I become an Xsmoaker!

So, I’ve decided to blog my journey as part of my recovery, my journey to the realm of normality.

It’s Tuesday today, the second day of freedom, the first day of depression. I quit smoking on Sunday using the well known and heavily punted “Easyway”. Far from being easy it’s been quite challenging since I’m also an IT specialist, an eternal pessimist and often the most “in the shit”. I’ve been free from Nicotine for 2 days now, but today has been the worst day and therefore the day I’ll take as my inspiration.

Most people will know the method in the madness that is the Easyway, the Allen Carr way. For those that are ignorant of the method I will surmise the following: In essence you are convinced that you are a Nicotine addict, that you are a junkie to the substance that is delivered to you in 20 -100 small doses a day in the form of a cigarette. You are then convinced that it’s “easy” to kick this little addiction, to quote “it’s 5% physical and 95% psychological”. This is true and the further you go along this journey of “freedom from the weed” the more it becomes clear that you are an addict and that your mind has a real part to play in the game of addiction.

But what they neglect to tell you is the extent to which your mind (95%) is willing to go to satisfy the physical addiction (5%). It’s willing to play the strangest games with your emotions, your relationships and your general mental health. It’s difficult to explain; for instance: one of the most beneficial and immediate symptoms of quitting smoking is the re-gain of your smell and taste. It’s immediate and amazing, you taste your morning coffee long after your first meeting. You can smell your own bad breathe before others have to tell you. But it’s also a weakness that the psychological monster will pick out and torment. As I stood in the government office for vehicle license renewal, know by Americans as the DMV and by South Africans as HELL this morning I was treated to the exploits of my new found senses and my maniacal mind. I stood quietly in line, pre 08:00am, and awaited the opening of the gates of HELL. I thought, I might like to smoke a cigarette. Immediately I thought, as a good “Easyway” student would, I’m a happy non smoker and a cigarette would “do absolutely nothing for me”.

And then he came. He came and stood behind me in the queue, his body intruding in my zone, my personal space. His breath in my neck. And his body odour, his BO crawling up my nostrils and infecting my everything. It was at this moment I swore I’d start smoking again, if only to remove this stench from my nostrils and to never have to smell it again. Of course, a trick my mind played to get me to “want” a cigarette. I didn’t smoke.

And tonight. My wife was pretty upset at me for something or the other, some simple little thing that would’ve even resolved itself given a different “state of mind”. But that little 5% being convinced the 95% being that this was such a serious issue that it got my wife to say the infamous words ‘if this is about smoking, here’s money, go get your cigarettes”. Luckily I was strong and left the cigarettes for beer.

These are the torments of a “happy non-smoker”. There are 19 more days of physical addiction left, and 19 more stories to tell and be sure; I’ll tell them all.

I am a Xsmoaker?

It’s the 6th afternoon of my journey and the last few days have been excrutiating, but I am a Xsmoaker!

All the wonderful positives of quitting are really becoming the largest form of irritation in my day to day life; I sometimes feel that I was born to smoke.

They say you don’t need to sleep as long when you’re a non-smoker, your body doesn’t need to recover from the poisens adminstrered every hour on the hour by a smoker. I thought excellent, an hour or two a day extra, something any ambitious young executive desires, a bit more time in the day, a 25 hour day persay.

So, for the last 4 nights I’ve been lying awake from 03:30 every morning, not able to sleep and not able to go to work. The only good thing about being awake at this time is that by the time my wife awakes from her slumber, I’m over the grumpiness of waking and in a good mood, at 05:00 in the morning.

I must say; nomatter that fact that I’ve been deprived of accumalatively 12 hours of sleep over the last 4 days, I awake every morning feeling amazingly fresh, “fresh mornings” now have a meaning not known before.

Tomorrow I leave for 2 weeks for a well deserved holiday before the holidays. I will continue to document my journey, maybe a little less frequently, but definitly.

The summit of the in-summountable is within sight of this traveller.