I've spent the last fortnight alternating between the throes of nicotine deprivation and guilt from succumbing to it - I am too weak.
I've written nothing, though I've had a few new ideas, and earlier this week I - accidentally - half sold the idea of 'Midnight Angels' to one of the commissioning editors in work - like I need the pressure!
If anyone needs me I'll either be outside wreathed in smoke, or inside frantically rubbing at my nicotine patch.
Comments
It's Great To Here From You
And I look forward to your stories.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Forget the Patch
Spend the bucks and get some Chantix. I don't know anyone that has managed to stop using a patch or gum. But ALL I know that used the chantix, quit with no problems.
Try cycling ...
... after you've coughed your lungs up (or, at least the black gunge smoking deposits in them) a few times you'll realise the futility of smoking. I'm always surprise when otherwise very intelligent people allow themselves to be manipulated by unscrupulous tobacco companies who compensate for the fact that their product kills its customers in a particularly horrible way by continually recruiting naive youngsters to make up the deficit.
On a practical note - a friend of mine gave up smoking and used the money he saved thereby to buy himself a very expensive camera by weekly instalments. He ended up a non-smoker and owning something expensive at no apparent cost. Knowing your love of photography that may appeal.
In case you think I don't understand; I started smoking as a schoolboy aged about 13 and gave up ( several times) about 20 years later. I know it's hard but it really is worth it, even if only to cheat the tobacco companies of their prey. I really wish you every success. I know you can do it. You're too bright not to.
Geoff
I'm already on a tricyclic
The pun police are going to get me for that (tho it's true) :)
Smokers have a little voice inside, an insidious, evil little troll that tells us that smoking is big and clever, that it joins us together in some great fraternity of the wheeze, bound in persecuted camaraderie with every other smoker. Worse still, it convinces us that it's a source of comfort and solace, a constant friend.
I did give up for just over a year, so I know the benefits of giving up... my sinuses cleared up, I got my full vocal range back for the first time since my early twenties (three and a half glorious, neighbour dementing octaves), MS fatigue attacks were relieved, I slept better, and so on. And yet, nothing can rescue an afternoon like today's, when I've been dragging my sorry ass from one pointless meeting to another, quite like a sojourn to the yellow pariah square painted in the car park for cigarette.
You can always stop...
...the way I did, twenty years ago. End up with blood clots in your lungs. You smoke, you die, quickly. Simple. Five days in intensive care broke the chain for me, I never smoked again, though I dreamed about it for years. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
In my first life.
When I was 19, the Uncle I hate told me to put on a uniform and get ready to go fight some rich man's war in stinky smelly jungle. Like many other GIs, I started smoking in basic, but in just a few days I was coughing uncontrollably and finally went to the Doc. He asked me if I wanted to live and I said, "Yes".
Well, stop smoking right now, you are alergic to them.
I did.
Gwen
Starting smoking
I started smoking while in the Army, too. Self-defense, everyone in the office where I worked chain-smoked. In fact, I don't think I knew even one single woman in the Army who didn't smoke back then. Not all of the men I knew did, but all of the women puffed like chimneys.
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Infallible Smoking Remedy - for FREE!
Coming to you through my very own chartable and benevolent nature. Absolutely free of charge to all here although satisfied beneficiaries who feel the burden of gratitude so great that it causes other health problems can always be accommodated.
One proviso is that you really want to give it up.
First of all you think of someone you really hate. Someone you despise from the very bottom of your being. A politician would do but the choice is yours.
Then you decide on a sum of money that you cannot afford to lose. Big enough to really hurt. No holidays for the next five years. Not quite so much that losing it would drive you throwing yourself of a cliff at midnight in a fit of hopeless despair but enough to shatter any immediate dreams of cash fuelled happiness.
Then write out a cheque for that sum to the above mentioned hate figure and give it to someone with whom you are in frequent contact with the instructions to post it on if you should ever smoke again.
If for some obscure and unfathomable reason this does not work, then try again. This second time you can use me as the hate figure.
Hugs,
Fleurie
Hi, Ceri
Yes, I was wondering if you were OK. Quit smoking, keep writing! We want you around for as long as possible. Hugs, Daphne (30 years of smoking, 20 years 'clean')
Daphne