tales from the ash tray

I'm a serial quitter, and one thing I've learned from all the times I've quit, is to not buy into the whole marketing ploy that quitting is this muthafucking THING that's going to be SO difficult. That mindset was brought to you care of the companies making obscene amounts of money from manufacturing and selling cigarettes, and is being perpetuated by the vampires who manufacture and sell nicotine replacement.

The actually quitting process is a whole lot easier than most would have you believe.

The first day is physically hard, the second isn't pretty, by the third, you're no longer looking down the barrel of OH MY GOD LIGHT ME UP NOW!! and the view is looking pretty free and clear from here on.

If you believe it's gonna be hard, it WILL be hard. Rest assured, I'm not saying it's not hard in the same way one snaps their fingers outside your line of vision and says 'lookie here!' to distract you from what lies ahead. It isn't hard. Honestly.

What's hard is staying quit.

And I've successfully quit several times, and each time I'm amazed at how frikking easy is it. My problem is staying quit, one of the reasons being it was so damned easy to quit, I figure just one won't hurt ::rolls eyes:: and if I need to, I can quit again like that. *snaps fingers* And I can. What I tend to forget, however, is the difficulty I have in deciding to quit. That takes forever as I wade through the When? Where? How? Eek! process. That part is the hardest part, and maybe then only because I've been indoctrinated with how hard the quitting process is. Excuse me while I repeat myself. Ahem.

There are stumbling blocks to remaining smoke free. I know them well, hence my serial quitter title, and one of the biggies is learning to 'uncluster' events. I had 'em clustered up neatly, so one never went without the other. Things like get in the car & light up, get home & light up, make coffee & light up, answer phone & light up.....and so on and so forth. Anyhoo, it was the trigger event I had to watch, not the lighting up event. I mean, I didn't walk around resisting temptation with a cigarette and a zippo in my pocket, but I did often get in my car, get home, watch tv and answer the phone. See?

I quit again last October (I think. I don't keep a running tally of days sans smoke, cuz the days I haven't smoked aren't important, it's the days I will not smoke that are) and I'm not missing it at all. I really don't think about it, even though I mix primarily with smokers. For the first time ever though, my house is a no smoking zone, so I must be serious. As an aside, I was at friend's house the other day and he lit a cigarette and I was all 'dude, take it outside' and he was all 'ooh, sorry' til l he remembered he was in his house and I was full o' shite. Bwah!