I'm not sure exactly why, but I've been getting triggered something fierce this month.
One of the episodes didn't even make any sense. I was in a place that I have never been before as a smoker, and there wasn't any smoking happening around me. All that I could figure was that I was hungry and bored at the time, and that used to be a smoking cue.
Then there was some emotional fallout at the beginning of last week. For about an hour, I got the old death wish back. It was that crazy train of thought that goes, "Who cares if it kills me, since everything is all ****ed up anyway?" I managed to talk myself through that one, reminding myself that these feelings pass, and that I'll be better off not holding a cigarette when they do pass.
Then there was the hour or so at a bar after a comedy show last Friday. My group of people was outside, so there was a lot of smoking going on. There were some "I only smoke when I drink" types, as well as some hard core addicts going at it. It kind of peaked for me when I saw some guy packing his smokes, and
he was doing it the wrong way. (Yes, the old addict in me is also a control freak.
) So I ended up grabbing this guy's pack and packing his cigarettes the way I felt it needed to be done.
I was worried about the idea of touching them at first. But dong that somehow relieved the tension I'd been having. Somewhere in that moment, I mentally went through the whole idea of smoking--what it would be like to have just one all the way to waking up feeling crappy the next day. The idea of feeling all coughy and stinky and going through nicotine withdrawals in the morning was not a pleasant one. That idea is what stopped me.
And the next day, I woke up feeling well rested, calm, and not smoky or coughy. I was really glad that I didn't give in to that impulse. In fact, I'm still glad now.
