Somewhere in between determination, heart palpitations, lethargy and giddiness I stopped smoking cigarettes eleven days ago. Oddly enough I feel more level headed than I’ve felt in a long time, albeit a sleepy time.
I slept 16 hours per day during the first three days of the quit and sporadically puffed on a Nicorette Inhaler and on a nicotine-free electronic cigarette. I also thought about bookmarking a national directory of treatment centers on my browser in case I needed further help quitting.
The constant dizziness from quitting didn’t subside until day four and it’s still lingering today. And I can’t beleive the manufacturers of the Nicorette inhaler want you to use 12 cartridges per day! I’ve been using one per day since my quit and puffing on an electronic cigarette five to six times per day. And now, eleven days in, I’m weaning off both the Nicorette and the e-cig.
I’m not really sure what prompted me to stop smoking on November 19th, and can’t really say why I feel good or how come I haven’t gone crazy or regressed back into smoking again. I guess when the time is right you just do it and say frack off to everyone and everything else that gets in your way of completing the task at hand.
There are numerous reasons this quit is sticking…
- I had no roommates last week so I could be as crazy as I needed to be at home
- I stopped working for one week
- I used Facebook for support and asked people to write in with suggestions
- My Mom (love you Mom) kept her distance for a few days until the fourth day when she showed up in sneakers and said lets go for a walk right now
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- My Dad decided to quit too
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- My closest friends and family do not smoke
- I have been reading blogs about relationships, humour, hope and self-esteem and not about quitting smoking or about health
- I stopped reading the news
- A good friend stopped in unexpectedly on the first day of my quit and sat with me while I went nuts then she told me to get dressed so we could go get Pepsi and more electronic cigarettes so I wouldn’t suffer through major caffeine withdrawal
- I washed all my clothing and bedding
- I threw away the tin and ashtrays that were outside on the sundeck early on the second day of my quit
- I cried rivers three days into my quit when I couldn’t find a cigarette anywhere to smoke but was grateful that I didn’t find one afterwards
- I’m ignoring any smoking friends and acquaintances for a little bit (sorry guys and gals)
- I drew a fish and coloured it
- I played with the cats a lot!
- I chatted with that great guy
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- I drank some wine in the evenings
- I cut my Pepsi consumption by 2/3 from 6L per week to 2L and suffered though the headaches of decaffeinating oneself
- I cooked and ate regular organic meals even when it was hard to do so
- I did NOT buy candy or chew gum to replace the addiction and have held my weight at 130lbs
- I speed walked to the grocery store, to the post office and to the bank multiple times
- I went out with the girls on the town one night
- I didn’t think about failing
- I watched Zombies on TV
- I masturbated – you know it works.
When you have both Hypothryoidism and ADHD it can be mind numbing to stop smoking as that tiny hit of nicotine stimulates the sluggishness of a low thryroid while it simultaneously organizes the hyperactivity of the ADHD brain.
I had tried earlier this year to quit and that did not go well and I understand why it didn’t now.
Deep down, we inherently know when something we do will last or if it will fail. The mental and physical freedom I feel over these last eleven days is akin to what I felt when detoxing from GHB for the third and final time in 2005, and cleaning up from the second major surgery from Crohn’s Disease in 1997.
To know you will die if you do something again is scary. I have convinced myself and rightfully so that if I ever smoke cigarettes again that I will die and if I ever use GHB again I will die and if I ever eat too many processed, sugary and fatty foods again I will develop Chron’s again and need more surgery and then die.
Next time you want to stop something and don’t know how, beg, borrow and steal the time to make it happen because you are worth it. I don’t feel bad about losing 10 days… in fact I turned my little home and surrounding outside neighborhood into healing central and made sure I got what I needed to make it through and now it’s time to give back and say thank you.
