Smoking and Oprah

Blah blah smoking is bad, you would have to be a total idiot to not know that.  I know smoking is bad, and I do it anyway.  I tell myself (and everyone else) that I quit, but ever since I “quit” about a year ago I have probably smoked 40% of the time.  I read, and still swear by, Alan Carr’s book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking because even though I am a known relapser, I feel like some day very soon Carr’s words will stick.

Smokers take a lot of crap from everyone, and now we can’t even go to a bar and hide among the drunks to enjoy a cigarette or eight.  I think this constant condemnation is what makes us hang on to the addiction.  I know that whenever I get the craving for a cigarette, and eventually slink over to the gas station to buy a pack, the dialogue inside my head is kind of like “I smoke, and people hate that I smoke, and that is the burden I carry; poor me, I’m a rough person, I have issues and by smoking I can communicate that to others- a simple ‘back off’.”  Even though that’s all crap, it gets me to the gas station and gets me to shell out money I don’t have for smokes.

What is so foolish is that I have gone months without smoking, and have survived, and then don’t have to feel guilty about anything.  I can still survive a car ride, a walk, or sitting outside without a cigarette.  I feel better, my skin looks better, and I don’t smell.  But once you get that idea into your head that you want to smoke, you can’t get it out until you do.  It’s like instinct- I have to eat, I have to smoke, I have to pee, I have to sleep, etc.  It doesn’t matter how long I’ve gone without one, when I get that voice in my head it’s all over.

But it really is stupid, and I know that.  And I’m vain enough to feel motivated when I see that wrinkle in my forehead, or that yellow middle fingernail- tainting my message as I flick off various people I come across throughout my day.  So after I finished my most recent pack last weekend, I was motivated once again by that pesky wrinkle.  Today as I sit and watch Oprah and Dr. Oz show people the shadows on their lungs and the blockages in their hearts I really hope I can grow up and show a little perseverence with this sucky habit.  When I started smoking I did it for no good reason, just because I could and everyone else did it too.  Nowadays it’s more because I like having a secret, even though I’m sure people know- my husband has a nose after all, and my mother is one 900 number away from being psychic, so it’s really not a secret at all.  But for some reason I feel like I need something that is mine that no one knows about.  I just have to find something that fulfills that need but wont kill me or make me look like an old paper bag (the latter being the most scary for me!). 

So good luck to all you smokers out there, I’m sure you really would love to quit.  I find motivation in many things, like my looks, my family, my future family, and my constant struggle to be as physically fit as my sickeningly athletic husband- and I’m sure other smokers have their own motivations for quitting as well.  But I just want to tell any fellow smokers that I too, hate this whole addiction thing- and I wish I could just enjoy my cigarette consequence free- but I guess we all have to accept that that is never going to happen.

I recommend reading Alan Carr’s book, not getting discouraged if you relapse (we all do it!), and not feeling bad if lung cancer doesn’t scare you but wrinkles do.  One thing I have learned, even though I still take my spills off the wagon, is this:  you can be the same person without the cigarette, you just have to find something to replace it for a while and then slowly ween yourself off of that.  So, as I begin once again my life as a non-smoker, I hope that if you’re reading this and you smoke and you hate it as much as I do, that you can start your journey of quitting and be successful at it!