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.
