Running is therapy

For some reason today was a little harder than things had been going. It wasn’t crazy hard, but I was caught a little off guard by some urges to smoke throughout the day.

I must confess, I did have a few beers last night. I went to a friends house to do a little grilling, and he offered me a beer. Now I could have said no, but honestly, I wanted to test the waters a little. I did want to smoke while I was drinking the beers, but I did some deep breathing and reassured myself that I was not going to smoke (in a non-obvious way…don’t get the impression that was in a trance on his deck talking to myself). I didn’t smoke by the way, but I am no hurry to have another beer either ;)

I dunno, maybe it was drinking last night that made today worse than the few days prior. I’m not sure. I also need to remind myself I am only on day 7. A 20 year addiction doesn’t disappear in a weeks time, chantix or no chantix. One day at a time. And I will not be smoking today.

I just happened to notice that I have been smoke free for 6 days. I suppose tomorrow that little girl will come out of the well and kill me.

I used to (until 14 seconds ago) have a picture of myself as the index page for this domain. It was a picture of me smoking. Since I am sunsetting that part of my life, I figured it was time to take that down. I did, and in it’s place, I put a redirect to the blog. *Sigh* I liked that picture. Aw well.

Again not much to report for my cessation. The days are passing (sometimes slowly) but I am still committed. The urges to smoke are really only acute first thing in the morning and before bed. I feel it other times, but not as badly.

Today is a cross training day, so I suppose I should get my lazy ass on the bike. Ciao.

I gotta say. I feel great. I am not 100%, not even close, but I have quit in the past and this is MUCH better. I had two pretty big craves today. That sucked. The second one was the end of the work day, I walked out to get in my car, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Usually I would get in the car and pound cigarettes as I moved up the highway. I did ok. I took deep breaths and turned up the radio. It didn’t last too long.

Right as I was getting it together a buddy called me to see how I was doing. That was cool.

I would like to have a damn beer though. I just don’t feel that confident yet. I am sure I wouldn’t smoke if I did have a beer, but I don’t want to trigger some massive craving that I have to deal with. Aw well, all good things to those who wait.

Whew, another day almost licked. Day two was not as bad as I expected. Yeah, there were times I felt like smoking, but I kept myself busy, drank plenty of fluids and managed it ok. I still feel strong that I won’t smoke, which is a new thing, usually by this time I would have already given up, or be burying my face in a pillow screaming. I can only assume it’s the Chantix giving me boost. Don’t get me wrong, it still sucks, it just sucks less.

Day 3 is tomorrow, at that point the physical addiction should have peaked (though that is hard to gauge since the Chantix started blocking the nicotine last week, though I don’t think it blocked it totally).

I would guess most smokers will tell you that the psychological portion of the addiction can be just as insidious as the physical. Even if you believe, as I do, that I was mistaken for a long time in my thinking that nicotine was helping me to relax/fend off boredom/de-stress, it’s still one of the very few activities that one does in a bunch of settings. As a result, just about everything reminds you of smoking. Though, I have been sitting at my laptop for over 2 hours now, and I used to smoke up a storm on this thing, and I am not a mess thinking about it. I am not completely at ease, but I am not a mess.

Inspirational thought of the day: Stop telling smokers that smoking causes lung cancer, they know, they get it, if that were all it took there would be like 5 smokers and they would be lunatics. Not that I cared a lot, but it used to crack me up when people would tell me that. Like “Oh really? I hadn’t heard”. My new favorite question from people is “What made you decide to stop?”. Heh, oh I don’t know, I think it was because a stray cat told me to. I QUIT SO I WOULDN’T DIE FROM IT MORON! I think what they really want is a magic sentence. They want me to tell them something that they can either tell a smoker they know, or use it to convince themselves to quit. There is no silver bullet, it’s hard, I am doing it anyway.

Nathan Powell, Non-Smoker.

**Edit: in a re-read of this, I am not calling anyone a moron, that was for comedic affect. It’s ok if you want to ask me what made me decide to stop. And I’ll tell you, it’s chicks man, chicks! :P **

Heh, just kidding, nothing quite so deep as a retrospective!

Day one is thankfully drawing to a close, and it’s been an interesting ride. I don’t feel like recounting each up and down I had today but I will say overall, it was better than I have had in past and worse than no trouble at all :)

When I drove home tonight from work the hour and 10 minute commute gave me too much time to think and by the time I got home I was kind of frazzled. I wasn’t anywhere near to breaking down and smoking, just tired from quitting all day (it’s hard to do nothing about something). I decided I would try to lay down a bit and get away from it all. Well that didn’t work out so great, the more I laid there the worse I felt. Then I remembered, I was supposed to go for a walk tonight, that was the plan. Out the door I went, and I must say it was a nice respite from the urges and tweaking I was doing in bed. I walked for 5.32 Miles, burned 574 Calories over 1 hour and 23 minutes so sayest the Garmin.

John contends that the calorie count is high, and that may be, but it’s still fun to walk out the door and say to yourself, I am going for a 500 calorie walk tonight.

Also, I did a lot of stretching, and other exercises to fill the day I missed yesterday in the 10K plan I am on.

Overall, I think I can be proud of this day. But I will wait a few more days, no sense spending too much time patting myself on the back only to let some junkie thought slip by me and take me by surprise.

Oh, and one last inspirational message for today. While on the walk I was able to think pretty clearly, it keeps all the racing thoughts at bay. I remembered one of the junkie thoughts I have had in the past, and heard from others, “What if I already have cancer, I might as well just keep smoking”. I thought about that. Even if I die tonight in my sleep, I die smoke free. Good enough for me.

I am just an hour or two away from quitting smoking (bed time). I wanted to post here for posterity. I plan to look back here in the future to remember quitting. Eventually I won’t think about smoking anymore and that will be nice, but I’d also like to remember that I was once a smoker, and got myself out of it. (I am sure people will be happier when I shut the hell up about it too).

The Chantix is working. It’s not a miracle, but it’s pretty good. I went 7 hours yesterday without smoking and it wasn’t that bad. I thought about cigarettes and smoking them, but it wasn’t quite as ferocious as I know going that long has been in the past. It will give me the edge I need. I think if I actually waited a few more days it would be even easier, but I am not doing that (and I won’t be using that as an excuse to cheat). In my mind I know I want to quit, and I set this date as my quit date, I plan to see it through.

The next time people see me, I will be a nonsmoker. Sweet.

Quit, or do not, there is no try.

I think most people find quitting hard because there is an absence of doing. Meaning, if there is something in your life that you want to change (like exercise, or clean) you know what to do. You can just do those things. With addiction you have to not do, and I think that makes people uncomfortable. At least, it seems that way to me. :)

I have no idea how I remembered that line. I am not particularly religious, but on the way home from work, I was thinking about *drum roll* smoking. And I was thinking that if I am going to succeed I need to change my attitude, or at least pump it up so that I can meet the cravings and such head on. And out of my mouth I exclaimed GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN! … Yes and then I laughed like a moron. Just a funny thing to say if you ask me. Especially for a grown man…in a car…by himself.

Other smoking news…By way of maggie’s mind we have this article. The one thing she talks about in there, is something I forgot to put on my list of things I am looking forward to when I quit. Namely…what she calls “smoking runs”. Gah, that is a drag. You get home, get your shoes off, sit down and then you realize “Damn it! I only have X number of smokes left”. You put your shoes back on, and drive (or in my case if it’s still early enough, walk) to the store and buy something expensive that is killing you. Yay junkie!

Not much to say in the smoking realm this afternoon. I am not sure what the deal is, but I was really hungry all day. I am not sure that taking one pill can make you hungry, but whatever…I am blaming the nervous breakdown I had a moment ago on that bag chips on the pills. I had several handfuls. It wasn’t pretty.

I was nervous today about quitting. Now that I had actually started taking the pills and the countdown has begun I am having some anxiety.

I joined an online forum for quitters, and the messages there are pretty helpful. These people are for real. They take quitting very seriously. It’s nice. I haven’t really said anything yet since, well I haven’t actually quit smoking :) If I am having problems though, I plan to use it. It’s cool, I saw it happen a couple times today…if you put ‘Help Help Help’ (or similar) in the subject, people flood into the thread to talk to you and get you through the craving. To me that is awesome. They do ask that you don’t smoke until 3 people have had a chance to respond (usually the amount of time it takes you to get it under control)…seems fair.

The one thing that was a little strange was that there is an awful lot of flirting in the threads. I find that strange. Mostly off color remarks from male users to female users. I dunno, I am not a prude, but that seems in poor taste to me. Like, “hey were all here to get help!”…”Nice ass!” Wtf is that about.

Onward and upward friends. Tomorrow is day two of the pillz. Looking forward to it.

**EDIT: I should say…no one actually said “Nice Ass”, I was being hyperbolic as an example. :) **