On Quitting Smoking

When all the stuff started going down with my marriage, I made a choice that I thought would help.  Amy had picked up cigarettes again, a habit that I had never shared.  But I thought that maybe, those little five-minute smoke breaks would be a way the two of us could share time, could reconnect.  Had I known at the time that she had already made her decision and was just stringing me along for whatever reason, I wouldn't have made that choice.  So I became a smoker.

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20.  I know now that nothing that I could have done at the time would have changed things, and all I did was saddle myself with a nasty and expensive habit.

So, I decided that last week I was going to quit smoking.  I had half-heartedly tried to quit before, but every time before I had put so much thought and energy into it.  It became a 'thing'.  It was too big.  This time, it came about Wednesday night.  I only had a few left in the pack that I had on hand.  I just decided I wasn't going to buy another pack.  If I could bum smokes from people for a little while, so be it, but I wasn't buying any more.

The last cigarette from that pack was smoked Thursday morning.  Early, around five a.m..  I did alright throughout the morning, and was feeling it finally in the afternoon.  I bummed one from a co-worker (thanks, Kim) around 3:15.

That was the last one.  I haven't had one since.

Friday was the hardest, easily.  I was VERY jittery, and short-tempered.  I came extremely close to caving in on it.  I tried to bum one from someone that evening, just so that I wouldn't buy a pack.  I even considered buying a cigar instead of cigarettes, as a kind of in-between step.

I couldn't bum one, and I didn't buy a cigar.  Friday night's sleep was tough, though.  Saturday morning was rough too, as I generally did most of my smoking in the early morning and late evenings.  But, with the graduation party to get together, I didn't really have a chance to think about it.  By Saturday evening, I was good.  All day yesterday I may have had one or two cravings, and they were easily dismissed.  I was still a little short-tempered, but not nearly as bad, and not jittery at all.

I will say, and I'm not trying to shortchange the experiences of other people, but I expected this to be harder.  Much harder.  A couple packs of gum, a good distraction (the party), and a little resolve was all I needed.  Ibuprofen helped, I had some headaches Friday and Saturday, but otherwise...this has been much easier than I expected.

Anyway, that's one thing down.  I did put on a few pounds this weekend, as I didn't really pay any attention to my diet while quitting smoking, but it's a trade-off I'm happy to make.