No news is good news, right? I wish that were the case. The past month or two has been an incremental backslide of smoking, where one bummed cigarette on a night out has led me to purchase packs again. I'm not really smoking during the day and am not back to my old habits entirely, but this slippery slope is apparent.
I've struggled with writing this post for a host of reasons. Obviously, it's difficult to expose your failures to others, and I'm upset to have disappointed the people that have offered so much support and encouragement to me over the past few months. I wanted to be able to offer a sincere, reinvigorated effort at the end of the post, and I'm not quite sure I'll be able to.
A lot of people I've spoken with throughout this process have emphasized not to beat myself up if I smoke, that it takes time for the new reality of not smoking to really sink in and the occasional cigarette is bound to happen. Don't lose site of the goal. Keep at it. I'm not really certain this is best for me. I don't think I can have just one cigarette, as just the one has become two packs in the past week and change. Slowly but surely, I've reintroduced the nicotine in my system and now my body craves it again. I purposefully left my pack at home today and have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms throughout the day. I craved one on my walk to work; at 10:30am I got the itch; I'm craving one at this very moment since I've got a belly full of lunch. That first cigarette I smoked in late December didn't bring me back to the withdrawal feelings in my "Day 2" post right away, but it certainly set me on the path I'm currently treading. A "slip up" needs to be more than just such. I was raised Catholic; I think maybe I need a good beating.
Recently, I saw an old friend with whom I used to chain-smoke during a
certain period of our lives. He quit cold turkey about five years ago
and hasn't looked back. He mentioned to me how personal smoking was to
him, and when he quit he took pretty much the opposite route as I have
and didn't tell anyone he was quitting until he had essentially quit.
Considering this has opened my eyes to another reason why this post has
been so difficult to approach- a lot of my reasons for backsliding are
really personal, emotional issues that I'm not entirely comfortable
exposing to the world wide web. So, we'll stick to generalities for now.
Well, how did I get here?
Sometime in mid-January, I stopped caring. I was angry at myself and with someone else in my life, and I used that experience as a diversion from the smoking goal. I used smoking as a coping mechanism for the anger and the pain I was feeling. I used the confidence and reassurance smoking gives me to move on from the issue. I do feel like I am over the hump and on my way to a more emotionally healthy place, but have become addicted again in the process. My motivations to quit have waned, and now it feels like the cigarettes are a load-bearing pillar in my efforts towards emotional health. The "smoking as healing" thing is a farce; it has to be. Otherwise, smoking is just given more power, and I know that this is baseline- an addiction. However, I'm having a hard time mustering up the commitment I had before. I feel crummy, but all this pitiful self-doubt just makes me want to smoke more. Wah.
It appears I am stuck, but it's up to me and me alone to un-stick myself.
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