Log In | Register
This is part 1: The badge of My Failures.
part 2 Will be entirely descriptive of the method I used to quit and I intend to be so thorough that you will be able to make a decision about it after reading the article.
I am a non-smoker that smoked for 25 years and quit over 12 times, this is in part the story of how I got to the point that I could say I am a non-smoker.. If you are expecting me to tell you how great I am for having toughed it out, and used all of this incredible will power. How I, “Manned Up and Got Her Done.” You are reading the wrong story cause that’s not how it went. If you are waiting for me to tell you all the reasons you should quit and how foolish you are for continuing to smoke, again wrong article. I am of the impression that everybody has heard that stuff too many times already. I want to tell you the story of how I tried so hard for so long to quit smoking, that it went from ironic and funny, to pathetic and sad. I did learn a couple of things along the way though, and since I know a lot about quitting and even more about failing, I wanted to write this in the hope that somebody might benefit from all of my suffering.
The first question you might want to ask is what kind of an idiot would quit smoking be free from addiction and start up again for no apparent reason? That would be me, I succeded in quitting smoking on a number of occasions and still went back to smoking again each and every time. I needed to adjust my thinking but just couldn’t seem to be able to do the militant angry non-smoker thing, which is the coping mechanism I probably needed to make up for the fact that my thinking in the matter was all wrong. I could have stopped smoking for 3 months, yet every time somebody lit up, inside I was going, “Ohhh I wish I could have one.” Couldn’t seem to move past the fact that no matter how long I quit, just thinking about it made me want one.
I used every method of quitting smoking there is so you can ask me anything about any one of them. I will say something about each one.
Nicotine Patch- I found this to be effective in the sense that if you were commited and didn’t mind the itching and the worrying about the damn thing staying on. The last time I tried the patch it was so hot out I would start the day with it on my shoulder and at the end of the day it would be in my shoe. Succeded with it when cool out, failed with it when hot out. Damn the itching anyway.
Nicotine Gum-I chewed it when it tasted horrible (they fixed that, it is not so bad now) tastes like chemicals you got to suck it in your lip. You look funny and if you see somebody smoking you get desperate to spit it out and go bum a smoke. It can work but you got to want it pretty bad.
Nicotine lozenge, eye drops, suppository (I made the last two up for laughs). All of the self dosing nicotine replacement therapy junk is pretty much the same. The only thing that was cool about it was you could get your nicotine level in your blood stream up so high you could puke from it with your heart racing. At first I found this stuff to work later on it did not work at all.
Hypnosis- It worked! I sat down in the chair the person said, “Do not smoke anymore.” I said, “Yes Master!” and that was it. (Ok that wasn’t funny). The hypnosis worked on me for about a week. She gave me this tape to listen to of the session and I didn’t listen to it and after a week I started again. Later I just used the tape to quit and I listened to it and did the hypnosis (yes it can be done with a tape, all hypnosis is self hypnosis) and it worked!! I quit smoking for 7 months that time.
Cold Turkey- Tried this on any number of occasions. Always worked for a while but then I would start again. One time I was one month cold turkey and started again like a regular glutton for punishment.
Chantix-This is a powerfull medication. It was very effective. The plan is simple you take the pills and as the dosage ramps up every ciggarette you smoke becomes more of a disappointment than the last. It is really disconcerting but you get to smoke all you want. I had trouble with the extreme side effects, I had all the worst psychological ones, extremely impulsive behavior, feelings of euphoria, increased potential for violence, and pretty much a completely whacked out demeanor. The good news is over time these things calmed down a bit, the bad news is I became more and more reluctant to take it. I stopped after only 16 days I had quit smoking during that period and stayed quit for almost two months..
Wellbutrin- It made me cut down quite a bit but I never quit with this medication. I also had a little trouble with the fact that taking it left a taste in my mouth like I just sucked on somebody’s coin collection.
I also tried prayer, I begged God to help free me from the hell I was putting myself through. I think the worst part about that was I felt like I let him down when I failed again.
I never saw any voodoo witch doctors, accupuncturists, accupressurists, psychobabbologists, or oriental massage chicks I am however entirely interested in stories of people who have tried those methods of quitting smoking.
The whole thing all the quitting attempts and failures went on for over a decade. I didn’t mean it to, it just did. I was always convinced that I would succede, and when I would fail, I knew I was going to try again. I used to just think I was a glutton for punishment, little did I know I was pre-conditioned for failure by way of a group of beliefs that are held as common wisdom in our culture. Even when I quit my mind was never free, because of the things I believed. I had a head full of ideas that were placed there by some very clever people that like to sell people things like all the quit smoking stuff. I bought a lot of stuff that said Glaxo-Smith-Kline, you think they don’t know how to sell some stuff? Right along the path, all kinds of treatment I could get but nobody selling a cure.
Luckily I had the government out there looking out for me, right? Wrong, all they did for me the whole time was steal my money. I was listening to the radio in Maine and they said they were helping people quit smoking so I called the phone number to see if I could get some advice or something. They told me to hose-off because I didn’t live in the state of Maine. I told them that I was buying all kinds of ciggarettes in the State. They said, "Good we want people from out of state to buy ciggarettes." So much for quit smoking help, all kinds of taxation but no help.
Anybody who says that taxes help because they make you cut down on your smoking due to the high price is completely mis-informed. Cutting down on smoking just re-inforces your desire to smoke, it does not help you quit. It actually makes it more difficult to quit. When you cut down you are more miserable before you have each ciggarette, therefore you enjoy each one that much more and this re-inforces your addiction making it stronger. The old saying, “Smoking more and enjoying it less,” is a totally true statement. The government should leave peoples addictions alone if they don’t want to help. Plenty of studies have shown that all ciggarette taxes do are help with tax and spend. If they used the money to cure addiction (not just treat it) everyone would be better off.
People envy those smokers that have the ability to cut down to 5 or even 2 ciggarettes a day. Don’t, they are some of the most miserable people on the planet, they use more will power than is required to quit smoking everyday of their life. A person who smokes 2 ciggarettes a day is soo happy for that 15 minutes out of every day and toughing it out the rest of the time. That is a lot of toughing it out for a little bit of happiness. Everything that I just described is of no assistance to a person in quitting smoking. They will be healthier because they cut down but it will make it harder to quit because it reinforces the enjoyment of smoking and alleviation of misery that comes with being addicted to something and deprived of it on a regular basis. Cutting down is actually one of the worst things you can do if you want to quit. If you are going to smoke, then smoke, having all you want decreases your enjoyment of them by decreasing your personal misery from being deprived of them. So the taxes thing is just BS and is of no assistance to anyone but those who wish to tax and spend (then they complain that you are polluting the air in places that were financed by the taxes from smoking).
I no longer have the room in this article to describe the method I used to quit that left me with both a positive attitude toward my peers that haven’t decided to quit yet and the state of mind needed to never go back to smoking again. So I guess there will have to be a part two and this will be the failure story. Since that is the case we may as well finish with my daughter Alyssa. While I was away fishing and even when I was around she started dabbling in smoking some ciggarettes. She was taking them from her mother, getting them from friends, and she got into trouble at school about it.
My wife decided she wanted to stay in California for a while and be near her relatives there. My job was taking up so much of my time that even though I would not live there myself, I set up house for her and the kids. The smoking habit my daughter had picked up soon got her in trouble at the prison like school she was attending (place had more bars than San Quentin). She was caught in the girls bathroom, there was ciggarette smoke in the air and a strip search (That’s right, strip search) of all the girls in the bathroom turned up a lighter. My daughter got suspended for 3 days for that. 1 day for the offense, and 2 days for arguement about the injustice of it. The second time it happened she got suspended for five. Those two events were presented as major evidence of wrong doing when they expelled her for a loud verbal arguement with another girl. The smoking thing really put a damper on education that year, but we thought she was just fooling about with it.
The next school year she went to a new school, open campus less bars. She got caught with a pack of ciggarettes and suspended for 3 days because she was on probation due to what happened at the other school. She also punched some poor girl out, but the reason I finally made it down to the old school house was attendance and behavioral discussion for the ADA meeting they have to have with you, before they throw your kid out of school for the last time. At the meeting I was trying to be conciliatory with the teachers and smooth things over cause they wanted her gone right then, and just needed my signature and her agreement that the special school is where she belonged. My daughter was a complete a$$ at that meeting she was distracted, agitated and having some symptoms I had seen before but............I finally saw it. She hadn’t had a ciggarette in 4 hours and was ready to kill for one. She wasn’t going to make it in regular public school cause she’s addicted to ciggarettes.
I begged off the rest of the meeting and took my daughter to the store to get food. We stood outside and had a ciggarette together for the first time, me and my 16 year old daughter. I stood there and asked her how long, how bad, and what it was like dealing with it and trying to go to school in that place. She told me that she had been addicted to ciggarettes for 2 years! That sitting in school without being able to smoke was hell and that she probably wouldn’t have gotten into any fights if it hadn’t been for jones’ing for a smoke. It was not a proud day in parenting. When we were done I went back to the school and took my daughter out of it so that she could go to school with the rest of the behavior problem kids, and maybe learn how to smoke crack or steal car stereos. (Ok that wasn’t funny and since it’s probably true, I’ll take it back). Any way if you are a teen ager who screwed up and got themselves addicted to ciggarettes, you may not be eligible to get an education in the state of California and they will strip search you and beat you down for it.
It’s weird to think that when I was a kid there was a big old smoking section and you could go out there and have a ciggarette anytime. If you were out, you could bum one off the math teacher. Amazing how much things have progressed over the years.
Alyssa is working in Alaska right now but when she gets home I am going to try to talk to her about it. I really never wanted that for her.
