Thanks for sharing your story, Leslie.
I'd been feeling anxious for quite some time. It wasn't smoking cessation I thought, as I'd been anxious before quitting. Things weren't going well in pretty much every area of my life they could not go well in:
Career: I hated my job. Well, it might be more accurate to say that I did not fit into the corporate politics, back-stabbing and sycophantic ways of my position, and the higher-ups did not appreciate this.
Relationship: I was certain the previously romanticized 'love of my life' was having an affair. Turns out I was right.
Home: Built in 1908, it was a concrete tomb filled with broken dreams, painful memories, leaking eaves troughs, crumbling foundation and scurrying mice, all of which I couldn’t afford to take care of. Someone said "There's no joy in your life," but I’d been too busy to notice.
Through all of this though, the one thing I had was that I'd quit smoking. After years of poisoning myself with no real understanding of how I was killing every cell of my body, I had been under that same deluded, pathetic illusion that every poor smoker thinks of as smoking enjoyment.
What a crock!
The truth was, I hated the smell, hated the black charcoal way my lungs felt, hated the coughing, hated the sneaking around, hated the leathery skin, the sad, silently beseeching looks of my family, the glares, or worse, empathic shifted eyes of people who pitied, the loud coughs as they walked by, the shame and the defiance in the reaction to that...all of it, all of it, I hated.And so I stopped.
But I still romanticized smoking, I yearned for it. I thought in some small part –- or maybe it was bigger –- of my mind that smoking was cool. Cigarettes had kept me company, after all, in every stressful situation, every trial and victory, every excitement and let-down, every wedding, every funeral. They were me and I was them. That I felt so good, healthy, that my cells sung in joy and gratitude, that I was rejuvenated as a nonsmoker was amazing. But then things crashed. Life happened. The job ended, the lover left and there was only me. In the mouse-ridden house.
And so, after seven smoke-free months, I lit one.
I was so prepared for the thought I’d had that I would feel an immediate calming. A relief. A familiarity and a sense of homecoming.
It didn’t happen.
All I felt was dizzy. My mouth filled with a kind of bug spray taste. I sucked in another puff. I was totally nauseous and felt none of the relief, joy or respite I had imagined. I had just broken a seven month quit.
For nothing.
I felt bereft, sickened and ashamed. I had let myself down. People all over the world were broke, struggling, losing children and parents in death and starvation, in cancer and aids...and me? I lost a job and a guy - neither of which were right for me in the first place, and even if they had been, so what? Everything changes in life. But I had caved.
I've forgiven myself for the smoking slip that cost me nearly fours years, ten thousand dollars, and internal damage I'm afraid to know about, because I'm back -- I've quit smoking again. I can only say N.O.P.E. on a daily basis at this point, and I don’t know for sure what the future will hold for me.
What I do know for sure though is this:
Smoking did not alleviate my life situation, which changes whether we smoke or not.
Smoking did not give me a sense of relief, as I had exorcised nicotine out of my system and just needed to deal with my feelings.
Smoking did not alleviate any cravings I was experiencing.
Smoking did, however, reactivate the brain neurons that said (with a vengeance that makes Hell Week look like a picnic) that I should smoke another and another and another...it was never enough.
I cried a projectile river because I was hooked again. I had succumbed to the illusion of smoking and it strangled me in a vise-like grip for another three years.
So tonight, on my first big and real social event since quitting again, an event filled with a minefield of smoking triggers... From getting ready, to waiting for a taxi, to cocktails, to feelings of inferiority, to rearing past issues and walking past people engulfed in thick sick smoke, I walked on. I remembered, and I walked on.
I made it through, and am still quit. And I will fight for this quit with my whole heart because it is worth at least that.
And because I care, and because I think you, dear reader, are worth it too, I wanted you to hear this story, and walk on,
Too.
Leslie / Cold Turkey / Jan 19/2009.
Thank God.
The key to finding true and lasting freedom from nicotine addiction lies in changing the relationship we have with smoking. If we quit smoking by will power alone, believing somewhere in the back of our minds that we're sacrificing something good, chances are very high that we will eventually fall victim to a smoking relapse.
When we do the work necessary to change what smoking means to us, we will find the path to the true freedom from this addiction we all seek. And we won't have to struggle to maintain it.
