Tammy Quit Smoking

How many times have I thought about quitting? How many times have I tried to quit? The answer is…I don’t have a clue. I really really wanted to quit smoking and I really thought that I could whenever I felt like it. I thought that it would be easy if I really wanted it bad enough.

It wasn’t easy.

I was serious about quitting back in the summer of 2001. My husband had quit smoking about a year before this, and I was sneaking around to smoke because he would gripe at me if he saw me. I thought I was doing such a great job at hiding my nasty habit. Who was I foolin???? Only myself. No one could smell them on me. I didn’t stink. My tongue was its natural color. Aren’t everyone’s teeth just a wee bit yellow? That yellow indention between my fingers was from holding a pencil. Wow, I had an excuse for everything.

Then in September of 2001 my daughter passed away, the day before her 24th Birthday. I was devastated. I didn’t care about anything at this moment. The first thing I did was send someone to the store for cigarettes. I must have smoked 2 packs a day that week. My husband started smoking cigars at this time too. These were days of major depression. This was the perfect excuse to smoke, right??? It was just another excuse as far as I’m concerned now.

A few months after my daughter’s death I learned that a friend of ours had cancer. He was also a smoker; smoked as much as I did. He went through the chemo and surgeries and I watched this large man lose so much weight. He quit smoking as soon as he found out that he had cancer.….. did I? Did any of his friends that he hung around with? NO !!! He was doing great and he was putting the weight back on and we were all convinced that he had this beat……. We buried him in December of 2002.

My husband quit smoking cigars right after this and my friend and I decided then and there that we were going to quit on January 4th of 2003 - that way all of the holiday parties were over and the stress should be a bit less. After losing such a good friend and having a quit date set, I did manage to cut down my smoking from 1-1/2 packs a day down to just 7 cigarettes a day. I was ready for January 4th. Guess what, that date came and my friend called and changed the date. I just said okay and went right along with whatever she said. What was I thinking? Did I need someone to quit with me? I thought I did.

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