotting nightmares; I imagined my road rage.

I've thought about that question a lot now that I feel like I'm over the hump.  I look back at those first few days, those first few weeks, and I ask myself what was the worst, what was the closest I came to smoking.

I have a few moments to chose from.  I have the wake of a friend who died about 10 days after I quit.  I have the funeral of a dear friend's father a few days after that.  I have angry moments dealing with a particularly impossible wood supplier.  I have a sequence of fairly emotional events that you'd think would provide my "worst day" scenario.

They don't.

My worst day is so much more banal.  There's an important truth in that: sometimes, it really is banal to quit.

My worst day was somewhere between day 5 and 6 (it was hard to determine exactly which day counted as which, since I stopped smoking on GDT and promptly returned to MDT).  I was at work, sitting at my desk, thinking about how easy it would be to walk to the corner, buy a pack of smokes, and just put this whole thing to rest.  At that point, no one knew that I was trying to quit: I hadn't told my friends or colleagues, and my partner was safely tucked away in Australia for 2 weeks in case I turned into a monster.  I told myself over and over again: no one will know.  You can try it again later.  Next week.  Next month. No one will know.

I scoured the internet looking for information and help on how to resist my diabolical rationalizations.  I found all of the predictable materials: breathe deeply (are you kidding me??); get some exercise (pffft...); have a glass of water (oh, f*&k right off).

Somehow, in reading all of that advice, I realized that I could not trick myself out of this particular craving.  Trickery might be a great strategy that could work in any number of contexts, but it was far too weak for what was going on in my body and my mind.  All of those strategies were nothing but cheap tricks.  The sleight of hand was not going to succeed this time.  I would need to understand this before I could fight it.

So I thought about what was going in my mind: what kinds of excuses was I making?  What did that excuse try to cover over?  What were my excuses obscuring?

Here's what I figured out.  I had somehow imagined quitting smoking to be an event.  In preparing myself for it, thinking through it in advance, coming up to the actual moment when I put out my last cigarette, all of that time, and for about 5 days afterward, I had thought about it an event.  It was something I would do at the appointed time.

But here's the rub.  After 5 days, all I could think was: okay, I did it.  That was nice.  I'm done now.

I did not think of it, or prepare for it, as something I would be stuck with forever.  (The addiction platitudes chirpily tell me to do it one day at a time.  I call b*&lsh*t.  That's a cheap street trick and I'm not falling for it.) Yes, this thing I had done, I was stuck with it for-e-ver.  Suddenly it was like an ill-advised one-night stand.  It seemed like a good enough idea at the time, but now it's morning and I don't want breakfast, I want you to call a cab. 

Now maybe if I had thought through this particular wrinkle I wouldn't have had the kahones to quit in the first place.  If I had thought soberly, in the clear light of day, that I would need to do this every single day, every god-damned day, in perpetuity, perhaps my resolve would have faded, my courage abated: the endless string of days, stretched out before me, each  just like the last. You will never smoke again. You are stuck with this forever.

So, you ask, how did you make it through that feeling?  I told myself that if I really wanted to, all I needed to do was reach into my pocket for some nicotine gum.  If I really needed a cigarette, I could have a piece.  I took it out, turned it over in my fingers, thought about how it would feel and what I would get out of it.

And then I put it back in my pocket -- not because I wanted to stay nicotine free, but because I finally understood.  The need I was feeling was not a need to smoke.  I couldn't stem the feeling with some nicotine and move on.  Instead, I finally saw that the need I was feeling was the need to be a smoker.  I was feeling my lost future.  I was longing for all of the  cigarettes in my life I wouldn't smoke.

That loss was too huge to contemplate before I quit.  It is still huge to contemplate.  But I think it marks a tipping point: the point where we can extrapolate from individual cigarettes, cravings, habits, and really think about what it might mean to be a non-smoker.  To be something different.

I've been something different now for thirteen weeks.  I don't miss the actual smoking anymore.  In truth though, I still miss being a smoker.  But I'm working on it.

Suckage Part 2

If you missed my post on gaining weight as one of the things that sucked when I quit smoking, I highly recommend reading it before this post.  Not to brag, but it does such a nice job of setting up the indignant, slightly bitter tone that the whole "suckage" theme is going to draw on.  The truth is that, about some things at least, I am indignant; I am bitter.

The glorious narratives of quitting put stars in my eyes.  Everything would be better when I quit.  Everything.  Everything. I feel a bit like Dorothy as she approached the Emerald City: the beautiful promise shimmering on the horizon, luring me, when all of a sudden, bam!  Poisoned poppies.  Crazy flying monkeys.  Witches castles.  Not so fast my pretty, not so fast.

The ugly truth is that I don't really feel any different.

You heard me.  I don't really feel any different, and that sucks.

Now I can hear what's going through your mind. Many of you are feeling the need to encourage me anyway, tell me that I will feel better, that I need to give it time.  Please resist that urge.  PLEASE.  I do not reveal this particular truth as a way of soliciting sympathy or encouragement.  (In fact, I can be very good at asking for sympathy and encouragement  quite directly when I need them.)  I'm not interested in sugarcoating this and lying to myself or others. I appreciate that when other humans are experiencing suckage our natural reaction is to try and make things better.  That's not what I'm after and I implore you to resist.  What I want in this space is to be simply and brutally honest, especially about what sucks.

The truth: I don't feel any different.  I'm slightly more fidgety I hear; I'm also a little more chatty if various reports are to be believed.  So, it's not that there has been no change whatsoever -- it's just that the changes have not been of the physical variety.  Now perhaps my expectations were too lofty, but I had expected to feel, well, something.  (I mean, I'm supposed to be growing new cilia by now for god's sake!)  I thought I might have more energy; I thought I might not get winded as quickly climbing stairs; I thought my skin would improve.

But no.  Nada.  Nothing.  Eleven weeks along and the only difference is that my occasional morning smoker's cough has vanished. More energy? I could use a nap right now and it's not even lunch time.  Increased lung capacity? Hockey practice continues to turn my lungs inside out. Improved skin? The forty-something I-want-wrinkles-and-zits-and-age-spots-all-in-the-same-place mockery continues unabated.

So I continue to wait patiently for the promised improvements to my body.  At my most philosophical, I think that perhaps I will just stay the same, and my eventual middle-aged decline will simply be slower than it might otherwise have been. I remind myself that increased energy is just a bonus and that reducing my risk of lung cancer is the real benefit.  I think about having the heart of a non-smoker within 10 years and my skin doesn't seem so monumental.

But it's hard to be philosophical all the time.  After all, I haven't even noticed my teeth getting whiter. 

Two months and my teeth aren't even getting whiter?

Dude, that's just mean.

Cool Turkey

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I quit essentially cold turkey, though I hadn't really planned it that way.  Yes, "essentially."  By essentially, I mean that I chewed two pieces of nicotine gum in the first two days of quitting.  At the time, I didn't really have a strong opinion about whether I was going to use the gum or not.  I always had some around for long flights, so I didn't need to actually choose to get some.  The first piece got me through the 11 hours of travel on day 1.  The second piece got me through day 2 at my desk.  That's when I decided that I wanted to go without.  I had read that the nicotine essentially leaves your body after 3 days, and I thought, well, if I keep on with the gum, 3 days will never get here, so I'll give it a try.

My deal with myself was simple: carry the gum with you; if you're tempted to actually smoke, then chew some (I haven't yet).  After about two weeks I stopped carrying the gum with me.  It has now been two months and it still sits on my dresser, just in case.  I promise I'll blog about it if/when I throw it away.  It's sitting right on top of my prescription for Champex, which I also obtained before quitting as a backup plan, just in case. 

There's a lot of "just in case" in my story of quitting; there are a lot of deals that I've made with myself.

Why, exactly?

Because I'm old enough to know that plans fail.  Simple as that.  Like relationships, governments, or the banking industry, sometimes plans just fail.  Being able to redirect in those moments of failure, though, that's the key to getting through.  The truth is that I wanted to quit smoking.  I didn't really care how I did it, as long as it was the easiest route that was available to me at the time.  It's like navigating in a strange city: you look at the map and you figure out a reasonable route from Point A to Point B.  Sometimes your route works like a charm; sometimes though, you need to improvise on the way because the map only tells part of the story.  I had an idea about how to get from Point A (smoker) to Point B (non-smoker), but I needed to know that I could change my route if I suddenly found myself  trying to cross a freeway on foot.

It's not just that plans fail though.  I needed my Plan Bs and my Plan Cs and all of my deals with myself as a way of preserving a sense of choice.  I'm a woman who likes to feel like she's in control of her own destiny, and creating options is one way to do that.  You see, I need to know that I can, and then I can choose that I won't.  Can't just doesn't work for me.  Never has.  I know myself well enough to know that my immediate, visceral reaction to "you can't" is "watch me."  Right or wrong, pleasant or unpleasant, that's just who I am and that's what I had to work with.

So instead, I created a world of "you can"s.  If you need to, you can do this.  If you need to, you can do that.

Twice, I needed to.  Twice I did.  Big deal.

I'm not invested in exactly how cold my turkey was.  I'm just invested in creating the conditions that make it easier for me not to smoke. The way I figure it, the more conditions I create, the better my odds are.