Sacman on quitting smoking

All the poor beginners, and I am one of them.
Wed, Nov 1 2006 10:58 am
sacman

But I’m in my 4th month now, and the horrific trauma of quitting cigarettes
has become merely an annoying buzz. That’s a fragmentary sentence.

In any event, there is NOTHING I, or anybody else, can tell you rank
beginners that will take away the pain. I can’t even say “You just have to
deal with it,” because there is no “dealing” with it. It’s like losing an
arm. It’s the worst, most hideous thing a person could go through WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION of death by lung cancer or emphysema. But I doubt it.
It is even possible that it is not worthwhile to quit.

My mom and my wife are the two greatest women I’ve ever known – and my mom died in 2003 at the age of 57 (not smoking related). Quitting smoking was MUCH MUCH MUCH more difficult than losing my mother. Lots of you are probably thinking I’m being hyperbolic , or that I had a shitty relationship with my mom – I’m not and I didn’t. The hell that was quitting is one of two things that are keeping me from returning to smoking – I would do nearly anything to avoid going through that misery again. I’ve been scolded on
this NG before for saying stuff like “Lung cancer can’t be worse than quitting – quitting is impossibly hard.” Well – perhaps. I haven’t gone through lung cancer, and I hope I never will. But I *have* lost my beloved mother – and losing my smokes was worse. Sorry, but it was. This will not change with time.

Having written that, I have GONE through the hard part of quitting smoking;
I’m not GOING through it right now. I’m done with the hard part. So to the newbies, I have to tell you, the only way I was able to succeed was sheer stubbornness. I’m a real bastard that way.

This one time, my parents made me take violin lessons. I was totally opposed to it (I still despise music, and I’m in my 30s). So what I did was this: I snapped the bow across my knee and said “I don’t care what you do to me. You can beat me, you can take away my computer, you can take away the TV – what you can NOT do is make me play the violin ever again.” And they didn’t.

And then this other time, my parents mad me “try” skiing. If there’s anything I despise more than the noise that is music, it’s physical exercise. Hate it, hate it, hate it. So I did the same god damned thing with my ski pole. I snapped that fucker across my knee and told my parents that I’d do the same thing to every pole that was put in my hand – that
quite soon, this could become an expensive day for them. Yeah, a spoiled brat I may have been, but I totally didn’t have to ski ever again.

Then this other time my parents wanted me to be religious. Man, I can’t stand religion. It’s worse than voilin plus skiing. It’s worse than voilin TIMES skiing. It’s worse than voilin raised to the skiing power. And so anyway, this one time, my parents made me go to church. Guess what happened? Well – I won’t tell you, but I *will* tell you I never had to go to church again.

Stubbornness is sometimes the only way to get what you want. The main difference between when I’ve been stubborn in the past and when I’ve been stubborn with quitting smoking, is that in the past, it’s been kind of like me vs. something external. Quitting smoking – that’s purely me vs. me. Pardon me – I believe my Freud is showing.

So anyhow, you totally have to be stubborn. For most people all over the place. You can even still buy them in Safeway. So – you have to be stubborn, and you have to trust that things will get better, because for the first few weeks, things will not seem like they’re getting better. But they will.

Listen – I’m willing to be a quasi-anonymous partner for anybody who needs some one-on-one support. E-mail me at ———– at hotmail dot com and I’ll send you my phone #. I sure wish I had somebody to lean on a few months ago when I first quit.

Okay, so see you guys later.