Junkie thinking-.......Think again

Here is a repost of a repost that I kept, as it really hits home.............LouDub posts regarding: Some Smoking thoughts from a veteran quitter (A very long post) To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times. – Mark Twain Like Mark Twain I am an eternal quitter, this fact alone attests to the truth that smoking is a strong chemical addiction, and quitting has a high failure rate. The difference between Mark and me is that even though I am smoking now I don’t want to be a smoker any more. I accept that smoking gives me some pleasure but I know the pleasure is only a chemical reaction to a hole being filled by nicotine, a hole that was originally dug by nicotine and one which will never be filled no matter how many cigarettes I smoke. For all of you struggling with your quit as I have in the past, here is a bulletin from someone currently smoking as to why I wouldn’t bother starting again if I were you. The first second you inhale that first cigarette when you have decided to abandon your quit (and it is a decision, even if it is under duress), you will feel a heady cocktail of negative emotions, shame, disappointment, self loathing, and a dirty sort of guilty pleasure. The first cigarette will not deliver the relief you thought it would and will burn down so quickly that you will immediately want another to see if it will give you the relief. Really its just your body building up its supply of nicotine, giving you nothing in return except guilt, smelly breath and headaches. You promise yourself that you will only have a couple but before the evening is out you have gone through 10 and that was by being really frugal and watching the clock to see if your next one was due yet. No pleasure anymore because now you are rationing and you can remember what it was like after a couple of weeks into your quit when hours would go by without you wanting one, but here you are back again craving. You begin by smoking on the sly, walks on your own, or hiding out in the backyard thinking that you will stop again soon that this is just a blip. Soon, very soon, you start telling people that you caved in and that you are only having ‘a few’ until you quit again, but of course you are lying, you are smoking much more than that and the more you smoke the less likely and the more difficult it will be for you to face into a new quit. You feel doubly ashamed because now you are lying to your friends and family and it was only yesterday that they were so proud of you. It takes no time before the sneaky ones you have in your car start to stink it out again, and even though you shower regularly and make sure you smoke outdoors, your fingers begin to have that familiar stench that no amount of soap can ever cover up. And then there is your old friend the morning cough, it unpacks its bags and greets you the first morning after you have smoked, ‘long time no see, I’ll never leave you again’ it says. Even before that you notice things you never noticed when you were a hardened smoker, like the soreness in your throat when you inhale even one, the sinus dripping down the back of your throat when you lie down,quit smoking, and the sulphurous taste in your mouth after a nap even though you have brushed your teeth fastidiously. The money you took out of the bank to buy lunches for the week only lasts 3 days and you have to make another withdrawal. At first you don’t care because you can afford it but it doesn’t take long before you realise that you are avoiding the shopping malls, not because you don’t need any clothes or want to shop, but because the internal auditor inside you is reminding you that smoking must come first. Like an abusive relationship, you have returned to your bullying partner who makes sure it controls everything again, your money, your time, your emotions, your health, your friendships, your self esteem. It owns you again and in return it gently and lovingly administers the poison you love so well. Patiently it waits, nursing you through all those chest infections,smoking cessation, sore throats, teeth and gum problems and wheezing until its finest hour when it becomes your palliative nurse in your final years. So many surprises it has in store for you, will it be the slow suffocation of emphysema where you experience the pleasure of breathing for years as if a pillow was put over your face and sleep sitting up every night until you eventually succumb to exhaustion? Perhaps the double pleasure of Lung Cancer where you experience all of the above with the added pleasure of eternally drowning in your own phlegm while white hot pokers are left inside your lungs for up to nine months sizzling away inside while you cry in panicky agony for your next morphine shot? Perhaps the joys of having a stroke are in store for you, where you are perfectly lucid trapped inside a shell of a body while your loved ones, perhaps your children take turn to feed you, if you can still swallow, and complete strangers wipe your ass and care to your sanitary needs. Or maybe you will cheat on your Nicotine nurse by having a major heart attack in your forties or fifties brought on by lots of cigarette love, leaving years of unlived life and friends and family behind. I intend leaving Nick again next Monday lets hope this time it will be for good, because that kind of loving I can do without. To those of you who have escaped, stay away, this is not life, this is half-life.