Smoking is a Bitch!

I'm nothing but a big quitter after all

So I have something completely unrelated to caps, tg or anything else that I talk about here.  I smoke.  I smoke a lot.  I was up to 2 packs a day.

A little history.  Both of my parents smoked.  I may have taken a puff of their cigarettes once or twice in my life, but as a boy I never thought I would become a smoker.  My first real foray into smoking came on my 24th birthday.  A friend of mine (who was 20 at the time) wanted to take me out on an excursion for my birthday.  Being that he couldn't legaly drink, we decided to head over to Canada.  Not only could he drink there, but we could get our hands on some real cuban cigars (by the way... we got fakes and they were nasty).  In that one drunken night I figured out that I REALLY liked cigars.  As I had been around smokers my entire life I just assumed that you would inhale the smoke into your lungs.

From that point on, and have been an on again off again cigar smoker.   There really isn't anything as cool, relaxing, sexy, refreshing and tasty as hanging out in a cigar bar for a few hours while smoking a big fat churchill. It takes a few hours to smoke it, so it gives you plenty of time to really sit back and relax.

Well my buddy and I ended up moving to Chicago upon graduation. I kept my cigar habit and in fact enhanced it there.  There are plenty of wonderful cigar shops in Chicago.  But over the year we spent there, I started to feel a stronger and stronger urge to smoke.  I had some crap job, and took my first 'smoke' break while working there.  I headed outside, lit up a cigar, took a few dozen puffs, and then set the cigar down to die out, figuring I would grab it up on my way home (the damn thing cost like $10, and I had no intention of leaving it there after only a few puffs taken).  Sadly someone took it.  There were bums a plenty down there, and I'm sure finding a fairly expensive cigar with only a few puffs taken out of it was a real find.

So the next day I went to the cigar shop and bought a pack of quality cigarillos.  If you don't know what a cigarillo is, think of a hand wrapped cigar, but cigarette size.  Some cheap ones would be swisher sweets.  The ones I bought were really nice.  They burned a little hotter than a regular cigar, but didn't take a couple hours to smoke.  They still took longer than a 15 minute smoke break though, so I felt that I was wasting money.  So after that pack was gone, I went down to the cigar shop and explained what I liked, and the time frame I had to smoke.  He recommended a premium cigarette.  I believe I bought a pack of 'Davidoff Magnums'.  These were very harsh when compared against a fine cigar, or a good cigarillo... but a hell of a lot better than your average cigarette.  At twice the price of regular cigarettes, they were rather expensive.

I would still buy cigars to smoke at home, but I always had a pack of Magnums to smoke while at work. If I had to place a time on when my cigarette addiction started, this would have to be it.  This was January of 1999.  It may have only been 2 or 3 cigarettes a day to start, but it grew.  Smoking cigars was expensive, and as expensive as the Magnums were, they were a hell of a lot less expensive than a fine cigar.... but only on a 1:1 basis.  By the time I moved away from Chicago I was smoking at least 10 Magnums a day.  And on the trip home itself I ran out and really wanted one... so I stopped at a gas station and bought a pack of Winstons.  At this time Winston was advertising itself as the 'No Additive' cigarette.  It tasted like crap... but it satisfied my need for a cig, and cost me next to nothing (when compared to Magnums and Cigars).

Within a month of moving I was up to a pack of Winstons a day.  I decided that I was now a smoker, and as such should try to do this as cheaply as possible, so I started buying them by the carton.  A few months later that was a run on Winstons, so I bought the closest I could get... Camels.  Since then I have smoked Camels as my brand of cigarettes.

I still had it in my head that I could quit... I just didn't want to.  I didn't even think of it as 'quiting' as I wasn't 'addicted'.  But a few years later when I tried to prove my point to a friend that I could go a day without a cig... I failed  I couldn't do it.  Within a few hours of my last cig, I was desperate for one.

Since then I have tried to quit many times.  Most attempts last all of a few hours.  Once I quit for three days, but it was REALLY hard.  I wanted a cigarette every minute of every day.  I may have been working, eating, playing or any number of other things, but during that entire time I was NOT SMOKING.  This isn't just a passive act like going several hours with not eating... it was very active as I wanted to smoke, and was denying myself that want/need.  So at 8am I was checking my email, and NOT SMOKING.  At 8:30am I was playing a game and NOT SMOKING.  At 10am I was working and NOT SMOKING.  At Noon I was eating lunch and NOT SMOKING.  NOT SMOKING was on my mind every single minute.  After three days I caved and smoked.  And that one cigarette didn't ease the want/need at all, so I followed it up with another.  And another.  The quitting had failed.

My best quit attempt was in 2008.  I don't remember what spurred me on, but I decided to quit.  I laid down the pack of smokes (there were still 5 or so in the pack) and started quitting.  As expected in about an hour I wanted another.  That want was just like the three day quit.. it was with me every minute of every day.  But after the third day something happeend... it became easier.  It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was easier.  And it continued to get easier.  After three weeks I was tentatively beginning to celebrate.  I had QUIT smoking.  I wasn't spending every minute NOT SMOKING.  The urge still popped up a lot, but I could wait each one out.

After a month I was hanging out with a friend and we got drunk at the bar.  I asked him for a cig as I really liked smoking and drinking (reminded me of all those evening spent in cigar bars).  That one cigarette damned me.  The urge came back in an hour but was just as powerful as it had been when I first laid down the pack.  I had just thrown away the past month of not smoking and was starting over.  This was also the week of a friends wedding that I presided over.  The new stronger urges and the nervousness from performing a wedding ceremony got together and just overwhelmed me.  When I got home from the wedding I was a pack a day smoker again.

Since then I have made a few attempts to quit, but never made it more than a few hours. It seems sad really... when I am working in an area where I can't smoke, I can go between 6 and 8 hours without a cigarette with no problem.  But my mind is occupied, I am unable to simply light up when I want, and I know that when I'm done working, I can go out and have one.  But as soon as I tell myself that I can't have another... EVER.... then the urge strikes me hard.

That takes me up to now.   Now I'm going back to school to work in the health field.  My job will land me working in a hospital. Most hospitals have been smoke free for sometime, but they are now going further.  Several local hospitals have started the process of not hiring smokers.  This isn't a yes/no question on the application.. they do a blood test.  If they find nicotine in your system, they won't hire you.  They are even making this apply to current workers (of course giving them time to quit before fully enforcing the policy).  So when I graduate this December, I NEED to be smoke free unless I want to throw away the last 3 years of school.  And to add a little fuel to the fire, my college campus is going smoke free in the fall.  They won't even allow you to go out to your car and smoke.

So... I am trying to quit again.  On April 21st I smoked my 'last' cigarette.  And on April 22nd, I smoked another one.  I have only had one success at quiting cold turkey (quitting for the month), and one partial success (quitting for the three days).  That is hardly a winning record when compared to the dozens of failed attempts.

So I am taking a new approach.  My goal is to be cigarette free by August 15, 2011. That is two weeks before I begin classes for the fall semester. In April I was smoking two packs a day.  Instead of quitting cold turkey, I am going to try and reduce my way down to zero.  To help me do that I am trying to remove cigarettes from my every day activites.  I will not smoke inside the house, and I will not smoke while driving.  When I want to smoke, I make a record of it, then go outside and smoke.

I am running with two short term goals right now:  1) Smoke less than 10 cigarettes a day and 2) go at least one hour between cigarettes.  Hopefully this will get a little easier, as right now I am wanting a smoke after about 30 minutes.  So for 30 minutes I am again NOT SMOKING.   And I try to stretch it out so that I can go 1 and a half or two outs with out smoking.  As I move along through the summer I will reduce the number of cigarettes a day, and lengthen the time between cigarettes. Hopefully this will work out, and I'll be smoke free by the time school picks back up.  If not, then I will need to move onto chemical assistance.  The patch, the gum, the electronic cigarette..... but while all of these things 'help' to quit, I can't be on them when looking for a job, as they all are just alternate nicotine delivery methods.

Anyway... I wanted to put this out there in the public realm.  I will share my successes here, as well as my failures.  For instance while writing this up I got a VERY strong urge to smoke, and had a cigarette (outside) after only 45 minutes.  So each day I'll get the information posted about how many cigarettes I had, and the average interval between them.  I don't know how I'll do it right yet.. I don't want a post a day about this, so I may just comment on this post every day.

I also wanted to put this up here as I think I came upon a correlation yesterday.   Since I have been trying to quit... I have had almost NO desire to create or even read caps.  I still roleplay over at DX on a daily basis, so its not like my TG fantasies are killed completely by not smoking.... but I just haven't felt the urge to create or read any caps.  Petra is next up on my list to cap, and if there is anyone that I find 'easy' to cap, its Petra... but I can't even get a scenario in my head that doesn't feel flat from the get go.  I've tried to make her one anyway.. figuring that once I got into it, I would just start to flow like normal.  But no beans.  I can't get a story that works for me, or find a picture that inspires anything.

I don't KNOW if quitting is the culprit for my lack of capping desire.  At this time last year, I had a huge dry spell that lasted for months and I was smoking like a fiend during that time.  It may just be some weired seasonal tg desire thing.  During the summer, I may just not be into capping.  I won't give up on it, and each day I'll try to cap or at least get back into reading caps.

The smoking data from May 1st is 10 cigarettes with an average interval of 1 hour and 53 minutes between smokes. I'd call that good, but I went to be a lot earlier than normal (probably cutting off two or three cigs), and the average is a little high because I worked in the morning which naturally extents the times.  If I take out the 'work smokes' I was a lot closer to a one hour average.