So, I'm gonna use this space (for now, anyway) to explain why I made the choice to smoke, what it's done to me personally, why I'm quitting and how I am quitting.
Yes, there is a TON of information out there on smoking. There are thousands & thousands of ads, personally accounts, medical information, YouTube videos, recordings, speeches.... The list goes on and on.
So why read mine? Well, you don't have to read it; no one is forcing you. I suppose it's really for me. I don't know how this will work because sitting in front of the computer is one of my triggers. I chain smoke when in front of the computer so if I disappear for days (or weeks) at a time don't dispair. And if I never some back around to it--it means I've lost interest. HA HA
My mom was 12 years old when she watched her father have a heart attack in their kitchen. He was a smoker & died instantly. She said the last thing she heard from his mouth was a gurgling noise. There was no trip to the hospital.
When Mom took up smoking, her mother cried. Her mother could not believe she had started smoking after witnessing with her own eyes what had happened with her father. Mom thought it was "cool" and she said she liked it.
Dad probably started smoking when he joined the Navy, though I'm not totally clear on that. Vietnam....yeah, everyone was smoking then.
In 1996, I was 15 years old. I had all the possible information one could get on smoking. I had two parents who'd desperately tried to quit many times. I even once sat at the living room window and watched my dad literally pick up a push mower and send it hurtling across the lawn.
This is how the need for a fix can affect a smoker. He shortly went back to smoking after pitching the mower across the lawn. Mom was only seconds behind or had already been smoking in secret.
At 15, I was invincible. The age of 35 seemed a lifetime away. Fifty, seemed even more elderly to me. My parents didn't get me & I didn't get them. There was a huge generation gap. We fought constantly. I was rebellious, lonely, depressed. I was in my third year of yet another school--not because we moved around, but because I kept getting into trouble. Mom thought changing of a school, removing me from bad influences would help. Boy was she wrong.
Bad influences exist even if you are home schooled (we even tried that too) This school was a good school, but I hated it. I didn't fit in at all. It seemed I was one out of four kids in the entire high school that listened to rock music. I had a "grunge" thing going on and I looked like I might appear on Sesame Street along with three other kids in my class and Grover would ask, "Which of these do not belong?"
That was me. I did OK in my school work--when I wanted to, when it interested me. Algebra didn't hold my interest, nor the make up of mitosis. There were people I talked to, but no close friends. I didn't hang out with anyone. I chatted with a few people in class. That was it.
Months earlier, my sister Sheila married Bob. Bob had a little brother, Shawn. When we met, it was like in the movies. We instantly liked each other. He was bad. He had long hair, played a bass guitar, smoked cigarettes, and was tall and lanky.
We "dated" for four months even though I was not technically allowed to date & he had no car. He broke it off because of family issues--long boring story there.
I was heart broken. Shawn was the closest friend I'd ever had. My first kiss. My first boyfriend. Sometime within the next six months I became insanely jealous of the popular girls at school--not because they were cheerleaders or anything like that. I wanted to look like them. I wanted what they had. Happiness, friends, a great body, a pretty face.
I decided that if I had a cigarette in my mouth, I wouldn't be shoving food in there all the time. I was five feet tall and probably weighed between 110 & 120 pounds. I had chubby spots like at my gut or my thighs, but I wasn't fat. Even today I look at photos and wonder how I could have saw myself as fat!
Sheila and Bob had moved in with my parents & myself. I stole my first cigarette from one of their packs--afraid Mom might notice if I'd gotten in her own pack. I got inside my closet and lit my first cigarette.
It burned my throat and my lungs immediately rejected this poison I was offering them. Smoke sputtered out of my mouth and I coughed to expelled the rest. Another drag, and the same thing.
I had to teach my lungs how to handle the smoke. I had to learn how to smoke. Today, of course I think it's got to be the most idiotic thing I could've ever done. I never dreamed I would continue to smoke for the next twelve years. It never occurred to me, not for a second that I couldn't have just one or two cigarettes.
That's the problem. No one decides to smoke for the rest of their life. I never decided to work my way up to three packs day. I didn't decide I was going to smoke for twelve stinking years.
That's why it took only one. I don't know if I was hooked on my first cigarette. The thought that I could have another--that's what hooked me. The thought that I could never end up like Mom--that's what hooked me.
The thing is, it tasted awful! It made my head swim & I felt a bit dizzy. This is what we smokers refer to as a "Nicotine Buzz". But you can get the same effect from holding your breathe because it is nothing more than suffocation--a lack of oxygen to the lungs and brain.
It didn't make me feel good but I felt good because I was going to be skinny. Looking back, I would have no smarter if I had lit a crack pipe because I had never seen a fat crack addict. I had, of course, seen fat smokers. Where was the logic?
There was no logic. I did not put one rational thought into that one cigarette. If I had, I would not be smoking as I write this. If I had thought logically about smoking, I would have weighed the pros and cons of smoking and would have realized there is not one single advantage to smoking. As a teenager you might think I would've at least deduced that I didn't even get high off of smoking.
Not literally, but figuratively I did get a high from it. More of a rush, really. Everyone at my school saw me for who they thought I was--smoking would only exemplify that image, I thought. I would become skinny because smoking is an appetite suppressant, a stimulant....
I eat more today than I've eaten in my entire life. I weigh 112 pounds and I am somewhat fit. The more I smoke, the more tired I feel; so much for a stimulant! The funny thing is, shortly after high school I gained about 40 pounds. That's a lot of weight on a small five foot tall frame! I got fat! So much for the appetite suppressant!
All it took was that one cigarette because I thought I was in control. I would never have dreamed of sticking myself with a needle filled with heroin. And yet the yearly deaths from heroin does not even begin to compare to deaths caused by smoking.
Slowly, I smoked more than one. Within a year I still didn't realize I was hooked. I didn't want to stop because I thought I liked it. It was the drug, the addiction, the craving for more that made me believe I enjoying it.
Like a heroin addict, I got no satisfaction from tasting the drug, only the "enjoyment" of quelling the craving.
At sixteen, I couldn't stop because I didn't want to stop. That was simply the illusion of the drug. Does a heroin junkie want to stop? No, he only wants more of the drug. When he gets more, he only wants more and more.....
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