Letters

(an inter quit-group e-mail at a couple of weeks quit)
  Hi there Daredevils,
    Just me again. I feel as though I've been quiet lately. Define "lately" when a day can be soooo long and a week can pass- is it gone already? Time seems to be a big part of this process of quitting. I see things, re: my habit, differently now than I did yesterday, a week ago, two weeks ago. I'd like to believe that I understand my habit better, that I've gained some new insight into my personal behavior regarding my 35 years of smoking. Or maybe, in reality, all I've done is move around to the other side of the same bush and, for all my efforts at understanding, I see only a different view of the outside of this same bush. No, that's not true. I do see more clearly how and why for 35 years, 20-25 times a day, I put a cigarette between my lips, lit it, and sucked the smoke into my lungs. I believe that my body demanded most of those cigarettes to maintain a comfortable level of nicotine.
   In the beginning, as soon as the level dropped, a tiny little voice would say, "Excuse me, but the nicotine level has dropped and your beginning to feel uncomfortable so please light a cigarette, now!", and as soon as I lit it the little voice would say, "Ahh, that feels better." And in a while the nicotine level would start to go back down and I would have to decide; to smoke or not to smoke. We've all been smokers and know what it "feels" like to want a cigarette and not smoke it, an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. I don't think it was too long before the tiny little voice wasn't so polite and was saying, "Hey, stupid, you know what to do, DO T!", and I did it, and the tiny little voice said, "Ahh, that feels better."
   Somewhere between 225,500 - 319,375 times in 35 years my body felt uncomfortable and I gave it a cigarette. I'm sure that long before I'd repeated that pattern a quarter of a million times, I'd learned that, uncomfortable = smoke a cigarette. And not just uncomfortable from a low nicotine level. Any kind of uncomfortable = smoke a cigarette.
   Today, 2 weeks and 4 days after I stopped putting a cigarette in my mouth every time I felt uncomfortable, I no longer have a nicotine level that goes up and down like a yoyo. The little voice can say whatever it wants and as loudly as it can. I know that at this stage my body does not "need" nicotine. And unless I plan to spend the rest of my days on a heavy diet of tranquilizers, "feeling" will be a part of life. Comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain, joy and sadness all combine to make up my life. All of this I can experience without poisoning myself 20-25 times a day.
   If all of this sounds familiar, it should. I've said it before, each time in a slightly different form. And every time I say it, it becomes a little more clear in my mind what this habit is about for me and how I've found my handle to deal with it.
    When I started by typing "Hi there daredevils", I had no intention of getting this carried away, again. Actually, I had though of telling you all about my weekend, two beautiful days of kite flying. Sun(not as warm as I'd like but..), wind, me, my kites, and not a cigarette in sight.
        Once again I've run out of words and maybe it's just as well :)
            Strength to all of you,
                    DD Steve 2w4d Smoke Free, Wheeeeeee!

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Hi Joe,
   I spent 35 yrs behaving like Pavlov's dog. Ding-a-ling: a feeling (in your words uncomfortable or inappropriate) / Drool: reach for a cigarette. Yesterday I said everyone smokes for the same reason, I was WRONG (misspoken). There may be as many reasons as there are people. But what ever the reason/s, there must be a "politics of smoking" with elements that are shared and common among all (or almost all smokers). We agreed that you and I both reacted to anger by reaching for a cigarette. I think we also agreed that this behavior came under the heading of avoidance. Do you also agree that this behavior is Pavlovian, Ding-a-ling: Anger / Drool: reach for a cigarette? And do you also agree that you and I are probably not the only people that react this way?
   Nicotine is almost 100% addictive (I've got stats from Linda's list. I need to check their source.). When nicotine rings its little bell, just before we start to drool, what does the bell sound like? Or more to the point, what does it feel like? That feeling may be too subtle a sensation to recognize so I just picture how I felt 1hr 50min into a 2hr 20min movie. That feeling of discomfort, while difficult to put in words, is very easily and quickly recognized by almost every smoker. Most of us don't wait until the feelings are too intense before we light up. Like a well trained dog I would drool at the subtlest of physical/emotional signals. I think most smokers may be very well trained also.
   To get to the point this year, the "only" appropriate cigarette is the one that's smoked in response to a dropping nicotine level. That is appropriate behavior for a nicotine addict. Cigarettes smoked because I'm hungry or angry or lonely or tired are inappropriate (and ineffective, i.e.. Avoidance). This time I quit cold turkey because it meant that within a week or so I would have no physiological "need" for a cigarette. After that first week I knew that every urge or craving for a cigarette would be inappropriate. I never once said to myself, "I want a cigarette, but I don't smoke any more so I'll have to find something else to do." That statement acknowledges "wanting a cigarette" as a valid, albeit undesirable, response. We've already determined that smoking for H.A.L.T.(Hunger. Anger. Lonely/bored. Tired) or similar reasons is an ineffective and inappropriate response to whatever feeling we are experiencing. So when I felt an urge or craving I would say to myself, "I want something and I KNOW it is NOT a cigarette. If I can decode this craving, that's great. And if I can't, then I will be uncomfortable. Either way, a cigarette has no place in the solution to this situation." This statement neither offers validity to "wanting a cigarette" nor does it re-enforce a cigarette as an option to anything. In fact, it refocuses the perspective and I found that I very quickly stopped thinking of smoking as the first solution to anything and soon stopped thinking of cigarettes at all.
   When I said that I've experienced no urges or cravings, I meant for a cigarette. I experience urges and cravings all day long, maybe more intensely then ever I did as a smoker. But I KNOW that these feelings are NOT for a cigarette., they are those associated with being alive.
      See you on IRC,
             Steve

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At 09:02 AM 9/3/00 -0400, you wrote:
" I really liked the part about not just trying to get thru a craving only to dread the next one...change your mind set. Yes, I have had a few slips. I AM NOT GIVING UP"

A mind set change, to me, means adopting a different perspective. As it might regard smoking and quitting, a 'mind set change' could be a shift in seeing smoking as one 'nic fix' after another to one 'life response' after another. A nic fix being simply the sudden awareness that we feel the low nicotine level discomfort and reach for a cigarette to cure it. A 'life response' is what we do when we're confronted with a moment in our life. That moment can be the phone ringing or finishing putting the laundry away or finding that someone left you a pile of dishes in the sink AGAIN or any other of the endless list of moments where we lit up a cigarette that didn't have a direct nicotine connection. My suggestion would be to examine as closely as you can everything that was going on just prior to those slips. Whether we're consciously aware or not, there is always a reason(s) why we light up. The more we work at examining our reasons, the more we begin to see. Your homework, should you choose to accept the assignment, is to write down the slips. Include any physical sensations you can recall like increased pulse, breathing, fatigued feelings, muscle tension that goes with anxiety.
Steve