CONGRATULATIONS FOR KICKING THE HABIT PRESIDENT OBAMA! Your smile will get brighter and brighter every day! Quitting smoking is not easy!
I learned how to smoke from Tatum O’Neal’s role in the movie “Paper Moon.” I was nine years old when I saw the movie and seeing a little girl smoke made me think it was okay for me too. Be careful what you wish for! I had my smoking habit for almost 20 years. When it was time for me to quit, I had to quit a lot of things. There were the bad things, like hard drugs and alcohol and there were the things that I deemed “bad but not as bad” like marijuana and tobacco. In recovery we have to make some serious choices, one is figuring our what our primary addiction is. Even though the hard drugs were destroying my life, my primary addiction was actually cigarettes, alcohol and pot but not always in that order when it came to alcohol and pot at least.
More than anything I figured out after a while, cigarettes were absolutely my primary addiction. They taught me a lot of “learned behavior” like how to look good smoking while drinking. How to make a joint look like a cigarette and tacky stuff like that. I didn’t realize the seriousness of my addiction to cigarettes until I read a book from “Smoke Enders.” From this book I leaned how entangled I really was in my addiction to cigarettes. I had all kinds of lifestyle habits like the car would not start unless I had a cigarette in my mouth or what was the point in making a phone call if I didn’t have a half full pack of smokes sitting next to the phone with an ashtray. I couldn’t stand people who didn’t smoke and preferred friends who did. After a while (like 15 years of smoking) I developed real anger and anxiety when people pointed out I should not smoke or if I ran out of cigarettes. But nothing made me more angry than quitting smoking cigarettes.
My habit was tangled into drinking coffee because cigarettes and coffee were much more compatible than cigarettes and orange juice. It was not a matter of what tasted good, but of what was compatible to smoking and this included perfumes and even laundry detergent as well as air freshener. I also supplemented smoking with meals to control my weight. I thought of food and smoked a cigarette instead of getting a healthy meal in my system.
Quitting was hell on wheels. The misery I felt the first two days quitting cold turkey is hard to describe. It was like wearing a tight belt around my waist day and night for 48 hours straight and no matter how much it bothered me I could not remove it (unless I smoked). I always say, if you can make it past the first two days, you can make it past the first two weeks and go from there.
Quitting smoking is not as hard as quitting hard drugs, but it is psychological crazy-making in the beginning. Getting away from nicotine is great but the one thing we have to realize is that we have a whole lot of time for filling in the blanks where we thought of smoking before. We have to make room for new thoughts and new things to do so we don’t run idle. No more offensive odors in the hair, on the clothes, in the car, on my breath. Running actually feels good, though I do have decreased lung capacity from smoking. For me it’s never again. I hope President Obama stays on the right track. If I can offer a little advice: Always keep in mind that there is no such thing as “a reason to smoke.” God speed Mr. President!
