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! 

I am a smoker.  I love smoking cigarettes.  If I was alone on an island I would not take “a friend and a good book.”  I would take a dumpster full of cigarettes and maybe a loofah or something.  I know they’re bad for me, I know they stink, and I know it’s stupid but ”as a dog goes back to its vomit, so a fool repeats his stupidity” (Proverbs 26:11).  I heard that the other day from somewhere and it fits… I didn’t pull that from memory- sorry.

So anyway, I am returning to my vomit because I QUIT smoking a while ago, I read a really good book and just quit.  It wasn’t even that great though, I missed it and all the people who got on my back about it when I did it didn’t even say anything about me quitting!  How about a little present or something?

So anyway, I quit and didn’t start again the whole time I was living in BC (in the creepiest little hamlet ever).  Then I moved back home and started hanging out with my stupid, crack-head, loser, smoker  friends and of course started smoking again.  What else do you do for 3 hours when you’re sitting in a garage with a bunch of loser crack-heads?? (I don’t do crack, I just hung out with people at home who were stupid and about one house-party away from being crack-heads.)Then I quit again… because my mom was getting on my case and my husband (who was living in Canada without me at that time)  still thought I was not smoking.  So I moved back to Canada and quit again.  I thought this would be easy because no one in his family smokes and you’re pretty much a leper if you do, he’s OBNOXIOUS about it whenever I try and smoke with him around, and most of all… Canadian cigarettes are different, and disgusting, and about $10 a pack.  They taste like someone rolled tobacco from 1928 in a piece of oilcloth and then dipped it in Maple Syrup or something.  They suck.

So I’ve been bored lately and kind of pissy and feel like I’ve been sacrificing a lot to live in wonderful Canada with my wonderful husband.  So I went and bought a pack.  I thought about it for about 3 days, about how much I missed smoking, about how it was not a big deal, lots of people smoke, if it’s something I enjoy why can’t I just do it for now while I don’t have anything else to do, etc. etc. 

So I bought a pack of these disgusting shit-sticks and lit one… my hand trembling with excitement, like a ballroom dancer back on her feet after being out with a broken ankle.  I knew what my body had to do but it felt much more difficult.  Then I inhaled and it was like I was a 12 year old choking on their first j.  Pathetic.  I was pissed I didn’t have a Camel or something in my hand.  But I finished it and didn’t enjoy it.  The next day, repeat.  Then Thanksgiving with the inlaws and no smoking.  Then today… damn you Canadian cigarettes…. you’ve seduced me with your disgusting flavor.  I still would prefer an American Freedom Cig, but I’ve now lowered my standards to accept a Peter Jackson.