I guess all it takes

[richard4]

My last blog post, as someone stated in a comment, was just a banter of excuses. I suppose I wanted to vent on reasons why I relapsed. I wanted to convince myself that the triggers were the entire reason. They are not. I haven't posted a blog in a while because I gave up on trying, for the time being. Where my head is at, I don't think I can, nor want, to stop smoking. If this seems like I'm making excuses, bear with me.
I work at a gym, with people who are entirely too miserable with their own lives, and intently try to make others miserable as well. The only way to avoid their frustration is to wear a fake smile and kiss butt. I'm not the type of person to normally do this. But I only have a short while to do this until I leave for basic. I want to be physically and mentally fit the months, six to be exact, before I leave. I work at a gym for crying out loud. One thing I've recognized I could do to avoid smoking is work out. However, when I am smoking, I don't care for doing anything other than walking outside and lighting one up. As I've said, bear with me.
My boss, who chain smokes, though I've come to find that lately she's cutting back which means I'm smoking more than her. That idea in itself is frustrating. Well, she has me working nights. The facility closes at ten at night! Who works out at such an hour!? Anyways, in the mornings, I've come to realize, is the toughest thing for me to overcome when I'm not smoking. I have things I can do, such as homework, etc. However, I find that I wake up and know that I have so many hours to kill, knowing that cigarettes and ashtrays with butts and lighters are strewn about, I just want to smoke! It's a vicious cycle really, whether smokers realize this or not. We smoke because we're unhappy and we're unhappy because we smoke. At least, that's how I feel when I give up on the only goal I have that I can truly attain as of now: To stop smoking.
The past few nights, I've been closing the facility with another smoker. We continuously kept sneaking outside for cigs. Somewhere along the brief minutes of being outside, I tried to get this dude to talk. He was so reserved though. I'm used to smokers just blabbing on about the most comical and mediocre things. I gave up and didn't attempt at making conversation with him again. What I'm getting at is, if I'm around miserable people that frustrate me, how can I attempt to stay clean of cigarettes? I know, someone is going to say read this book or that. Trust me, I'll get to it when the time arrives. As of now, I guess all it takes for me to really take the initiative to stop is to do just that, take initiative.

[cindywilson]

the reason smokers are unhappy is because we are addicts, we do not really choose to smoke, we lie and tell ourselves we do, but the truth is nicotine shouts at us to smoke and our choice has long since disappeared, when we get disgusted enough with ourselves we get in there and figh to quit, as with any addiction it is part physical and very much mental and certainly in the beginning not fun at all, but with time and a certain toughness going forward, we can overcome and win and feel good about ourselves again. You will do it when you are ready and actually I admire the fact that you recognize you are not there yet. I won't recommend you read anything, because you aren't ready to open your mind yet, but when you are, please come back and there are many here who will be willing to help you, remember it is and has always been your choice, Good Luck!

[hwc]

Richard:

You are making this way more complicated than it really is. Smoking and quitting smoking is not deep existential philosophy. It's really very simple. We smoke because we are addicted to a drug, almost always trapped by the addiction as teens. From then on, the physical cravings and withdrawal pangs will return when the drug levels fall. We smoke to get more of the drug. Exactly the same as a heroin addict. The only difference is that, because we use our drug every hour every day every week every month every year of our adult lives, we come to form incredibly strong psychological connections between almost everything we do and stopping to use our drug again.

The only way to stop the smoking is to stop smoking and accept that there will be a short period of discomfort (maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe a few months) that is the price to be paid for breaking the devastating drug addiction that kills one out of every two users.

To the extent that you can put yourself in a state of mind where you embrace the process of quitting, it will perhaps be a little easier. It has been demonsrated time and time again, both in research and in the real world, that education and support are the biggest factors in increasing successful quit rates.

You seem to be pretty clearly saying that you do not want to quit smoking at this point in time, even to the point of rejecting educational materials that would help you. Understood. We've all been there, many of us for decades. My advice, in that case, is to buy 'em by the carton so at least you are saving a little money.

[hwc]

Richard:

I "tried" and couldn't quit when I was 19, too. I had all kinds of excuses and besides I knew I could just quit when I turned 20 or whatever.

The next time I tried to quit was thirty-six years and 394,000 cigarettes later when I turned 55.

If I had it to do over, I would have endured any amount of struggle to quit when I was 19.

[edith2]

My last relapse was in 1979. I got pissed off because my truck got stuck in the driveway. I had not smoked for 19 months and I had one cigarette. It was as if I had smoked all along; there was no catching up. I didn't quit again until July 17, 2004. I had all the excuses in the world. I wasted all that time holding onto those excuses. I didn't want to end up being hooked up to an oxygen machine or like my co-worker of 20 years. He was 47 and he died from smoking after wasting away down to 65 pounds.

[nory]

Boy hwc hit the fricking nail on the head . Rock on hwc, our hero.

[JonesCarpeDiem]

Loose socks here

[Brenda_M]

hwc wasn't going to recommend Allen's book, but she summed it up really nicely. 😃 Beautifully done, hwc! And hwc was right, too, about being 19. I told myself I wouldn't start my 20s as a smoker. I quit when I was 21 and started again at 23. I feel like a fool, and many of my friends have quit and stayed, too. When I quit at 21, I thought I wouldn't have to worry about the cancers and stuff...part of being invincible at that age, I guess. Now, I'm only 26, and I do think about that a lot, about how I might have done this too late...if you can do it at 19, then you totally should, I'm saying. Anyway, when you go to bootcamp, they won't let you anyway, so if you look at that as the opening you need and prepare during that time to never smoke again after the training, then that's good.

I hope I'm not preachy. I'm just passing the time until my little craving goes away...

[richard4]

Thank you all for your comments. HWC is helpful in the way that anyone who has been through it with the utmost clarity is. Everyon else thank you for your understanding and helpful thoughts and opinions. I'm thinking to myself as of now that I CAN quit and that I WILL quit.