6 months seems like and incredible milestone: For .5 years I have not smoked a cigarette and I did not change my lifestyle at all except that I don’t smoke 2 packs of cigarettes at the bar. In fact, days after I started putting off smoking (I really abhor the word quit…seriously), I was able to go out and drink like a mofo. But how?
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Every time I go out here in Portland, and someone asks to bum a smoke or a light, I tell them I haven’t smoked a cigarette in five months. People ask me how I quit smoking. They say they aren’t ready, that they don’t have the willpower, or whatever. I know the feeling, I wasn’t ready, I didn’t believe I had the willpower, and I questioned how I could undergo such a life altering change. I just sit there like a smug dick and roll my eyes.
When they say “I’d have to change my whole lifestyle“, that’s when I finally pipe up.
So here I am, and it’s been 1/3 of a year since I have had a cigarette. Lately, I really abhor the fact that I named this “Kyle Quits”, since that is not what I tell everyone. In truth, what I tell them is that I have been putting off smoking for four months. Putting if off? What the fuck is that?
When I first started this blog, I did it as a distraction to help me in my “quitting smoking” process. I use quotes because, well, I’ve screamed my Positive Powers of Procrastination theory in enough drunken hags faces that I’m sure everyone in the world has heard it. I digress…in October, I posted nearly every damn day, now I post rarely. Looking back, I think I made some entertaining posts:
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The longer I go without having a cigarette, the more I loathe the term “quit” and wish I didn’t buy “kylequits.com”. One would think that I should be super excited that I haven’t smoked a cigarette, which I am. However, I can’t deal with terms like “quit”. Really, I like the idea that I am putting off smoking. I don’t even want cigarettes anymore unless I go out drinking anyway.
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If so, you are fucked. Not that I don’t applaud your efforts for trying, it’s just that picking a date to quit smoking means you aren’t ready to quit. It’s that freakin’ simple. You know what I did this New Years? I made a resolution to start smoking again. That way when I don’t follow through, I won’t be too disappointed.
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Smoking cessation products that make sense: Nicotine Inhalers, Nicotine Gum, and wacky ass pills like Zyban. Products that seem pointless: Nicotine Water.
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Every few years, it seems there is a new stop smoke aid on the market that touts itself as the new wonder drug: like it magically kills any and all desire to smoke. So far Zyban has been the most effective pill, touting a 30% success rate. Personally, I think these numbers are false, but I know that it did help me briefly a few years back.
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The thought of quitting smoking is what scares most smokers. The finality of it is overwhelming ala “I’m never going to smoke again”. That’s a long time. The rest of your life is a long, long time. The real trick, I found, is to take that huge gap of time and break it down into manageable segments.
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While I might not have had a cigarette in nearly 6 weeks, I’m still eye the “ban it everywhere” zealots with a great deal of uneasieness. The slippery slope of “good of the public” has makes me wonder what they’ll come for next. At one time, the Nazi party had a very popular public health campaign, and the party as a whole was very anti smoking. For some reason, the American Cancer Society and various public health czars never include this in its list of effective campaigns.
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