IT IS NOT SUPPOSE TO BE EASY
My wife and
I both quit smoking at the same time – she was thirty-two and I was
forty-four. Between us we were
averaging three packs of smokes a day.
We were
teaching school in an Athabascan Indian village and usually bought cartons of cigarettes
at the military base when we would travel to Fairbanks. At the end of summer, before heading back
into the village, we decided we would quit.
I was miserably short of breath and my wife knew smoking wasn’t good for
either of us.
We just
quit. We went into the village without
cigarettes (though you could purchase
them in the village store for four times what they cost in Fairbanks.) No patches, no electronic smoke, no nicotine
pills – just quit.
It is not
the nicotine you miss; it is the habit of smoking. What do you do the first thing in the
morning? You light up a cigarette. What do you do immediately after a meal? You light up a cigarette. What do you do while drinking coffee, or
playing cards, or driving in the car? Unconsciously,
you light up a cigarette. And then
immediately after sex – what, no cigarette!
Not smoking
leaves a big hole in your daily routine - in the habits that you have acquired
over the years - and for a while you feel lost at these times. But it only takes about two weeks of not
smoking until you feel an adjustment and the control.
Using nicotine
substitutes only prolongs the dependency and makes you feel your success depends
on pharmaceutical companies to taper you off.
If you are cutting back, using a patch, sucking water vapor, taking
pills – looking for a crutch - you are just fooling yourself.
You just
have to put on your big girl’s panties, get rid of the smokes, and quit. If you do you will get over it sooner than
you think – and more permanent.
If you aren’t
serious about quitting, just admit it.
It’s your choice.
the Ol’Buzzard
