Reply #37: What a sweetheart you are! (with a great bark!)

[The Doctor.]

What a great point... to look at the last one and say 'I'll quit after this one' doesn't really work.

I barelly smoked for five years before I quit. A friend of mine got married, so I quit on his wedding day. I was best man at a wedding I didn't think should have happened because I knew he would be miserable. Stubborn bastard... believe me, I tried to save him.

I figured since he was throwing his life away, the least I could do was spare mine. I've never been known for my willpower, but I quit CT on November 9, 1991, since the year after that, and from then to this very day, I've smoked a total of maybe fifteen cigarettes. (Cigars don't count, I may have had barely a hundred of those in that time)


The first two weeks after I quit were a major PITA. Week one I was a real Dick... with a capital 'Cheney'. Irritated all the time, constantly sneering at myself in the mirror, outing CIA operatives cause their CP foiled my plans... the whole sha-but. There's nothing much a new quitter can do about that.

Week two was the psychological torment. Every movie, show, mag ad that showed people lighting up made me check my pockets. There was something so fundamentally wrong with my morning paper and cup o' joe with that missing, I didn't read the paper for months. That second week was the worst. At least when I was irritated I didn't feel that peripheral sense that there was something wrong with everything. All my usual activities felt a little off. I recognized that smoking was a part of my conscious foundation, and anything that I did that I could associate in any way with smoking had to be avoided.

I stayed away from friends who smoked, places where I would go to smoke, foods that I particularly enjoyed a smoke after eating, and I didn't drink alcohol at all for a few weeks.

It was easier every day, I even went back to Hung-Gar and reconditioned.

My advice to anyone who wants to quit is to develop a plan to not be around other smokers or activities that you associate with smoking. Unfortunately this is very difficult in some environmnents.

Then the challenge becomes adopting a strategy to otherwise occupy yourself even under the most routine circumstances.

Good luck.