As I metioned in a previous post, recently I took the plunge and quit smoking after 7 years of the habit.
It’s one of those things that I had thought of doing on and off for many years, but like most smokers never really got serious about it because… well…. I enjoyed smoking! I felt better after having one and the reasons go on and on. Adam had been nagging me for years and years about giving up, naturally I never did. Seeing a government anti-smoking ad on TV usually made me go straight outside and light up. You know those ads, the ones with some crusty old bogan blaming smoking for her mouth cancer instead of her 40 years of poor dental hygiene and eating roadkill. Or the ones where the crying child actor is asking the concerned doctor actor why he can’t fix the actor attempting to play “daddy” who trying to rasp out “I love you son” with a tube up his nose. Yes, I may be insensitive to what those actors are trying to portray, but I absolutely detest the way those ads are mode. In particular, I absolutely detest the NSW Government’s “QUIT” campaign.
I actually called the 13 QUIT number one day last year, curious to know if there was an easy way to fix the smoking cravings whilst finding a better way to deal with anxiety other than smoking. The woman on the phone took my name, number, details, as I would expect, then proceeded to ask me had I seen the ads on TV or in the newspaper. (Yes, you nitwit, do you think I accidentally dialed you instead of calling the pizza place?) and asked if I wanted to quit. (again, WTF?). She then started on a dialogue most likely printed on her screen about how smoking is bad for your health, blah blah blah and did I know all this? I started getting a bit angry here – What kind of idiot living in this day and age is NOT aware of the health dangers associated with smoking? Treating me like an imbecile is very unlikely to get me to listen. So she said she would send me a “Quit Pack”, which I assumed would be a nice little set if tricks to stop smoking, maybe a stick or two of nicotine gum, and some case studies of people who had succeeded.
What did I get 6-8 weeks later? Half a kilogram of glossy pamphlets that spewed the same propaganda that the government ads did. At this point, I was fed up with the whole deal, and my (very strong) feeling of spite caused me to immediately reach for my pack of cigarettes, light a smoke with my zippo, and use the zippo (and fluid) to set their pamphlets alight. Curiously enough, the highly-plasticised glossy pages burned with an intense green flame. I’m sure the fumes coming from the flame was even worse for me than the cigarettes, but at that point I really didn’t care.
Oh, and did I get a “follow-up call” to see how I was going? Nope. Didn’t hear a thing. Another shining example of an effective NSW Government program.
So, back to the present, the only way I knew it was time to quit was by moving into this house – I had always wanted a complete “revamp” of my life, start in a new direction as a new person. And quitting smoking had to be a part of it. The hardest part was making a promise to myself and actually keeping it – I mean, how many “last cigarettes” can one have? What really did help was a $20 book I bought, written by a fairly well-known quit-smoking advocate, Allen Carr. I was too cheapskate to go to his course, but I thought if I could read through this book and get a few thoughts into my head about an effective method, it would be a start. And really, that’s all it needed – to put things in a different frame of mind. The book is not perfect, no methods are. However, by sitting down and reading that book, it cemented in my own head that I was going to give it a proper go this time, and I needed to remember that all in all it was something quite simple – a drug addiction, and that as long as the drug is in the system, it will continue to want more and more. And no drug addiction is ever a good thing. To starve it would be hard (and it was), but now I rarely think about it, which I think is the biggest blessing of it all.
So I’m not going to say to all the smokers out there you can do it and wave the pom-poms, frankly if a smoker wants to smoke, they will, and it’s really none of my business. It really irked me when ex-smokers got on their pedestal and told me how “disgusting a habit” it was, and that “pffft, if I can do it anyone can” so it’s “just a matter of willpower”.. What I would like to say though is that I am very proud that I was able to do it – usually I’m terrible with self-control and I’m incredibly impulsive – so it’s not as though it’s a matter of willpower. What I am hoping is that I can now have the confidence to change other parts of my life that need a little touch-up – one thing at a time!
