January 31st, 2006
It's now been 15 months. That's 8200 cigarettes. $3500 (give or take). And an immeasurable number of coughs, hacks, throat-clearings and sneezes. I'm glad of this, and I no longer experience cravings on the order that I talked about at the end of my last discussion about stopping smoking ... but there remain some oddities that I expect will always be with me for the rest of my life.
Like those blasted dreams. I will be sitting around doing nothing special: Watching TV, reading, playing piano or guitar, etc. and then I will casually light up a smoke. I will continue smoking for a little while longer until I suddenly realise what I'm doing. I'll look around to see who noticed, or maybe I'll hunch over a bit in defensiveness, but I will feel alarm and disgust at myself in equal quantities. I've just ruined all that work by sparking up a smog! (Though, interestingly, I finish the cigarette anyway out of the idea that since I've just blown it, I might as well finish blowing it thoroughly ... just the kind of addictive rationale that addicts' minds employ.)
Then I wake up in a panic that immediately starts to retreat. I realise that:
- No, I did not blow it,
- I am not having withdrawal symptoms, but
- I sure started smoking in my dream pretty casually and easily, didn't I?
That last point is not an easy one to digest. It scares me a little, puts me onto my toes again as it were. On the other hand, last November at my 20-year high-school reunion a woman offered me a cigarette and I refused. I didn't even think about it. And if ever there was a crowd I would want to smoke around (like, every single peer pressure from high-school revisited and together in one concentrated roomful!) that was it. So my waking hours seem so safe that I tend to forget smoking is like drinking to an alcoholic: It only takes one to completely fall off the wagon. There is no grey area. Either you smoke or you don't (and if you don't, you are in some form of withdrawal for the rest of your life, except the effects of withdrawal are nearly always below your conscious threshold after about three months).
I mean, there are still occasions where the desire kicks up and announces itself, of course. But though I may pass people standing on the street and having a cigarette, or I might be sitting watching a hockey game on TV or driving my car and feel a craving coming on, I am not going to find the nearest supply of cigarettes and light up.
I tend to mention my cravings out loud to people who are around me. The sentient among them have little to say, though I still get the occasional, "No! Don't do it! Death! Rape! Poison! Taxes! You'll ruin everything!" I can't seem to impress upon those people that expressing my desire to smoke out loud by no means indicates that I will carry through on the urge. It just means that I have the feelings and would be foolish to try and ignore them. It's humanity 101, but I still have to explain it to people sometimes.
Actually, I have friends who wax all self-righteous when it comes to discussions of smoking (and their not smoking). I guess that's fine by me, but they should observe I don't walk around all self-righteous at the fact I didn't get addicted to heroin, crystal meth, peyote (is that even possible?), or crack cocaine. No, and they should also please note that I am not feeling all warm and fuzzy that I never committed murder, wrapped a car around a power pole in a drunken stupor, got into a fistfight, or busted into someone's home with larceny in my mind and danger in my heart. No, I don't want a medal pinned to my chest for the bad things that I didn't do ... and that says something about me that it doesn't say about them.
I only dredge all this up today because I had another dream last night in which I was smoking. I woke up in my panic again, and I let the feelings drain away again. But it got me wondering why, after all this time, I still have those dreams. I took a look out on the Internet and have discovered, somewhat to my surprise and chagrin, that there are people who smoked for ten years and have quit for 30 years, and they still dream of smoking as vividly as the first few days after they quit.
Or maybe it is just my mind's strange way of reminding me of the 15-month anniversary ...
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