A few months ago I was camping with my boyfriend. We were across the road from a family with two small children who were playing on scooters and bikes. As usual, BF and I lit smoke after smoke...I mean, what ELSE is there to do while camping? Meanwhile complaining about being too tired to hike. Telling people back at work about the great time we had smoking...I mean CAMPING. At any rate, the kids across from us must have noticed because they started playing a little game...called "I'm the King of Smoketown." The little girl would respond by saying she was the Queen of Smoketown, the Mayor, the Princess of Smoketown...whatever, until they couldn't think of anything else and an argument ensued. BF and I laughed but later it haunted me. I was the Queen of Smoketown.
I have wanted to quit since I started. I've smoked casually (on weekends, at parties) since I was 18 but made the transition to pack-a-day smoker 5 years ago when I got a divorce. I'm also a recovering alcoholic and I said goodbye to that addiction nearly 4 and a half years ago. I know quitting is one day at a time but I've never had any luck quitting for even a day. I use every excuse in the book, especially my alcohol addiction, as a reason to keep smoking. Drinking had immediate, disastrous impacts on me, my family, my friends, my work. Smoking makes you a social outcast a few times here or there...but what the heck...hang out with more smokers, right? I've made a bunch of cool friends that way, RIGHT?!
Smoking makes me just as much of a liar as drinking did. I've lied to my mom (who quit cold turkey in 1976 after smoking for 18 years and is so holier-than-thou about it I could scream). I lie to my friends about how much I smoke. I've rejected potential boyfriends who didn't smoke because not smoking while I was around them was a DRAG (har har). Add to that the extra $50.00/month my health insurance makes me pay to be a smoker, and the $200.00/month on smokes, the stench of my coffee/cigarette breath only a dinosaur could love, the thrice-yearly bouts with bronchitis...I get it. I want and need to quit.
I'm on Day 7 of Chantix and was smoke-free for 48 hours before I decided to throw all caution to the wind and have a smoke. It sucked, as usual, because the Chantix makes me feel like I'm sucking on the exhaust pipe of a car. But I'm concerned now. I'm worried that I will keep taking the Chantix and still give in. I need the collective willpower of this group to help. Like drinking, I can't do it alone. I don't think about drinking very often today...once in a great while, even around people that are drinking. And there was no drug for that. I want to be that way with smoking. I wouldn't even mind one day being a person that gets ticked off when I have to sit too near the smoking section in a restaurant. I don't want to be the person who has to unhook his oxygen tank to go inside a Turkey Hill to buy smokes.
The Chantix is GREAT...it's a million miles away from the blind rage and horrific anxiety that I got every time I tried to quit for a day. Let's face it, I quit almost every time I lit up. I usually spent the whole smoke hating myself for lighting it and promising to quit. Now is the time to make that reality. But I'm worried...I'm worried I'm not fully committed, and what is it going to take to quit, beyond the Chantix? A lot of people said they weren't even going to quit but their doctor told them about it and they thought "Oh, what the heck". That's sort of what happened...I hated smoking but I wasn't necessarily desperate to quit yet...just loathing the habit.
Sorry for the long story but I wanted to get it all out. Any help and support would be hugely appreciated.
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Quit Meter
$32,360.00
Amount Saved
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Quit Meter
Days: 763
Hours: 0
Minutes: 14
Seconds: 44
Life Gained
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Quit Meter
6472
Smoke Free Days
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Quit Meter
129,440
Cigarettes Not Smoked