NEWSPEAK Blog

Boy, do I suck.

So, since last we spoke, I've fallen fully off the nonsmoking wagon, and it's all because I let myself chip. "What harm," said I, "could a few cigarettes a night cause, if I'm out at a bar and having fun?" A lot, because "no smoking" quickly turned into "no smoking in the morning" which turned even more quickly into "Fuck this. I'm stressed and I need a goddamn cigarette."

I had another, slightly-more-than-24-hours attempt on June 1, which is the arbitrary date my wife set for me. This lasted until she swept out of the house in tears because I was being so mean.

I saw this interview with David Sedaris on The Daily Show today:

Sedaris quit smoking recently, alongside my other longtime reason, personified, for not quitting, Anthony Bourdain, and during the Daily Show interview he spoke about moving to Hiroshima in order to quit. This jibes well with my current theory, that I need a vacation—a long, beachside vacation, preferably—during which I can relax and escape from daily habits in order to quit. This theory, has problems, certainly, but it does have its merits; many books recommend switching up your routine, rearranging your furniture or going away to help you quit.

I like this theory, because it means I not only want to but NEED TO go on vacation, to a beach, preferably with good rum, for my health. And it sort of bears out—when I was in St. Lucia, I smoked, sure, but not nearly as much as I do usually. It was just too fucking hot, and I didn't feel like it, because I was the antithesis of tense. (Vacationing elsewhere, in England or France, pre-smoking ban, in the winter, I smoked joyously and copiously, mainly because I could.) So, I need a hot climate, a beach and rum. But then again, don't we all?

Quitters win, or sometimes they don't.

I cheated.

Last night, I found myself walking out of the store with a pack of cigarettes. Walking in and buying them wasn't a conscious thing at all—I just did it, whether by habit or nicotine-withdrawal trance. So that's the bad news.

The good news is that when I lit up, it didn't do much of anything for me. No Eureka! of nicotine, no abatement of the vague sense of discomfort I've had for the past five days. It was just smoke, and it sort of gave me a headache. I don't know if five days is enough to rewire my brain, but I didn't get a whole lot of pleasure from it. Just to be sure, I smoked a few more, then I gave the remainder of the pack to my wife and told her to either hide it or throw it away. I woke up this morning and popped a piece of gum in my mouth.

So if my brain has indeed changed, does that mean I'll never again experience the rush of shivery, glorious gratification I got from smoking a cigarette after drinking a beer? Or will I just have to get it from something else? What if my brain rewired itself in such a way that I get really into, like, stockinged feet, or women dressed up like Dragonball-Z characters? What if I discover that punching myself in the kidneys floods my brain with dopamine?

And this is the weirdest thing, because it makes me sound like such a nonsmoker: I didn't like the taste. To borrow a phrase from health-class posters everywhere, it was like licking an ashtray. Totally ew.

So it appears I'm somewhere in the curious limbo between being and not being a smoker. It's confusing, since I still really want to smoke, but I now know that even if I had one, it wouldn't do me any good. There's nothing to do but search the web for Dragonball-Z hentai.

Quitters win: the ongoing diaries.

So I am two days smoke-free and doing okay with it, surprisingly.

Don't get me wrong; I really, really want a cigarette. Oh, sweet Jesus, do I. But I'm actually doing better than I expected. I have not threatened to kill anyone yet. I've been jokey, not mopey and morose and crabby, as I remember being last time I tried.

I was a day late in quitting, primarily because I was up all night deadlining and very stressed and in completely the opposite mood to even think about it. So I turned the paper in Thursday morning (which is out, by the way, and which you should pick up), went home to sleep and then woke up in the evening committed to finishing the pack I had and then giving it up.

I drank a glass of wine and read and smoked. When I reached the last cigarette in the pack, I took it out and placed it on the desk, putting off the inevitable while I worked my way through my book. Finally, after about a half-hour of waiting, I put my book down and lit it up, pacing. Believe you me, I savored that fucker. And then, when I ground it out, I dumped my ashtray, washed it out, took out the trash and wiped down the desk in my office—the only room in my house where I was allowed to smoke. I lit some incense and went to brush my teeth. I washed my hands. Then I went to bed and kept myself up thinking about all the exciting things I could do when my lungs began to work again. I could, like, run a marathon!

The first day was a breeze, more or less. I woke up, slapped on a nicotine patch, and went on with my day. I bought a pack each of gum and Hall's and haven't been without either in my mouth—or the tea-tree toothpicks I bought today—since. The toughest part, I found, was simply outthinking my routine. Well, I just finished eating—or drinking a cup of coffee, or talking on the phone, or watching That Thing You Do!, so I should smoke, I would think reflexively, and then have to remind myself that I would have to be content with another goddamn cough-drop. It's certainly a hole that needs to be filled, but my brain was able to stay ahead of my cravings. I just stayed home, watched movies and stayed out of temptation's way.

Today's tougher. I woke up in a rotten mood and haven't been cheery since. The symptoms of physical withdrawal peak between 48 and 72 hours, and I'm sure I'm building up to that. I went to the Arc this morning and had to leave almost immediately, because I wasn't in the mood to browse secondhand clothes or be jostled. I've been downtown all day, walking around, and the smell of cigarettes is everywhere. I just watched, from my office window, a woman go into Athan's and buy a pack of bright yellow American Spirits. She came out and packed them against the heel of her hand, then drew one out and stuck it between her lips while she fished around in her pockets for a lighter. After an interminable amount of time, she found her Bic and lit it. I could smell her relief.

But my willpower is proving to be stronger than I thought. I expected to run shrieking into the closest 7-Eleven the moment I smelled secondhand smoke, but I was able to even drink a glass of wine and walk next to someone who was smoking without elbowing her in the throat, grappling her Spirits from her purse and darting into an alley to light up. It's the teeny-tiny victories, I guess.

I will now go home and cook dinner and watch movies and not smoke. It's Taco Night, which excites me unnecessarily since I am apparently nine years old.

Quitters win!

I've been a habitual smoker for 15 years, and I'm quitting. My plan has always been to quit before I'm 30 (the often unspoken part of that plan is that I get to start again when I'm 65, as a reward), and as I turned 29 a few months ago, it's time to get started.

I smoked my first cigarette when I was 7, started pilfering packs from my mom and the convenience store when I was 14 and was up to two packs a day by my sophomore year of high school. In college, I was smoking three packs a day. My junior year of college, I switched brands from Winston to American Spirit and, because Spirits smoke much more slowly, they curbed my consumption to about a pack a day, where I've remained since.

I like smoking. I like it a lot, but my hacking cough has gotten progressively worse, doubling me over in the mornings and providing new and interesting colors for me to spit up. I now have the lung capacity of a toddler. I get winded getting the mail. It's time to quit.

So Plan A is this: I will quit, using Zyban, because I clearly do not have the willpower to attempt cold turkey. Zyban is Wellbutrin marketed under a different name, since researcher types discovered that Wellbutrin has the unexpected and fortuitous side-effect of helping people quit smoking. I'll supplement this with the patch. I'm no fan of prescription drugs as a panacea, but I'm going to need some help on the mood front here. The one and only time I've ever tried to quit smoking, chewing ass-tasting Nicorette and eating seven times a day, the friends I'd appointed to keep me busy doing nonsmoking activities got so fed up with my nonstop whining, acidic quips and horrible bitching that one of them simply said, "Jesus—just have a fucking cigarette already." So yeah, Wellbutrin might help.

Because I'm uninsured for the time being, I don't have a doctor who can prescribe me the drug, so I turned to my mom, who for some reason lives in Texas now and will go to Mexico to get prescription drugs. The packet of Zyban she got there cost her like $6. I started taking it earlier this week.

You're supposed to be on the drug for a week before your quit date. My quit date falls next week. In the meantime, I get to enjoy the benefits of the antidepressant while still smoking, which seem so far to be mainly like taking mellow speed; I'm chatty and affable but have had trouble sleeping and not a whole lot of appetite.

I know the recidivism rate for any attempt to quit smoking is ridiculously high, but I am going to take this seriously. As it is, I have one more weekend as a smoker, and you better believe I am going to enjoy it. Smoke up, Johnny.