Puff the Magic Dragon

Thirty-nine days ago I quit smoking.  Again.  This will be the fourth or fifth time in the last 24 years that I have quit.  I have learned from the last two times that, for me, the best way is just to stop. Cold turkey.  This usually comes at a time when I have been smoking heavily and therefore coughing my lungs out and thinking of imminent death from cancer. I have Parkinson's Disease and I don't want to get in the chronic/fatal disease line again, thank you.



So, what makes this time different than the others? Well, firstly, I was very distracted during the crucial first few weeks of quitting.  I had broken both of my feet (I know, I know) and was zooming around our two downstairs rooms in the wheelchair and going up and down the stairs on my butt.  Hey! Bonus exercise! I discovered triceps.  Also, my neice was visiting from Amercia and every time her grumpy aunt would say 'I really want a cigarette' she would just say 'don't' and I'd get over it.

I don't remember why I started smoking.  I think it was my second year of college.  It was probably a combination of wanting to seem cool, wanting to relieve stress and wanting that little high you get when you don't smoke that much.  The reasons for staying on the cigs were addiction, anxiety and stress.  Every time I quit I had something extremely stressful happen in my life that sent me back on them.  Valium don't work the way my Merit Ultra Lights or Silk Cut Blues did.

One anomaly that kept me smoking was that smoking, not nicotine patches or gum,  but the act of lighting up, helped with my Parkinson's symptoms. Maybe it was just the relaxation bit, but it worked and for those times when the symptoms were really bad, it really helped. I'll have to find another way to chill out.

I also had a lot of triggers.  Finish dinner, have a smoke.  Get a phone call, go out and smoke while I'm on the phone.  Watch TV or movie where everyone is smoking, have a smoke.  But since quitting this time I've noticed that the times I would smoke the most is when I was avoiding something or bored. 
If there were things to be done and I didn't want to do them, have a smoke for five minutes, then I'll do it.  If I was nervous about going somewhere I would have at least one cigarette before leaving.  When I was at a gathering and I got bored, wanted to be alone or felt anxious, I'd say "I'm going for a smoke" and there was an excuse to be by myself for a few minutes.

I always smoked outside from my mid-20s onward.  It was a pain, but my husband doesn't smoke and I wouldn't ever smoke in a non-smoker's house.  So, this left me alone outdoors a lot.  I would sit there on the back steps, or, in the case of bad weather, in our shed, (shows you just how desperate smokers are), thinking and looking out at our garden.  In the daytime I would notice all of the noises, the flowers and the six or seven types of birds flying around.  Soon I became really interested in planting flowers and finding out about those birds.  Two more hobbies were born. 

At night, my interest in astronomy was intensified.  Despite being a city, Dublin has a lot of wide-open dark sky at night.  You can see tons of stars on a clear night and I've been lucky enough to see a few fireballs and dozens of meteors.  I've seen the International Space Station about six times.  With the naked eye it really looks like a UFO from an old fifties movie.

So smoking hasn't been all bad, but its time to let go.  If they didn't smell so bad and contain all that stuff that will kill you, I think I would probably continue smoking.  I like smoking.  Because its banned everywhere, its like belonging to a little club.  A club that meets under awnings of bars and restaurants or outside the lobby of hotels and office buildings.  But I quit. Hopefully for good this time. I'll let you know.