Day 5!
I have to tell you a story. The first day of my quit, I found a cigarette that had maybe 2-3 puffs off it. I actually knew it was there, I deliberately left it there… just in case I needed it. Normally I would have lit that thing up and smoked it, and once I did that I would have brought another pack and kept smoking. By the time my husband would have got home from work I would have smoke at least half the pack if not the whole pack and had to buy a second pack, and I only would have got the second pack so I could place it somewhere and say to him, “Look what I found!” Needless to say that would have been the end of our quit. After discovering become an Ex, and reading all that I have these past few weeks, I now think to myself … I am a nicotine junkie, and what I would do is exactly what a junkie would do. Another thing I would normally do when I attempted a quit is tear my house apart looking for a lost pack, a butt, and I wouldn’t limit the search to my house, my car, the shop, the yard everywhere I would normally smoke, until I found one. Sometimes that would take hours, and if I didn’t find one by noonish, I would go bum one from a neighbor that smoked. One puff and I was buying a pack.
When I went to get my cigarette that first morning, I picked up the cigarette and just stared at it. I thought of all the things I’d normally do, and knew I was thinking of going down the same road and falling into the same hole, once again. Much to my surprise, I looked at that cigarette for what it really was. That cigarette is a monster wrapped up in a piece of paper and it wants to haunt me, ware me down until I give in and let it take my money while it kills me. I took the cigarette into the house and put it into a pretty glass bottle, screwed the lid on and set it on my kitchen island right where I could see it.
Somehow that monster in the bottle really helped. I knew if I wanted to smoke I could – it was right there, so I didn’t spend hours stressing myself out looking for the stupid thing. It was also a visual reminder to me, yes it looks pretty (because of the pretty glass bottle) but what’s inside in is exactly is what is causing my frustration, my pain, my sense of feeling lost, taking my extra money, and taking my life. I am going thru this shitty – quitting process - because I couldn’t tell this monster no, not only that I believed ever one of its lies. So when Breath free said to me, “Don’t feed it” I looked at my cigarette in the bottle and said to it, “that’s exactly what you want me to do isn’t it?” When Jonsecarp wrote, “Throw your hands in the air and give it the bird” I looked at the nicotine monster in the bottle and did just that. The nicotine monster still sits on the kitchen island, in a pretty glass bottle, and whenever I need to vent, I let that monster have a piece of my mind and let it know what I think, and when I am done I stick my tongue out at it and walk away!
All of you who have posted on things I have bogged I will be forever great full for your support, helping me not feed that monster and not be that junkie that gave in. I gave in to a live style that I should have never dabbled into in the first place - 35 years ago.
Thank you fellow Ex Smokers and thank you for helping me feel proud of me.
