Introduction

Well, here we go.  I smoked my very first cigarette when I was 11 years old.  My friend Wiggly and I stole a Marlboro Red from her dad's pack and snuck away to the bayou on the end of her street to try it out.  She taught me how to inhale, and we were giddy at our first experience of "the buzz": the dizziness, tingly fingers, minor nausea.  In our minds, there was no question about it - we were cool.  No one else at school had smoked (as far as we knew) and this seemed to elevate us to a level of adulthood and experience that we swore to keep between ourselves.  It was our big, cool, deadly secret.  I remember myself at 11; I definitely was not cool.

Fast forward 17 years and I am still smoking.  While I have brought the habit down from my peak of a pack a day in college, I can still smoke half a pack a day pretty easily.  If it's a Saturday with day drinking involved, I sometimes regress back to the college smoking habits and wake up Sunday morning with a terrible nicotine hangover- the worst kind, imo.  Even sadder is that first cigarette you smoke on Sunday morning anyways, reviling yourself as you know it's the first thing your body wants and the last thing your body needs.  Sick.  I am literally killing myself.

Claire and I on New Year's Eve 2007.  Cigarettes galore.

Yesterday was one of those Sundays.  In a moment of clarity, I turned to Facebook and crowdsourced my amazing friends and colleagues for advice on how to quit smoking.  The response was pretty incredible, and I feel like I got some great tips.  Since then, I've been brainstorming together a cohesive plan of incentives, replacements, goals, etc to help me along the way.  More on the plan later, but here's a hint: it involves blogging!  Surprise!

I've never kept a blog, but I am inspired by my older sister who has been blogging for about two years now.  More recently, she's used it as a form of therapy and communication regarding a certain cutie-pie, Quinn, who is on his way into this world.  You can check out her blog here.  Full disclaimer: she is a much more talented writer than I am, so please come back after reading :)

Let me lay out a few reasons why I think blogging might help me better achieve my goal to quit smoking:

• It will be an outlet for me to express and document rationalizations I may have along the way that could convince me to start smoking again.
• It will be a way to hold me accountable to friends and family (and most importantly, myself) about my progress.
• I imagine my brain/moods will be going haywire from lack of nicotine, so maybe sometimes I'll just come here to publicly lash out and hopefully spare my poor coworkers, roommates and friends from having to deal with me.
• Ideally, it could also serve as a road map or inspiration for others who are trying to quit and feel daunted by the task.

So, step one: done.  This is a blog.

Step two: give my addiction some thoughtful consideration.  Why do I smoke?  What are my triggers and associations?  What do I get out of it?  What has worked and what hasn't in my past efforts to quit?  What are my main reasons for wanting to quit?  Next post with all of that fun and super interesting information to come soon.

Thanks for reading!
Katie

Status: still puffing away, 8 cigs/day.