Not Smoking in a Hurricane
Posted on August 31, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 3 Comments
Today is August 31, 2008. 107 days since the last time I had a cigarette.
A few hours until Hurricane Gustav makes landfall not far from here.
I live about 60 miles north of New Orleans, so it’s very very unlikely that I’ll flood or even that the wind will be powerful enough once the storm reaches this area to damage my home or anything like that.
This house made it through Katrina without a scratch and my assumption is that we’ll make it through this one just fine as well.
I would have left town, since I can’t work anyways once the power is out, but I have nobody to take care of my 4 dorky cats and 2 nerdy dogs, and I’m not going to leave them unattended.
I’m posting today mostly to say that the past two days I’ve had some strong urges to want to smoke. Hurricane preparation is a totally different level of stress than the normal day-to-day stuff, and this is my first time experiencing stress like this as a non-smoker.
While I don’t expect any damage, I will most likely have to live without electricity for awhile. I bought a generator, but that’s not the panacea I was hoping it would be. Basically it’ll keep my refrigerator running long enough each day to keep my food from spoiling and maybe run a fan, but that’s about it.
Plus I was only able to find one gas can in town (5 gallons), so between that and the ones I already had, I have about 10 gallons of gasoline on hand, plus 7 gallons in the generator, so that really only gives me a couple of days to run the generator without finding more gas.
Living without electricity also means it’s time to stock up on things like batteries, flashlights, pop-tarts, bottled water, etc. Unfortunately everyone else in the State is trying to buy the exact same things at the exact same time. 
So anyways, waiting in line to buy a generator, seeing empty shelf after empty shelf at Wal-Mart, getting price gouged by the local mom and pop grocer ($9 for the big pack of aluminum foil, $5 for a jar of mayonnaise!!!) is a new level of stress that I haven’t had to deal with yet as a non smoker, and the urge to smoke has been pretty strong.
Of course this is just another psychological association I have to break. In the past the smokes were the first thing I would reach for in these situations, so that’s what my brain associates with these situations. It only takes a minute (ok sometimes I dwell and take longer than a minute) to convince myself that the cigarette is not what I really want, I’m just acting like Pavlov’s dog and someone just rang my bell.
I recently re-read this article as well
http://whyquit.com/joel/Joel_01_07_smoke_for_stress.html
to prepare myself for the case of cabin fever that’s probably coming, and to remind myself that smoking won’t make any situation better, but it can and will make my life worse.
I’m not smoking today. Tomorrow, I probably won’t have electricity, but I still won’t be smoking.
At Least You Can Still Smoke in Your Car
Posted on August 24, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 1 Comment
| Today is August 24, 2008. 100 days since the last time I smoked a cigarette. |
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| This is the longest I’ve ever gone without a cigarette since I had the first one over 20 years ago, and it’s a good feeling.
Every once in awhile I’ll get the urge, or a feeling that “a smoke would be nice right now”, but those are easy thoughts to dismiss, and it gets easier each day. It’s 100% YUCK and I’m glad I don’t have to breathe it anymore. Breathing is pretty nice actually, it’s nice to be able to take a really really deep breath without triggering a coughing fit. Anyways, I’m not smoking today, I’m not really worried about tomorrow, but I’m keeping my guard up just in case. |
3 months smoke free (or something like that)
Posted on August 17, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 1 Comment
Today is August 17, 2008. 93 days since the last time I had a cigarette.
Apparently the last time I posted I got the number of days wrong. I would like to thank my wife for bringing this to my attention. Without you I would have no idea of how many shortcomings I had, and it’s so nice of you to be there to remind me of them. 
The correct number of days is in that little counter to the right. The quit date is correct. The money thing isn’t, it’s showing euros because when I tried to use the code for dollars all I got was some weird symbols and no numbers. So if it says I’ve saved 100 euros, it’s really 100 dollars. Everything else on the counter is correct though.
Today is the 17th and I quit on May 16, so that makes it 3 full months no matter how you slice it. (90 days, 13 weeks, or hitting the actual same date on the calendar 3 months later)
This is the longest I’ve ever gone without a cigarette since I had the first one at the bus stop before school in the 8th grade.
As usual, some days are harder than others. There are some days where I sit and obsess over having a cigarette, although those urges are nothing like the ones I had to deal with early on.
The good thing though is that those days are fewer and farther between. Most days I don’t even think about smoking at all.
Yesterday Dork Jr asked me how long it had been since I’d smoked and I had to come to the blog to look, because I didn’t remember. I think that’s a good sign.
I think about it a little more lately since I just started another diet. This one is different than the last one though, and I think more conducive to my other goals besides just weight loss. (which is staying smoke free)
Not to bore anyone with alot of details, but basically I’m supposed to eat something small (300 calories or so) every 3 hours. This works out to a total of 1500-1800 calories a day.
I’m never really “full” but I’m never really “ravenous” either. I’m somewhere in the middle, which is where I guess is should be. The food ”feels” alot healthier than just eating meat and cheese and eggs all the time too.
The eating every 3 hours helps keep my blood sugar at an even keel which prevents me from getting cigarette cravings because of low blood sugar.
I don’t know if 1500-1800 calories seems like alot to any of you, or doesn’t seem like much to any of you, I don’t really know because I never really paid attention to calories before. What I do know is that it’s nothing for me to polish off one of these red baron pepperoni pizzas for dinner, and that’s 1788 calories, and that’s just one meal, and it was a typical meal. So probably somewhere in the neighborhood of double that is what I was eating on an average day.
This new thing is definitely a big change, and so far the weight is coming off AND more importantly the smoking urges aren’t any stronger than they would normally be, and staying smoke free has to be the first priority.
It would be nice if I could hit the 1 year mark not smoking (my original goal here) and also be fit and trim to go along with being smoke free. That would be a nice bonus that would add even more years to my life and add to the quality of those years.
It may also help to dispel the myth stuck in some people’s heads that if they quit smoking “they’re going to get fat”. I was “fat” when I was smoking, got fatter when I first quit, and if I can finish this thing off slim and trim AND smoke free, then how cool would that be?
I’m not smoking today, I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Yeah I have a tattoo, and no, you can’t see it
Posted on August 5, 2008
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Today is August 5, 2008. 84 days since the last time I had a cigarette.
Nothing major to report, which is one of the reasons I haven’t updated in so long.
I’m still not smoking, and this is now the longest I’ve ever gone without a cigarette since I had the first one, way back when at the junior high bus stop.
It’s not that I don’t ever want one, because there are alot of times that I do. The difference between now and before is that now I don’t have to smoke, before I did. There are still times when I think I would like to have a cigarette, but I don’t have to have one and the temptations become easier to resist as time goes by.
I still think about smoking way more than a normal (read: never smoker) person should, but I’m sure as the months go by I’ll think of it less and less.
It’s the last week of summer, at least as far as the local school calendar is concerned, and Dork Jr is here until the 6th. School starts on the 8th, a Friday. Some genius who runs the school system and has a P.H.D. decided to start school on a Friday. Go figure.
So Dork Jr is here for a couple more days, Dork IV is due at the very end of September, Mrs. Dork is waddling around, and I’m still trying to implement my new business plan to keep things going in the meantime.
The only new and even slightly interesting thing that’s happened since my last post is that I found an elliptical on craig’s list and bought it. Of course, now that I’m able to work out again, I all of a sudden don’t feel like it. Go figure.
I need to get myself on a routine once Dork Jr goes back home….not to mention get myself back on a normal sleeping schedule. I practically work the graveyard shift these days just because I can’t get my sleep schedule normalized.
I need to get myself into shape and become one of those people who can get by on only 4-5 hours of sleep a night, because once the baby comes there likely won’t be anymore sleeping in or sleeping at odd times, I’ll be sleeping whenever he lets me.
Mrs. Dork and I will share the responsibility of course, but I’m one of those people who is hard to wake up, but once I’m up, I’m up, and have a very hard time going back to sleep. So on nights when it’s my turn to get up with the baby, a couple hours of sleep is likely all I’m going to get.
Maybe I should go ahead and invest in a red bull I.V. to put next to my desk? I guess we’ll see.
I’m not smoking today, I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
This is a bad time for me, I’ll quit when things get better
Posted on July 26, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 2 Comments
How many times have you, or someone you know, said that? (By the way, I’m staying quit, sorry if I scared my readers (ok, reader ) with that title)
Gee, there’s alot of stress in my life right now so I can’t quit smoking.
I’ll quit smoking after I lose weight.
Things are really hectic at work/home/school right now, so I can’t quit.
Hogwash.
There will never be a perfect time to quit. You will always be able to find a reason to keep smoking if you look hard enough. There will always be something going on at work, home, school, with your love life, with your kids, with your parents, with whatever that you can use as your excuse to not quit.
Once you do quit, something will always happen that you could use as your excuse to start again. Something stressed you out, some “tragedy” happened, your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you, whatever.
The fact of the matter is, it will never be any easier to quit than it is right now, right this second. Once you have quit, smoking will not be the solution to any probem you encounter, and it is much easier to stay quit than it is to quit all over again.
I’m not big on personal drama, I hate it actually. I also think we should have a constitutional amendment against whining or feeling sorry for yourself. I’m not big on sharing my personal problems, but after thinking about what I wrote yesterday, about how someone could stumble upon this blog a year or two from now and find something useful here that could help them to quit smoking, I decided I should share a little more of my personal experience.
Since I’ve quit smoking my weight has ballooned to 270lbs. I’m 6 foot tall, not that height really matters at this weight, I could be as tall as Shaq and this would be too much for me to weigh.
I was in the 240 range before I started trying to quit smoking at the beginning of this year. So while I wasn’t exactly “skinny” as a smoker, I was alot thinner than I am now.
Also because I quit smoking, I can’t really go on a strict diet right now. It’s important for me to keep my blood sugar up so that I don’t get a nicotine craving from having low blood sugar.
So unless I can exercise enough to offset the extra calories and then some, it’s likely that I may put on even more weight.
That’s getting harder to do, because the extra weight makes my back hurt, especially on days that I exercise. (I actually took a vicodin for the back pain earlier, and feel a little loopy, and that is definitely a contributing factor in tonight’s post)
If I were to start smoking again, it wouldn’t help me exercise obviously, but I could use the cigarettes to control my hunger and it would allow me to increase my caffeine intake, which would also help control my hunger, and I could lose weight dieting that I can’t right now as a non-smoker.
I’m not going to do that though, because that’s a lousy excuse. The short term pain of being this heavy is worth the long term reward of being a non-smoker. I’ll be able to handle the weight issue once I’m further removed from smoking.
The “weight issue” has been an excuse that I’ve used during past quits to start smoking again though.
My business is going to shitdoo-doo. I may be out of business in 6 months.
3-4 years ago, I made 2 to 3 dollars back for every dollar I spent, and my biggest problem was that I couldn’t find more places to spend money so I could get my return.
Last year I made 1.50 for every dollar I spent. Not as good as before, but there were alot more places for me to spend so I made it up in volume.
Last month I made 80 cents for every dollar I spent (in other words I lost 20 cents on each dollar).
There are some new avenues I’m exploring, things some friends in business have turned me on to. Things that are labor intensive but don’t require much capital. So I’m going to work my butt off at those things for the next 6 months and see what I can accomplish there. 6 months is my estimate of how long I have, based on residual income from prior deals that should keep coming in for a little while, and lines of credit I can tap to cover expenses in the meantime. It could be a month more or a month less, but either way, by then I’ll know if I can replace the income I’ve lost with these new projects.
If I have to go back into the “real world” and get a job, that’s fine. Unfortunately the skills I have from working online for the past 7 years don’t translate into any marketable skills that could get me a job working for someone else. I can go back into retail management, but the hours suck and the pay will be half of what I’ve made the last few years (half if I’m lucky, maybe less)
This is even worse news because the way my income has been declining, I can’t afford the mortgage on my house. It’s been on the market for a long time, and we’re asking the absolute lowest price we can accept and still pay off the mortgage, but we can’t sell it.
It’s a bad time to be trying to sell a house, especially one that is alot more expensive than the average house in your town.
I called my attorney last week to find out what my options were as far as getting out of the house. I’ve read about this “jingle mail” phenomenon where people are mailing their house keys to the bank and just walking away. Of course those stories don’t tell you what happens to the people afterwards.
Depending on the laws in your state (and the laws in this state suck, at least from my perspective) you’re pretty screwed if you can’t afford your mortgage and can’t sell your house.
Bankruptcy seems to be the only option in that case, but not the easy kind of bankruptcy where your debts are wiped out and you have it on your credit report for 7 years. If you make more than the median household income for your state (in this state that number is just barely north of 30k per year) then you have to file Chapter 13, and pay back all or part of the debt.
The amount you pay is based on your income for the last 6 months. Not your current income.
So if you were making alot of money, then lost your job and had to file bankruptcy, you would have to pay back money based on what you were making before you lost your job. Thank you United States Congress and President Bush for passing that new bankruptcy reform legislation. (The reason it was called bankruptcy reform legislation is because “love letter to the credit card industry” didn’t poll very well)
So anyways, my business is declining, I may be out of business soon, and I can’t afford my house. If I can’t sell my house for what I owe, and leave or just stop making the payments, then the bank will sue me. Once they sue me I’ll have to file bankruptcy because I won’t be able to pay the judgement.
Once I file bankruptcy the court will make me pay back money based on how much money I used to make.
I wonder what happens when you can’t afford to pay the money you owe to the bankruptcy court? Is there another court you go to so that you can file bankruptcy against the first bankruptcy court?
Anyways. There’s still hope that these new things I’m going to do are going to bring in a good bit of money, and all of my worrying will be for naught, but it’s just as likely, or even more likely, that the scenario I described above is the one I’m going to live through.
Oh yeah, did I mention that my wife is 7 months pregnant, and soon will be taking off 3 months for unpaid maternity leave, so that’s even more money we won’t have. (I don’t begrudge my wife her maternity leave, don’t take that the wrong way, she’s definitely earned the right to have the time off, I’m just saying, perfect storm and all that)
Plus when the baby is born my mother-in-law and mother will be here staying in the house with us for awhile, the house where I work and lose money.
So 3 months of no paychecks from my wife’s job, plus another mouth to feed, to go along with everything else. A year ago I would’ve smoked a whole pack of cigarettes in the time it took to write this.
But you know what? Smoking will not make any of those problems go away. It won’t put money in my bank account, it won’t find a buyer for my house, it won’t drop all the excess pounds from my frame, it won’t turn around my business, and contrary to popular opinion, it won’t make me feel any better about any of these things, nor will it make it easier for me to deal with these things, nor will it relieve any of the stress caused by these things.
All smoking will do is make me a stinky, coughing, out of breath guy, who still has all of the problems I’ve listed above.
I’m not really comfortable listing all of my personal issues here, and it’s not something I want to discuss any further, I just put all of this out there to let you know that stress or trouble in life is no reason to go back to smoking. Having a bad day at work or an argument with a loved one is no reason to go back to smoking.
None of these little dramas in our life are really important anyways. A “real problem” would be finding out you have cancer, and only 6 months to live. All of our money problems or relationship problems or career problems would seem pretty silly in the face of that wouldn’t they?
Yet by smoking you’re taking one more step towards only having 6 months to live.
I guess I said all of this to say that you either want to quit or you don’t. There is no magical time that’s going to make it easier, that’s just your way of justifying to yourself, or to someone else, why you won’t quit.
If you won the lottery, and were lying on a beach (that you owned) drinking a mai tai, while getting a massage from an attractive member of the opposite sex, you’d still be able to concoct a reason why this isn’t the best time to quit smoking.
The only thing stopping you from quitting, and the only thing keeping you quit, is you.
Now Inhale to Your Heart’s Content
Posted on July 24, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 2 Comments
Today is July 24, 2008. Smoke free day 69. Chantix free day 33.
441 years to the day since Mary Queen of Scots was deposed and replaced by her 1 year old son James VI, and even 1 year old James had a higher job approval rating than George W. Bush.
34 years to the day since the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and ordered him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
8 years +1 day since the Downing Street Memo was written. (I missed a good one by not blogging yesterday)
I haven’t updated my blog in 10 days. I’m truly sorry to disappoint my readers (both of you). Of course it’s not people currently reading that this blog may actually help one day. It’s the person who one or two years from now stumbles across this site via some obscure search term vaguely related to quitting smoking, and decides that they can quit too.
That was the case with me when I found Maggie’s Blog, reading about how she quit smoking with chantix helped me to know what to expect and kind of made me feel like I wasn’t doing it alone. (Even though by the time I found her blog she had already been smoke free for like 8 months)
Through Maggie’s Blog yesterday I also found this guy’s blog, this fellow is an avid runner who quit smoking about a year ago. Browsing through his archives I found a running program that he used to start, designed to turn couch potatoes at a zero fitness level into 5K runners.
When he started he couldn’t run from here to the end of the block without getting winded, and two weeks ago the guy ran 10 miles in 1:53:02. Maybe I can follow his archives and have the same kind of success I had following Maggie’s archives when I first quit smoking. God knows I need to get into shape, and I used to like running, although now I’m pretty heavy so it’s kind of stressful on the joints and back, but this program starts off slow and is a gradual progression so it seems like anybody could do it, I think I may give it a try.
Anyways, I guess I said all of that to say, that while I thought, and still think, that 99.9% of blogs and user created content on youtube is worthless drivel, there is still that .01% of useful stuff that wouldn’t otherwise be there, so maybe web 2.0 isn’t so bad. Being able to read the “journal” of someone who has already done something you want to do is invaluable, so thanks to those of you who decided to share your experience, even if you weren’t doing it for altruistic reasons. Even if the whole web 2.0 thing has totally killed responsible journalism for the foreseeable future, at least we get something good out of the deal.
The low carb diet lasted all of 3 days. My wife was probably rolling her eyes and thinking “I could have told you that ahead of time”, but oh well. Doing the low carb thing to my blood sugar made me think about smoking entirely too much, and I was afraid that if I ran into a “craving” that could be satisfied only by carbs or nicotine, that my vanity might override my sanity and I would choose the latter.
So late in the 3rd day I decided to give it up. I did, however, buy another exercise bike.
There was one for $129 at Wal-Mart, so I decided to give it a shot.
There are very good reasons that this is the cheapest exercise bike known to man, but oh well. It hasn’t broken and seems to be able to hold my weight just fine.
The problem is I can really only do 30 minutes on it before my legs turn to jello, and I don’t feel like I’m getting a great cardiovascular workout like I was on the elliptical.
My guess is that the bike is working a totally different set of muscles that I’ll have to “build up” before I can do extended times, basically my quads have to catch up with my lungs I guess.
The muscles used for the elliptical are the same ones used for walking, but without the impact of walking, so that’s probably why I could do that for such a long period without any real pain.
I’m still searching for another elliptical on craigslist, but so far no luck.
I know that I’m going to have to do something about my weight at some point, but maybe I just need to do one thing at a time. (That’s what my wife says anyways) Staying smoke free has to be priority number one for me, everything else needs to take a backseat to that right now.
Even though staying quit is much easier now than it was at the beginning, and it probably gets easier every day, I’m still not at the point (and don’t know if there ever will be a point) where I can be cavalier about the whole not smoking thing. I need to be on guard about situations I put myself into that might be conducive to me smoking again. Having my blood sugar crater because of a diet is one of those things that I probably shouldn’t do right now.
So exercise yes, I definitely need to do that. I need to be an exercise fiend, doing cardio is something that will make it less likely that I’ll ever go back to smoking, because I’ll have a daily reminder of what my lungs are capable of now that they weren’t before. Hopefully some weight loss will be a nice side effect from the exercise. But not so much for me with the dieting right now.
I’m not smoking today, I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Your Voice of Wisdom Says Smoke Kent
Posted on July 14, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 2 Comments
Today is July 14, 2008. Smoke free day 59. Chantix free day 23. Day 1 of my diet.
I haven’t updated in awhile here. Last week was very hectic.
It started out with a head cold for me that kept me in bed for the better part of 3 days. Then Mrs. Dork broke her foot.
She was at the doctor’s office (of all places) for her annual physical, and she had her feet crossed and her foot fell asleep. When the nurse came out to tell her they were ready to see her, she stood up, and immediately fell down. This apparently twisted her ankle enough to cause a Tarsal Navicular Stress Fracture.
By that night the swelling and pain had gotten worse so I took her to the hospital for x-rays where they gave us this wonderful news. As if being 7 months pregnant weren’t impediment enough to her mobility, I had to basically carry her around for a few hours and then help her around with the crutches after that.
We were able to get in to see an orthopedist the next day (the one real benefit to having a for profit healthcare system….short wait times) and luckily she didn’t need a cast. They gave her a “walking boot” and that was that.
Then, the next day, the poor thing ends up catching the same cold I had earlier in the week, and basically spent the whole weekend in bed doped up on painkillers for her foot and cold medicine for her sinuses.
At least she’s feeling better now and was able to go back to work today.
So back on point. Nothing really new to report on the staying smoke free front. Some days I don’t even think about smoking at all. Some days I do, and have to fight those urges, but it’s nothing I haven’t been able to handle so far.
As a matter of fact, I think I’m far enough into the smoke free journey that I can start another journey, this one for weight loss.
I weigh far too much. 269.2 lbs this morning, and I’m 6′ 0″. (That’s 183cm and 122kg for my friends across the pond) I should weigh between 170-180 or so.
This is the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t really blame it on quitting smoking, although the last 20lbs have come since I first started trying to quit smoking.
“I’ll quit smoking after I lose weight” was an excuse of mine for a long time to not quit smoking. From what I’ve read recently that’s an excuse alot of people use. I finally decided that continuing to smoke was really only going to make me a slightly less fat smoker, and that wasn’t exactly a healthy thing to be. Plus the damage from cigarettes is permanent, whereas the health risks associated with obesity go away as soon as you lose the weight.
So anyways, today I started on a low carb/Atkins style diet. This may not be the best solution for me long term, but it’s what I’m going to start with.
I know this works for me, the problem is I haven’t been able to stick with it long-term. The way I figure now is that if I can resist a craving for a cigarette, I sure as hell can resist a craving for a pizza. I’m also figuring the one-day-at-a-time mentality that helped me get through the rough patches when quitting smoking will also help here.
If it doesn’t I can always do something different, but like I said, I know this does work for me so it’s just a matter of being able to stick with it long enough to get the results I want.
Something else I’m looking forward to seeing is how my body reacts to this now that I’m not smoking. I went on a low carb diet for 3 days once during a previous quit, when I was still taking chantix, and I lost 11 lbs in 3 days. That’s just insane.
I know everyone is thinking “it’s just water” or whatever, but on this exact same diet as a smoker, it took me 10 days to 3 weeks to lose that much weight, so there was definitely a difference. I stopped on the diet though because I was still at a point in that quit that I needed to keep my blood sugar up to fight the cigarette cravings. I think I’m past that now.
Something I’ve learned since then is that smoking elevates your blood sugar. Low Carb diets are all about forcing your body to burn fat by keeping your blood sugar low, so I guess by smoking I was kind of working against myself. Now, it’ll be interesting to see what my body does without the cigarettes screwing things up.
I haven’t made any progress, unfortunately, on the exercise front. I think the last time I wrote about that I was telling the story about how the exercise bike from wal-mart was broken, along with my elliptical, and that I was going to join a gym.
Unfortunately the gym that is right around the corner has two problems.
- It only has one upright exercise bike, which is my exercise vehicle of choice at the moment
- They require a minimum of a 6 month membership
As long as my house is still on the market, I think it would be unwise to make a commitment like that and be forced to pay them even if I moved away.
Another gym that’s a bit further away doesn’t require a contract, BUT they changed their prices and now require a $150 initiation fee. For that much money I can just go buy another exercise bike and work out at home.
Needless to say, I didn’t join a gym that day.
I looked on Craig’s List for an exercise bike, inquired about a couple of them, but they were both sold by the time I wrote to the sellers.
Right after that is when I got a cold and then Mrs. Dork broke her foot, so I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do about exercise, but I’m sure that I’m going to do something to go along with the diet and speed along my weight loss.
For right now though, I just need to focus on sticking with this diet, catching up on all of the work I missed last week because of everything that happened, and most important, remaining smoke free.
I didn’t smoke (or eat carbs) today. I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Breathe Easy Smoke Clean
Posted on July 8, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 1 Comment
Today is July 8, 2008. Smoke free day 53. Chantix free day 17.
119 days until the 2008 Presidential election.
Thank gawd for that. I already have cable news fatigue like I had the day after the election in 2004. I really ought to stop being such a political news junkie.
This head cold has really knocked me on my butt. Last night I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. I went to the drugstore to buy some cold medicine, but all of the dayquil and nyquil (my cold medicines of choice) were this new, pseudoephedrine free formula.
I had to go to the pharmacy counter and ask for the good, industrial strength, roto-rooter stuff they keep back there. They made me show ID to buy it (so much for that meth lab I was going to start)
So today I can breathe but I’m really loopy. High as a kite even, and the urge to smoke has been really strong.
I think this is one of those things, a psychological or emotional trigger to smoke, because this is something I haven’t done (be sick) in over 20 years without smoking.
In why quit’s ebook there is an article about that. (I’ll have to look up which page when I’m “sober”) How even months or years after quitting there will be experiences that you’ll encounter for the first time as a non-smoker and you’ll get the urge to smoke. Funerals are a big one.
This is the first time I’ve been sick, and been high off of cold medicine, and not been smoking in over 20 years. So the urge to smoke has been there all day.
It’s not overwhelming, it more like “habit”, I’m feeling a certain way, breathing a certain way, in a way I don’t feel or breathe everyday, and every now and again I feel like reaching out for my pack of smokes that isn’t there anymore.
I don’t know if any of that made sense, like I said, I’m pretty loopy from the cold medicine. Hopefully said medicine will knock me out soon. I can’t sleep all day because someone is coming to look at the house tomorrow.
Our listing contract isn’t up until the end of this month, and so of course after I give up on the idea of selling the house, and start my spring cleaning and room re-arranging, and come down with a cold, someone makes an appointment to come look at the house, and I have to spend all day cleaning and straightening so it will be presentable.
Of course Murphy’s Law would dictate that this is the person who will make an offer, now that I’ve invested significant time and not an insignifcant amount of money into the house since I thought I would be staying here a long time.
Either way, I didn’t smoke today, although you could say I abused the cold medicine.
I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Here’s How to Smoke All You Want
Posted on July 6, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 3 Comments
Today is July 6, 2008. Smoke free day 51. Chantix free day 15.
819 years to the day since Richard the Lionheart was crowned King of England.
223 years to the day since the dollar was unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States. (If only they’d know what would happen this year, maybe they would have chosen the Euro?)
66 years to the day since Anne Frank and her family went into hiding.
I remember watching the movie that was made from The Diary of Anne Frank, and I remember how Mr. van Daan (real name Hermann van Pels, but in the movie it was van Daan) was a smoker, and the people helping them hide would bring cigarettes along with the rations.
What torture that must have been to be dying for a smoke and going through severe nicotine withdrawal and yet be confined to a small room and not be able to make a sound. Nothing to do but sit and pray that your salvation (a pack of cigarettes) walks through the door today with your caretakers.
Man it’s good to be free from that sort of slavery. To be able to sit for hours and need for nothing is a simple freedom that most smokers will never know.
It appears as though the cough that started a couple days ago wasn’t smoking related. I am coming down with a cold. My nose is so stuffed up now that I don’t think I could clear it out with a pressure washer.
It’ll be interesting to see if I get a respiratory infection this time around. That’s been pretty much standard issue with a cold for me over the years. I may start with a head cold, but eventually the cough gets wet and I get congested and need antibiotics to clear up my lungs. Maybe this time, since I’m smoke free, I’ll just have a stuffy head for 72 hours and that’ll be that. That would be a nice benefit to being an ex-smoker.
I was talking with my wife today about the trials of the first two weeks off of chantix and wellbutrin. I think one of the major factors in what I went through was the wellbutrin.
I say this because when the doctor first prescribed wellbutrin, she told me it would take two weeks to build up sufficient levels in my blood, so that’s when I should try to quit.
So when I stopped taking the chantix and wellbutrin at the same time, it was a double whammy in terms of my dopamine levels dropping like a brick.
3 days or so for the chantix to wear down enough that it wouldn’t have any effect, but then over the following 10 days my dopamine levels still dropped further each day as the wellbutrin worked it’s way out of my system.
I don’t have any scientific evidence for this of course, it’s just my best educated guess based on what I know and have read about the drugs, plus my experience with them. It would definitely explain why I was ok quitting with the chantix/wellbutrin combo, and then became a nervous wreck for almost two weeks after I stopped taking the pills, even though I hadn’t had a cigarette in over a month.
My best advice to anyone who is still smoking and wants to quit, is to quit cold turkey. With the right information and a little determination, anyone can do it. It’s also cheaper, and safer than any other method.
My best advice to anyone currently taking chantix or wellbutrin is to wean yourself off of it slowly when you decide to stop. Halve your dose for a week and then halve it again for another week or so. Of course I’m not a doctor and this shouldn’t be construed as medical advice. As a matter of fact, if you’re considering doing anything I recommend instead of talking to a doctor, you should really see a doctor. (a psychiatrist)
All things medical should be done based on the advice of your doctor, shaman, or wet nurse.
I tried buying myself a new exercise bike yesterday, because my elliptical is broken. After several hours and lots of frustration, I found one at Walmart. It was the last one they had and already put together, since it was the display model. So not only did I get a discount but I didn’t have to put it together. DOUBLE BONUS!!
Then I tried to use it today and the seat won’t move. It was in the lowest possible setting and I could not budge it to move it up. The bolts that held the seat mechanism in place wouldn’t come out either. They would unscrew, but I couldn’t remove them from the housing they were in. So calling the manufacturer to get a new seat wasn’t an option, because I couldn’t remove the old seat the put the new seat on.
So my options were to
- Try and use the bike while maintaining an uncomfortable, yet funny looking duck type posture.
- Give the bike away to a
midgetvertically challenged person. - Take the bike back to Walmart and get a refund
I opted for #3. I can’t seem to win. The equipment I buy breaks, and the equipment that isn’t broken sucks so bad that I wish it were broken, so I could throw it away and save the space it occupies.
So tomorrow, I’m going to go join the gym. A new Anytime Fitness just opened about two blocks from here. Then if something breaks, it’s their problem. Of course with my recent luck, the gym I join will probably burn down the night before I go in for my first workout.
I didn’t smoke today. I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
No need for Nyquil
Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 6 Comments
Today is July 5, 2008. (Actually July 4 around midnight)
Smoke free day 50. Chantix free day 14.
34 years to the day since I was born.
Hopefully a few more years added between now and the time I die because I quit smoking.
I haven’t been blogging as regularly as I should, and I’m sorry to disappoint my readers. (both of you)
It’s been a pretty busy week with Dork Jr here, Mrs Dork having the week off from work, and me doing my spring-cleaning-in-the-summer-that-I-didn’t-do-in-the-spring.
I seem to have the smoking thing pretty well under control now. The way I feel about smoking now is pretty much how I felt about it when I was still on the chantix. I get the occasional craving for a smoke, but it’s nothing that I can’t handle.
See, I would still really like to have a smoke. The smoke I want is the one or two a week that a smoker really enjoys. What I don’t want is the other 140 or so cigarettes per week that I would smoke because I had to, not because I wanted to. You can’t have one without the other, so when I think about it in those terms, it’s an easy decision.
I started coughing today, and I have a scratchy throat too. It just started a few hours ago really. It could be a cold, or it could be my cilia finally moving along like they’re supposed to and cleaning out my lungs.
I’ve been spitting out black stuff in the mornings when I brush my teeth. I don’t mean to gross anyone out, but this is a blog about quitting smoking and all that it entails, so I figured I’d mention that.
The black stuff in the morning has happened before, during other quits, but hadn’t happened yet during this one. My best guess is that I’m exhaling some of the tar from my lungs on a regular basis and at night, when my mouth is closed for several consecutive hours, it just builds up there along with all the other fun stuff that builds up in your mouth when you’re sleeping.
Speaking of which, do you ever think about that when you’re watching a movie, and there’s a love scene, and the couple wakes up next to each other the next morning, and they immediately start making out? Ewwwwwwww!!! Who does that, really?
Anyways, the cough is new and it remains to be seen if it will be accompanied by other cold-like symptoms or will just be a nagging cough. It would be nice to know that my lungs are cleaning themselves out, although the timing is a little weird I guess.
I quit once earlier this year for two and a half months, about 25 days longer than I’ve made it so far this time, and I never had the cough, but who knows. Every quit is different and coughing AFTER you quit smoking has to be a good thing right?
Today is my 34th birthday. I’m looking forward to my 35th birthday being one where I’ve been smoke free for over a year, and that should lead to me being a much healthier and fit person overall I think. Hopefully I’ll be in better shape on my 35th birthday than I was on my 25th birthday (when I’d been smoking for 12 consecutive years)
I didn’t smoke today, I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
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