The eCig (Day 4)

Day 4 is here!  If I wasn't doing Nicotine Replacement Therapy, the nicotine would be out of my system by now.  Alas... still technically have the monkey on my back, but for me, breaking the habit of smoking is more important than breaking the addiction to nicotine.  It's not the nicotine that's killing me, it's the cigarettes.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned I was meeting up with a friend who was using an eCig as a replacement to quit smoking.  I was super stoked to try it and asked him about it almost as soon as he showed up to the restaurant bar.  We took turns pulling from it right there inside, and I definitely and immediately felt like I was cheating.  Yes, the eCig doesn't contain tar or any of the other nasty additives you'll find in a cigarette; it's just nicotine with a vapor exhale.  But for me, so much of smoking is a psychological association, and holding a stick that looked like a cigarette, felt like a cigarette (albeit, heavier), provided nictoine and delivered "smoke" kind of freaked me out.  It felt too real.  Most of my cravings have been impulses to bring a cigarette to my mouth, to go outside and take a break, the act of inhaling and exhaling smoke.  Those are the associations I am trying the hardest to break, and smoking the eCig just brought them back into my bodily vocabulary, if you will.

Of course, at the time, I was delighted at the opportunity to cheat without really cheating.  We kept taking pulls from it and then, with a blinking light, we realized the battery had died.  Our faces dropped and the fiending immediately kicked in.  We had to get another one.  Where's the nearest liquor store?  The only brand they carried was a disposable one for $11, and the only variety that had nicotine (who wants an eCig without nicotine??) happened to come in a cinnamon flavor.  Gross, but oh well.  We proceeded to the show.  The irony that the band we saw is called the Smoking Popes is not lost on me, btw.

All night, I kept wanting to step outside and smoke, and I kept reminding myself that I had no reason to go out there.  Mark and I crowded around the high top table and took turns pulling from the cinnamon eCig, each time expressing how gross it was and then going back for another drag a few minutes later.  I definitely put more nicotine in my body last night than I would have if I had just stuck to the gum.  About 2/3 of the way into the night, I lost it.  I tried to casually rummage through my bag (it's got to be in here somewhere...), which probably actually looked like a frantic search for gold among crap.  I carry a lot of shit in my purse, and that little black stick was no where to be found.  Good riddance.  I'm confident that I'm making more progress without it.

Status: In good spirits, feeling strong and proud!