Smoking

[sathor]

I've quit smoking before - I'm on my fourth day this time, and am almost out of chewing tobacco (which I have used less and less since I stopped smoking completely.) And as per usual I'm experiencing some pretty significant frustration/confusion etc. that comes and goes. Hot flashes. Anger. Boredom. I've pretty much locked myself in my room trying to keep myself occupied 24/7. Quitting this time seems worse than the last time. Much more severe withdrawals.

Last night I had a short burst (a few seconds) of auditory hallucination (sirens) but my headphones were on and I'm wondering about some audio file being hidden in a webpage :P At any rate, it seems to me that most of the side-effects of quitting smoking are borderline, if not absolute analogues, to temporary psychosis. There's people online who claim they actually had a full blown mental breakdown some time after quitting.

Things they don't tell you when you start smoking.

The worst part about all of it is that to be honest, I wish I could keep smoking. I wish it wasn't so expensive. I wish it didn't virtually guarantee (what is it, one in three chance?) of getting emphysema, COPD or lung cancer. I never expected I would live long enough to experience any of those issues, but the reality is I don't know how long I'm going to live...and if I do live that long, I sure as hell don't want to be on an oxygen mask or incapable of exercising.

Hopefully I can keep this going. The next few days will be rough because I will have zero nicotine in my bloodstream. I'm going to have to abstain from alcohol for awhile as well...something like three months, they say.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Heya, dearheart, just zipping in to say Happy Birthday a little early, because we're off to Faire again in the morning, and won't be home till Monday evening. So, I hope you have a good one!

So many of your posts and comments I want to reply to! Sorry it's taking me so long; time flies in the summer.

Good for you for quitting smoking! Sorry to hear you're having a hard time with it, though. The symptoms you're experiencing are not caused by lack of nicotine - what they are is an extinction burst; the reason they're worse this time than last time is because they worked last time: you resumed smoking.

After smoking for 42 years, I quit two years ago, almost inadvertently. I wanted one of my folk to read Rational Recovery, because AA was clearly not working for her, but I couldn't recommend a method I hadn't tried myself. So, since cigarettes were my worst bad habit, that I'd been "planning to quit" for decades, I made them the test case, and quit them. "I will never smoke another cigarette."

It was easy! Any time the thought of smoking crossed my mind, I'd repeat that to myself (and its happy corollary, "I am saving a shitload of money!".) The difference was in the 'Big Plan' - that crucial, non-negotiable word 'never' that made withdrawal-symptoms irrelevant because they weren't going to work no matter what. In the past, I'd 'tried to quit' - and succeeded for a while sometimes - but I'd never REALLY quit, so the window was always open a crack: if I got really upset, or if I was drinking and someone else's cigarette smelled good, I could have 'just one'. Of course it never WAS 'just one'; the monkey would be right back on my back again with the first puff.

When I did really quit, the window was permanently closed and locked, so there was no crack for the monkey to keep picking at. I had to remind myself that I will never smoke another cigarette a lot of times in the first weeks, and I still do have to remind myself occasionally - especially if I'm drinking with smokers - but I didn't get any withdrawal symptoms at all.

The person I'd hoped would read Rational Recovery never did read it, and she's still trashing her life with alcohol, but another friend followed my example and quit smoking four months after I did. She too had smoked for more than 40 years, and had had withdrawal symptoms bad enough to send her to the ER when she'd 'tried to quit' in the past. She didn't get them when she truly quit, though. She says she realized that what she thought were withdrawal symptoms were actually anxiety symptoms caused by her fear of withdrawal symptoms.

Locking yourself in your room 24/7 is practically guaranteed to engender frustration, boredom and anger even if you weren't trying to quit smoking. I'm sure some people do have full-on mental breakdowns after quitting smoking, but post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy: 'after' does not mean 'because of'. There are a lot of reasons why people break down, but nicotine deficiency is not one of them.

Anyway anyway: have a happy birthday - the Perseid meteor shower is happening now, so I hope you have some starry nights to watch them! *hugs hugs* Be well, my friend; here's to a year of wonders!

[sathor.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the wishes. I'm sure it will be an uneventful birthday (I hope anyway) but we shall see.

I'm still not 100% free of nicotine - but I have cut way back and that's good. I just have to take the next step =\ And you are completely right when you say that it means no more, ever. Because that's the only way for someone in my position.

The extinction burst article is a bit funny - I know you've linked it before (and I've read it before) but I can't help but smile over the whole philosophers/psychologists thinking about lack of free will and automatons. I can't tell you how many times I've been down that road, and quite frankly, I tend to believe there's no such thing as free will, REALLY. Nice to think about, certainly a nice ideal to hold, but I don't believe for a minute that we control all that much. I echo Skinner's concerns about a culture that puts individual freedom above all else as well - although it would certainly be dangerous to go around saying that out loud.