Quitting smoking blog

Quitting smoking blog - WEEK 9

Monday, 6 Feb 06

Yesterday I decided that it's time to start cutting back on the nicotine sweets. It's fairly clear now that I average around 7 gums and 5 (strong) lozenges per day. I was thinking that, rather than going by numbers, to not take them unless I feel withdrawals.

Normally I make pre-emptive strikes, that is, I take them before the symptoms come, which keeps me nice and steady. The trouble is, in the end how can you quit nicotine without experiencing some withdrawals?

However, I have four or five projects running at work (I'm losing count). Then there's coursework and a website I promised to make for Que Sara Sara. Plus this journal, which for the first time is feeling like work. I still haven't contacted Wazza about the art piece he was asking for, nor made the shrink appointment for Ritalin or chased up a quote to have my car door fixed.

My head is spinning! Doncha just love the noughties and the over-commitment epidemic?

I feel too stressed to try cutting back on nicotine at the moment. I was at my family's place this weekend and everyone was angry and fighting, and my attempts at peacemakng didn't work at all.

As well, Mr Groin called yesterday, disappointed that I'd forgotten his birthday. He hasn't replied to any of my calls or SMSs since, which neatly dovetails with the fact that his ex-girlfriend has come out here from America to see him. He finally just replied to my last SMS and told me "don't panic" so I suppose maybe I'm just getting tetchy.

As you would have guessed, I'll be gnawing on nicotine things with gay abandon for the next day or two at least ...

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Tuesday, 7 Feb 06

I went to bed at 12.30. I lay there awake until around 2.30am. I got up and did a bit of internetting and gorged myself on nicotine sweets until around 3.30 and went back to bed. The last time I looked at the clock it was something after 4am. Obviously, I was like a zombie at the office and, ironically, ended up getting through a mountain of work. Maybe not so ironic ...

More research: it seems that nicotine increases dopamine levels in the brain, which given you pleasurable feelings, and that people smoke to keep up their dopamine levels. I recently bought some L-Tyrosine 500 from a health store. Tyrosine is considered one of the best natural treatments for ADHD, but perhaps it might be helpful in dealing with nicotine too.

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Wednesday, 8 Feb 06

Strangely enough, it's getting harder to stay off the cigs now than it was several weeks ago. I suppose it's the stress. Some of today's pangs were real doozies and my idea to reduce the dosage of nicotine lollies has gone out the window. The anger I felt a month ago against cigs has just about dissipated (I never was good at grudges). It's now down to not wanting to waste the progress I've made and all the hassles I've been through to get to where I'm at now.

What makes it harder is that all this gum chewing is starting to catch up with me now. I had a headache today and I knew it was TMJ Syndrome (or Temporo-Mandibular Joint Syndrome). It's a fancy name for jaw pain. I had the condition last time I gave up, and it was a major reason why I went back to smoking (along "just one won't hurt").

It did reach a point where I couldn't have the gums any more and then ...

Back then I found out that the nerves in the jaw connect to other parts of your head, and headaches are a common symptom of it, as are earaches. It's not nice, I can tell you, so I will have to rely much more on the lozenges now.

I feel as though I have been walking up a long highway over the past month, making sure that I stay on one side of the street.

Now, just as the pressure is on and my resolve is wavering a fork in the road is looming ...

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Thursday, 9 Feb 06

It's been a while since I've enjoyed some coffee liqueur after work, so I bought a bottle on the way home. As I walked back from the station I could imagine the sensuous joy of smoke in my mouth as I smoked with it. It brought to mind the feeling described in the 1947 article, Why do we smoke cigarettes?.

... to explain the pleasure derived from smoking as taste experience alone, is not sufficient. For one thing, such an explanation leaves out the powerful erotic sensitivity of the oral zone. Oral pleasure is just as fundamental as sexuality and hunger. It functions with full strength from earliest childhood. There is a direct connection between thumbsucking and smoking.

"In school I always used to chew a pencil or a pen," said a journalist, in reply to our questions."You should have seen the collection I had. They used to be chewed to bits. Whenever I try to stop smoking for a while, I get something to chew on, either a pipe or a menthol cigarette. You just stick it in your mouth and keep on sucking. And I also chew a lot of gum when I want to cut down on smoking...."

Instead I had my iced coffee liqueur, followed by some prunes and a nicotine gum.

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Friday, 10 Feb 06

The madness continues. Work was mayhem as I struggled to finalise this demonic project and I'll have to do some work this weekend on user manuals etc, and I still haven't sorted us out for a late March trade show or worked on the training programs or ...

Meanwhile Mr Groin's ex-girlfriend has him bluffed so he's afraid to come over here because "it wouldn't be fair to leave her alone". I need to work on my feminine wiles because I'm clearly being outdone in this area by a country mile.

Not that I'm worried, because she's got two chances of winning him back (you know them). Still, I'm miffed because after last weekend's cranky family episode and my high-pressure week, I feel cheated that I can't catch up with him or had time to arrange anything else. Now I'm stuck at home and the stupid cricket's on the radio.

Whatever, this ex girlfriend stuff is just more stress I don't need. So I bought a bottle of scotch on the way home to keep me company. So far I've found the McCallum's scotch to be a rather pleasant and personable little drop, warming and uplifting. A fine companion for the evening.

I just read a news report about a rural man who has smoked two packets a day for 30 years has been told by a surgeon that he won’t perform a knee operation on him unless he quits smoking.

Perhaps they should refuse surgery on car crash victims unless they have defensive driving lessons first?

... maybe heavy drinkers should be refused the knife too?

... we could at least make sure sportspeople don’t waste their surgeries by putting their joints under strain.

... we could tell executives and politicians—even surgeons themselves—that they have to take on low-stress lifestyles or take up mediation before being given treatment.

I’m a grateful ex-smoker so I shouldn’t care, right? The trouble is that I can’t help noticing how rank the air is with the foul odours of hypocrisy and witch-hunts.

Even the smoky stench of a crowded pub smells better than that.

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Saturday, 11 Feb 06

Woke in a stinking bad mood, faced with the prospect of spending a weekend alone before returning to work’s mayhem. I was more tempted to have a cig than any other time over the last four weeks.

While in this sociopathic state, a theory formed in my mind that not only living things but all material matter are nothing more than parasites on the non-material universe. Uplifting, huh?

But let’s face it, all of life—the entire material universe—is constantly destroying, exploiting and devouring itself. The freezing vastness of the universe, punctuated by occasional poisonous balls of nuclear gas (suns) that either explode or become black holes that swallow anything in their vicinity is hardly what you’d call a nice place. By comparison, our earth is utopia.

Yet in this “utopia”, everything just exploits or eats something else. In the human world, the selfish and the ruthless always seem reap the greatest rewards. We then blithely refer to things as good or evil when all we’re really saying is whether they are good for us or not. Does helping other parasites make you “good”?

So, given the obvious worthlessness of everything in physical existence (Nietzsche and Satre move over), surely it doesn’t matter whether I—microscopic flea of a parasite that I am—smoke or not??

The strange thing about this dark turn of mind is that I don’t seem to be starved of nicotine, although NRT does tend to deliver fairly low doses and lacks the reportedly 16 other addictive chemicals they put in cigarettes.

Still, I didn’t crack. Instead I phoned Mr Groin and hassled him until he agreed to come over tonight. I can’t see why his ex should get both Friday and Saturday nights, leaving me alone on what should be my escape from work stress. Sure, that means she’ll have nothing to do now, but—in the spirit of parasitic sentience—better that she have a dull Saturday night than me ... hehehe

Knowing that I won’t be spending tonight bored and alone helped. However, in the end the transparency of this journal was probably my main deterrent to cracking.

I advise all prospective quitters to be totally open about giving up—your successes and failures. Fear of looking like a weak-willed idiot is a strong motivator. It also gives others a chance to support you when the going gets hard.

This whole quitting episode has been one helluva roller coaster! Just as well I have such a bubbly, buoyant nature, eh? [sic]

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Sunday, 12 Feb 06

1am, Mr Groin's gone home, havign reached an understanding and sitting through the hammy Wedding Crashers DVD as relief from the twin tragedies of Mystic River and All About My Mother we've endured of late. One of his Winfield butts sits on my window sill, beckoning.

I picked it up and wondered. It was very small, the tobacco extending about 4mm from the filter. The paper was slightly torn. I thought of how nicotine is essentially a medicine for me. I thought of how easy it would be to get away with a small guilty pleasure. I thought of a lot of things before tossing it in the bin. Now my fingers stink from touching it. Whatever, I'm full of nicotine from gums and lozenges (and my jaw is sore again) so I don't need it.

I found a study on the web titled, Stimulant-like action of nicotine on striatal dopamine transporter in the brain of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In English this means that nicotine works on mad people like me in a similar way to Ritalin and Dex. Other sites sya that nicotine helps with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Tourette's. Remember, we're talking about nicotine here—not cigarettes—with its pot-pourri of additional crappola.

Funny that a substance whose main reason for existence is to kill insects has such a profound in its effects on humans.

I also found out that nicotine makes your heart work harder by constricting blood vessels, so if you use nicotine you should also have plenty of omega-3s from fish (especially salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, mackeral, trout, tuna and shellfish), linseeds, almonds, walnuts canola, tofu, spinach or those capsules found on on the omega-3 tree.

Another observation about yesterday's dark mood. I have a tendency to get depressed on Saturday, especially Sat nights, if I'm stuck at home alone. It's like the Christmas syndrome, when everyone's supposed to be having a good time, but you're not. It stems from my younger days when I was about as popular as a fart in a space suit, as opposed to my current popularity status of a more free-range fart.

I used to smoke a mountain of cigs on those wretched, rejected Saturdays, so my unofficial ADHD medication (aka cigarettes) had an extra function of "company". It holds your hand at parties where you don't know anyone and acts as a surrogate flatmate for lonely pensioners. If Mr Groin hadn't come over last night, I suspect I would have either cracked, or more likely, overdosed on lozenges and gums.

Update: Back to the present, I did some lap swimming this morning, the first time this summer. I've been taking L-Tyrosine and I don't know if it was the swimming or the amino acids but I've felt great today. Later on I caught up the Scotsman and his daughter, Ali McBeale for a few beers on his verandah, before joining them at a local pub for dinner.

The Scotsman did me a huge favour by unbending my damaged front fender so now I can open my car door without spending hundreds of dollars or losing my no-claim bonus. At no stage during the beers or dinner did I have the urge to smoke. The Scotsman smokes occasionally, but he's one of those types who can have one or two with some drinks and then not touch it for months and, since I wasn't smoking, he didn't either.

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Week 10 -->