I know quitting is going to be hard. I've been trying for two months now to just even cut back and haven't had much success. So I decided I needed to pull out the big guns and at least join a community. It's a good time to start because I live in a house where over half of the people smoke (inside even!) and one of the heaviest smokers is going to be gone all next week. One of my big triggers is when someone else starts to smoke. I've likened it to yawning, I hear that little snick of a lighter and smell the smoke and I'm immediately reaching for a cigarette myself. It's so bad that seeing someone smoke on television does it too.
I currently smoke about a pack a day and started smoking almost exactly two years ago. I smoke in my car while driving, I smoke when I'm stressed, I smoke after I eat a meal, I smoke when I'm working, and I smoke around friends who are also smoking. Even talking about it right now is making me want to smoke.
I named this post the way I did because last night I watched the documentary I Am Alive, which was about the 1972 plane crash into the Andes where the survivors were lost for more than two months. Finally three of them set out on foot, determined to find help, one of them eventually going back to the plane wreckage with the other survivors while the other two continued to walk out of the mountains. They covered 40 miles in only ten days, which doesn't sound like a lot except it was at altitudes of 15,000 feet, through snow, and up literal sides of mountains. Climbing the first mountain alone took them three days.
But one thing that struck me was that they knew they couldn't give up, they had to keep walking, even if it was just one step at a time. So that's how I'm going to take this. One step at a time, to be followed by another step. Surely this will be easier than trying to hike out of the Andes mountains and into Chile during December without any survival gear and after basically starving for two months.
So, step one: Don't have any more cigarettes before I go to sleep in an hour or two.
