My smoking background
I smoked from age 21 to 25. I quit cold turkey and didn't pick up a cigarette until I was 37 and only once in the past 20 years have I quit for any reasonably decent amount of time (6 months when I was 45).
How I relapsed
I relapsed at age 37 because I was recently divorced and started dating a man who smoked. He was fun, exciting and eventually became my husband.
We were out on a weekend adventure and I just decided that he made smoking look as good as I remembered it had been.
Now, keep in mind that I really loved to smoke, and my reasons for quitting were about my children, not so much about me.
That single cigarette led to many, many more and I didn't really give much serious thought to quitting again. TWELVE years of no smoking ... gone in an evening.
After that marriage ended in divorce, I married a man (also a smoker), and about three years into our very good marriage, he had a 'widow maker' heart attack. Long story made short: I rushed him to the ER, he was DOA, they were going to pronounce him, I said keep zapping him, and he regained a heart beat. Two major surgeries later - an emergency stent and then a sextuple bypass surgery (yep, there is such a thing as a sextuple bypass which means all arteries are replaced by veins) - he was able to come home and recover.
Did I quit smoking? Nope. I quit smoking around him and never again in the house.
However, just recently it seemed right to quit again. Cold turkey again. It's really the best way for me.
I don't want to relapse this time.
Honestly, when I relapsed before I wasn't worried much. No family history of cancer to speak of, my blood pressure was excellent, I was really in good shape. All of my health checks still come back as excellent... but I'm smart enough to know that I'm playing a losing game of Russian Roulette.
Did I SEE that relapse coming after TWELVE YEARS of no smoking?
NO. NO. NO. NO.
I could not have predicted that.
Lessons learned
- Once a smoker, always an addict.
- Accept the addiction as controllable.
- When you give up cigarettes, it's not like someone is asking you to also give up your favorite pet or past-time or any other thing.
- Cigarettes are crushable opponents, literally, so crush them.
- Be creative while in your craving zones. Make up games. Example: One game I play is to make a phone call to the cigarette that wants to caress my lips. I have to explain to the cigarette that we've broken up and sad as that may be, our relationship was doomed to fail.
- Laugh more.
Terry Martin, Smoking Cessation Guide, says:
Those of us who have thought we could smoke after quitting and not eventually find ourselves back in the throes of nicotine addiction have learned the hard lesson that AdelleLee shares so poignantly here.There is no such thing as just one cigarette... ever. They travel in packs.
If you have quit smoking, use gratitude as a tool to help you remember just how precious the freedom is that you've worked so hard to achieve.Don't look back! Smoking has nothing to offer you other than the horrors of smoking-related disease and ultimately, death.
