Testing

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The cigarette saga continues....

I smoked for 25 years, then quit. For several years I had quit. Seemingly with success.

Then I met Amanda, who smoked like a chimney. Between the constant exposure near her and the stress levels at work I started smoking again. Dammit! I should have resisted.

The second time quitting is not nearly as smooth as the first. After having not smoked for several years, I had somewhat hidden the memories of the pure pleasure of that first drag in the mornings, the swift delivery of the nicotine to your system after a particularly stressful moment or time frame, the satisfaction of stopping whatever you might be doing for a minute to "have a cigarette". The smoking really gives you break periods in life when things are hectic.

I had quit when Amanda did, only to pick it up again for a bit. I haven't smoked since we married.

And it's killing me.

It's been 5 1/2 weeks and the urge to smoke is no less now than it was after I had my last cigarette. Problem is.... I don't WANT to quit. But I need to so I've committed to never smoking another cigarette for as long as I don't smoke one. That may sound questionable, but I take it a minute at a time right now. And I'm sure that some time before I die I'll have one more smoke for whatever reason.

The gum helps a lot, but it's almost as expensive as the cigarettes. I started running again today, so that should make things easier. You don't really crave a cigarette when you're panting for breath and your lungs are about to burst from breathing harder than you have had to in the last 2 years. On a good note: I jogged 2.1 miles in just 20 min 30 seconds. Not bad when you consider that I haven't really done regular running since November of 2007. I'll be glad to get back into shape enough to be competitive in a 5K or 10K run. I've done the 5K thing before so the 10K is likely my next target once I'm at least back in 5K shape:)

Besides... I'll be damned if I will allow Amanda to outrun my ass;)

8 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry you started smoking again back when we first knew each other :( I feel really bad about that. What kills me is I was trying to quit back then, but just wasn't quite there!! ARRRRGHHHH!!!

    But you have to stay quit now, because if you pick it up again? I will so TOTALLY outrun your ass.

    And I shall taunt you while I'm doing it :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't forget.... I know where you live!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Duh... *eyeroll*

    (you know, we could talk about this rather than bicker on a website that no one reads except us anyway...)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the encouragement dear;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh dude, like YOU didn't say almost that EXACT same thing while I was typing it?

    Sheesh :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I found this all terribly amusing. Just so you know...

    I smoke, it sucks, I hope to quit someday soon.

    -jafg

    ReplyDelete
  7. jafg.... when I quit both times it was cold-turkey. I don't have the will power to taper off. I will tell you this- the patches AND the gum help immensely!

    ReplyDelete
  8. jafg, LMAO! Yeah, welcome to our insane family.

    Unlike Choreboy and his hard-core cold turkey ways, I took Chantix for a month. Standard course is 3 months, but it made me so squirrely that I had to taper off of it at the end of the fourth week. Downside is it had reduced some of the smoking urge, but on the plus side I'd not smoked for several weeks at that point so I ended up figuring there was just no way I was going to torment myself by getting in the position of having to quit AGAIN.

    ReplyDelete