Journalism Research and Random Meanderings

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Quitting smoking sucks 

I'm writing this so I'll remember how hard it is to quit smoking.

It's been over a week now. I've had three cigarettes. I've chewed my way through 30 pieces of the 4mg. nicotine gum. By itself nicotine gum is horrid. I mix it with regular gum. That doesn't make it good, just less horrid. Unless you try to get some nicotine with the morning coffee then the mix of coffee (which I drink black, no sugar) juicy fruit and the acrid aftertaste of the nicotine goes back to being horrid.

I had no idea how supremely irritating everyone was until I quit smoking. Especially my girlfriend Keiko, she's all sweet, considerate and supportive so in the depths of withdrawal wonderland that feels like a passive aggressive revenge plot. I get pissed off over the dumbest things. I don't like being around me right now and I don't see why she would.

It seems that I've stopped sleeping almost completely now. I get an hour or two here or there. I might sleep four or five hours if I'm completely exhausted. Sleeping was already a problem because I have been working security three nights per week and either school or freelancing three to five days a week for around two-and-a-half years now. I dozed for a couple of hours in front of the TV last night and then went to bed and read until around five-thirty. I couldn't stand being in bed anymore so I got up and had breakfast.

I'll work for a while, take Ewan (Keiko's four-year-old boy) to daycare because she's working, work some more and try to get some sleep this afternoon so I can do a 12-hour security shift tonight.

I've done this several times in the last 10 years, by that I mean like 15, and it sucks every time. I've tried everything; cold turkey, food, Xyban, food, the patch, candy (chocolate-covered jujubes - the heroin of sweets), shiatsu and of course the gum. I've been off cigarettes as much as I've been on them since I made my first serious attempt to quit in 1993. I gained 20 pounds on that attempt and have gained another 15 since then.

The sight of 20 pounds of pastry-induced flab hanging off my 6'-2", 165-pound bone rack sent me screaming to the gym for three years of weights, volleyball and karate. Of course I was single then and the kids had moved back with their mother so I didn't even have much in the way of parenting obligations. At least it didn't feel like much compared to raising three kids on your own full-time.

Exercise was the one thing that kept me off the smokes longer than anything else. I kept it up for a couple of years after coming back to T.O. in 1996 but school took me out of the exercise routine and working nights makes it difficult to get it back because of the aforementioned sleep problems.

I don't like to sound like I'm making excuses or feeling sorry for myself. Excuses are just a way of avoiding responsibility for decisions we've already taken. Self-pity is just plain toxic. Withdrawal, insomnia and flabbiness (which has returned with a vengeance) are the consequences of my own actions, inactions and choices. Positive action will take me through and then out of this. They are all temporary conditions that I have the power to overcome.