Today is day number 10 in counting that I have decided to give up the filthy habit of smoking cigarettes…..(hear the dramatic background music….don-don-don).
Some of us have been where I am now. And I accept that the other some of us hasn’t yet been where I am now either because they never started smoking in the first place, or because they haven’t decided to give it up yet.
Well for those of you that haven’t attempted to give up before – like me, let me tell you that since I have quit, I realize more and more each day what poison we inhale into our lungs every hour of every day (or however many you smoke in a day).
My road to recovery has not been an easy one, not by a long shot! I have so far been subjected to the worst of withdrawal symptoms and I’ve just about tried every remedy I could hear of to try and make myself feel better. I don’t feel great. Actually, I feel like death. I don’t feel anything like I thought I would have felt like by now. I thought, in my infinite wisdom, that I will quit smoking and that I will suddenly feel miraculously fabulous. Food will taste better again. I will feel energized and focused…..but low and behold….my throat is still sore. My chest is still tight. My voice is still horse and husky (in a totally unsexy, unflattering way) and added to those I have acquired an entirely new set of ailments to add to my list. I struggle to sleep but I am totally fatigued. I am nauseous. I am jittery and anxious, and this is not even mentioning the fact that I am as irritable as a female crocodile on heat with a sore tooth! Aaaaargh.
Why did I quit, I hear you ask? Well this was a gradual build up for me, and I presume that a lot of smokers that go completely cold turkey like I did experience this “build up” I will talk about now. In the months leading up to my abandonment of what used to be my favorite disgusting habit, my feelings towards smoking started changing, physically and I guess emotionally and psychologically too. The first thing that I noticed was how much my voice has changed. It happened more than once where I would talk to someone on the phone in the morning, where the person on the other end would ask me whether I had laryngitis….and I didn’t! It bothered me that I had a chronic cough that just wouldn’t go away. Then the smell of smoke around or on me became more and more nauseating to me. I started resenting the fact that my hair always smelled of smoke, that I always smelled of smoke and I was upset about the fact that I probably never smell nice to anyone – ever, unless someone would think that the smell of a full ashtray was pleasant and nice. I resented the fact that I spend hundreds of rands on perfume a year and you might not even know I’m wearing any because the smell of the cigarette I just smoked 5 minutes ago is so overbearing! Then the most important, there was the guilt. I am a mother, and my little boy not only deserves to have a healthy mommy, but he also deserves to live in an environment where he wouldn’t be so exposed to all the chemicals in my second hand smoke. I also felt increasingly guilty about the example I was setting for him. I certainly don’t want him to smoke when he’s older, but if I smoke myself, how can I tell him not to?
So 11 days ago, I smoked way too much one night and woke up the next morning feeling worse for wear. And because I don’t drink, I knew I had that typical smokers hang over, and that was when I decided there and then that I am over it! I broke of my long standing relationship of 13 years with my vice, my crutch that I thought played a big role in making out who I am today. It was a part of me! And although I feel good about making the decision, and although I haven’t craved a single cigarette since I quit, I do miss it, I think about it more than I do any other thing in one day, and it’s almost as if I am starting to mourn the loss of this relationship with my cigarettes that were always there for me! When I was happy, when I was sad, always! It’s so hard, and I literally have tears in my eyes as I type this sentence.
If you are considering quitting by whatever form or means, please do not let anything anyone tells you deter you to quit. Let the withdrawals and all the unpleasantness you will experience, be a motivation to keep going and get this drug out of your system. Yes, I said it! It’s a drug, and anyone who is addicted to smoking cigarettes is a drug addict, and a junkie, and in principal the only difference between smoking cigarettes and Meth Amphetamine or using Heroin or Crack Cocaine is that cigarettes are actually legal, and can be bought over the counter from just about any shop on every corner.
When you think about it that way it doesn’t sound so appealing does it? Well I have come to realize that it’s the truth, and as active smokers, we all tend to make excuses for our addiction, and I guess we do that to try and justify killing ourselves slowly in our own minds. We are brainwashed into believing all kinds of things about cigarettes that simply isn’t true. And I often wonder, what do people that don’t smoke do to reduce stress?? They certainly don’t feel like grabbing the first pack of smokes they can find at the first sign of stress. Many people believe that smoking is a social thing and that it’s “cool” to smoke, but in recent times it has actually become very unsocial and “uncool” to smoke because of the laws prohibiting smokers to smoke just about anywhere these days. It’s the smokers that’ll stand outside in rain, wind, hail and cold just to have a puff, while the non-smokers are all nice and cozy inside, probably laughing at the silliness of the whole situation…..
With all of this said…I feel a great sense of accomplishment for coming this far, but I take it one loooooong day at a time, and I hope that this article will inspire at least one person to also choose life, choose air and oxygen over carbon, smelly clothes and stained teeth. After all, an unknown author once said that a cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.
