Days four to 14 were probably the worst so far - barring the nights I had beer, but that is something I will touch on later. Anyhow, I am sure it didn't help that Nick's son was here for the weekend, and my fuse was short. I was none-too-pleasant which thankfully my body just translated into forcing me to be very, very quiet while I hid behind my books.

Cute as pie, and well behaved, Nick's son is an absolute joy to have around. He does what you ask of him, and for the most part just likes to play video games, go skating, or watch movies with Nick. Honestly, no one could have asked for a more polite, kind, obedient child and for that I have been thankful. But, if there was one thing I could say annoyed me, it is his inability to be patient when addressing someone [I know, he is the most perfect child and here I am splitting hairs]. If he addresses Nick, and Nick doesn't answer right away, we are all treated to a loud chorus of "DADDY?"..."DADDY?"..."DADDY?"..."DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?"
"DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?""DADDY?" over and over again, until Nick breaks his concentration and addresses him.

Honestly, out of all the annoying big deals, this is NOT A BIG DEAL. I am lucky that 99.9% of the time, that kiddle is perfect. However, when one has quit smoking and their fuse is at an all-time shortness, the repetition can push you to the edge. Naturally, I did not freak on the poor kid. Instead, I jumped off the couch and announced that I was heading to the gym. When your apartment is 510 square feet, the only option in times of struggle is OUTSIDE. Luckily, in the not-too-outside, aka, downstairs, there is a gym in my building.

I had started to hit the gym a few days before my 3-days of illness, but missed a day because I was in too much pain. Contrary to popular belief, exercising during menstrual cramps NEVER has eased the pain for me, although it may work for other people. So my default thing to do when I was itching for a cigarette, or just plain...err...bitchy about the whole thing, was to head to the gym. I discovered that sweating and pushing my lungs helped with any desire I had to smoke.

So 40-minutes and a good sweat later, and I was pretty much back to normal. I came home and then treated myself to a nice, hot shower laden with lots of nummy smelling soap from LUSH. I am a big fan of treating yourself for accomplishment, and so I used my last LUSH Christmas gift certificate to load up on smelly goodness in praise of my first three days. So naturally, I felt heaps better after all of this, even though 5 years ago I couldn't imagine spending a Satyrday night working out at the gym. It's funny how time works.

From there on in, I decided to use my job-less time more productively, scheduling a decent workout time in with basic house stuff and job hunting. In fact, my schedule started to look like this:

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: 30-minutes of upper-body strength training, abs and back, followed by 40-minutes of cardio. Sometimes 20 minutes of yoga.
Tuesdays and Thursdays: one hour of Vinyasa-style yoga followed by 40-minutes of cardio.

I had to organize myself to make sure I did all this in the morning, as I found that if I left working out too late, it would be more of a hassle and I was less likely to put all my energy into it [as I was busy worrying about other things I had to do]. Happily though, working out set the tone for my entire day. When I had the urge to smoke, I just remembered the amazing lung capacity and easiness of breathing I had when doing yoga or cardio. I closed my eyes and made my mind concentrate on how shitty I used to feel compared to a few scant weeks later. I remembered how amazingly quickly my body bounced into feeling more healthy hours even after quitting smoking. I knew that all this was worth much more than one cigarette, and it pushed me to try and get through the urge.

Obviously, some moments during this period were absolutely unbearable. It is an addiction, and like all addictions it is something that is hard to beat. However, the thing that made this time so much more bearable was that in my head, I knew that it was time. Previous attempts to quit - even though I did really want to - didn't have the same finality that I felt with this one. This time I armed myself with all the information and skills I could in an effort to beat those low points and push through the cravings when I felt I was starving for a cigarette. I also considered that there will probably be no other time in my life when I will have less stress as I wasn't currently working, and that allowed me to workout, meditate, and generally be less stressed out during the worst parts of my quit. I also think that everyone should consider quitting during a time of illness. The first 72 hours is much more bearable when you have a cold, the flu or any other generalized pain that takes your mind off smoking. If I had one tip to give someone regarding their quit, it would be : quit while your body is sick and dealing with something else. It is much easier when you care less about smoking. Also, remembering that your body has already rid itself of nicotine, and to put it back into your body would start you back at the beginning is a powerful motivator if you remember how the original cravings were much worse, and that these ones are less frequent and less painful.

The original 'why did I quit smoking' Q & A:

Why did I quit smoking?

Because I felt like shit all the time; I had painful cramps in my lungs periodically and was always coughing and hacking. I couldn't walk up hills or run for short periods of time without being winded. Almost none of my friends smoke, and I was sick of having to interrupt conversations to go out and smoke. I hate being tied to an addiction - the very idea that something compels me to go out in the freezing weather every 1/2 hour was driving me crazy. It affected my concentration [gottagosmoke, gottagosmoke] when I was trying to be productive, and always having to make sure I had cigarettes on me was more attachment than I think I need in my life. It stinks, it makes me feel like shit, and at the end of the day, it made me somewhat of a social pariah. Also, I felt that smoking was out of tune with my values: spending money on something that was killing me, and trying to eat better whilst inhaling poison made me feel out of whack. There are more reasons, but those are the basics. I was lucky I had a particularly difficult period that laid me up in bed for three days - 72 hours is exactly the amount of time it takes to get nicotine out of your system. I was so concentrated on being in agony I didn't even think of smoking. Now I am dealing with the psychological triggers, mostly.

How long did I smoke?

15 years - half of my life

How long have I been smoke free?

As I am writing this: 6 days, 8 hours, 47 minutes 39 seconds.

How long do I think it should take to be free of this habit?

The habit is slowly but surely becoming easier to get rid of. I will be addicted for the rest of my life however.

If I go back to smoking, will I want to quit again?

I don't want to smoke again, ever. If I start again, I may not be able to quit before something horrible happens and I end up permanently damaged. I am taking the www.whyquit.com approach to smoking - never take another puff.

Will quitting be any easier next time around?

The idea being that even if you want 'just one' cigarette, it never is just one it is all the subsequent cigarettes after it as one puff will put me back into using. Regardless of its social acceptability, I have to treat my nicotine problem just like any other addiction. The idea of a heroin addict saying, "Oh, it's ok, I only banged one needle, it will be fine" is ludicrous - we know that opiate addicts can't go to recreational use after coming out of rehab, so why is it somehow ok for a smoker to have, "just one cigarette," like that is perfectly normal in the quitting arena. It's not, because it isn't just that one cigarette, it is all the others that come after it that I am worried about. It's better just to avoid.

What do I think smoking will do for me?(benefits??)

The only benefits smoking has are the ones I justify in my own mind. Other than that, it is a drug that slowly kills via it's delivery mode.

Is it worth giving up what I've worked so hard to do?

No. It's almost been a week, and if I have to go through the torturous, cantankerous first few days again, I don't know if I can do it next time. Now that it is over, I only periodically have cravings that are psychological in nature [ie: sitting in a bar, triggers from when I use to go to the dog park ect..]. These last for up to 20 minutes [but aren't usually that long], then they go away. Even if they happened 3 times a day, that is one hour out of 24 hours where I am suffering: it's nothing.

On February 8th, 2006 I woke up reeling from the combination of a horrible hangover and debilitating menstrual cramps. Considering how many cigarettes I had smoked the night before, I had absolutely no urge to smoke when I woke up - unlike the other mornings when a few coffees into the day, I was outside puffing on a cigarette.

In fact, although I didn't know it at the time, my last cigarette had been smoked the night before while Nick and I consumed copious amounts of wine and tried to do some music stuff. Although I couldn't say now, I am pretty sure I barely remember falling into bed that night, having imbibed more than my fare share of the Dionysian liquid. Waking up under the duress of pain from the north and south of me, anything other than drinking water and popping painkillers was out of the question - and that is how I easily got through the first day of non-smoking.

The second day wasn't particularly worse, with only the occasional desire to smoke coming through the blinding pain of my uterus. I said to myself, "Hrm, you haven't smoked for over 24 hours, perhaps you should think about quitting...again." Truth be told, I am a serial quitter, trying time and time again to break free of smoking only to be brought right back into it as soon as the going gets rough. Having a drink? WHOOPS, started smoking again. Fight with a loved one? WHOOPS, another cigarette. I was terminally unable to deal with any stress in my life without lighting up a cigarette. I was the cigarette smoker equivalent to the yo-yo dieter.

The thing is, none of my friends really smoke. Out of the people who I spend the most time with, the only people who smoke are my fiancé Nick, and our friend Dan. Everyone else is a non-smoker. Naturally it is a bit of a pain in the ass when you are at a party, or having dinner, and the smokers have to leave mid-conversation/card game to get our fix of nicotine. I have always felt a twinge of guilt that our social evenings were spent waiting for an opening so we could rush outside into the freezing -20 weather and puff down more carcinogenic fumes. On top of all that, our grand entrance back into the house was foretold by the giant stink of smoke that proceeded us - let's face it - to the rest of the world, smokers smell, have foul breath, and pollute the environment around them. Frankly, smoking is just plain tacky.

I have to honestly say that being in bed, sick for three days really helped me get through the first 72 hours of my new, smoke-free lifestyle. I know some people who would be driven to smoke because they were in pain, but this method worked for me. I also knew that after 72 hours, the majority of the nicotine would be out of my system and I would be into another phase of cleaning my body. Everytime the urge to smoke would hit me, I would remind myself of how I had already gone through the worst part, and that giving in now would mean I would have to do it all again the next time - and the next time may be due to a major illness. So instead of giving in, I scoured the internet for information on smoking cessation and used the pages I found as a crutch as I went through the torture of treating my addiction.

The best website I have found so far is www.whyquit.com. The layout and navigation are terrible, and I am not particularly fond of the writing style, but the information contained within those pages are exactly what I needed to kick myself in the ass when I was dangerously close to picking up a cigarette. The basic tenet is: treat smoking not like a habit, but like an addiction. You *cannot* have 'just one' cigarette because that 'one' cigarette will lead to the many, many more cigarettes you will smoke afterwards. Smoking that 'one' will lead you back down the path to addiction. No one says to a recovering heroin addict, "So, you haven't even banged one hit?" For most addictions we assume clean means no more, not just the occasional hit. Smoking should be treated no differently. Obviously, there is more to the site than just that, so I suggest you check it out. For me though, that website was invaluable in getting me through those horrible moments where I thought I would explode if I didn't smoke. Never take another puff.

The about.com smoking website had an interesting exercise that I also found helpful. When quitting, write down all the reasons you have for kicking the habit and keep it close when going through the rough times. Here is my list:

- I turned 30 in December so, I have been smoking for almost half my life. Half my life has been lived in an addicted state
- I didn't like being a social pariah [as a side note, my friends never made me feel like that, but I always felt awkward about smoking]
- Constantly smelling like an ashtray - especially when faced with high-stress events like job interviews
- I have asthma and have slowly noticed my breathing getting progressively worse
- I wanted to get more exercise in my life, which was being hindered by my bad breathing
- I found I was avoiding certain places because walking or biking up hills/stairs left me breathless
- I was sick of making the effort to eat organic and being conscious of the environment only to be faced with being a hypocrite because I still smoked
- I hated being one of the only people in my social group who smoked
- I didn't like coughing and hacking all the time, and the fact my allergies were so bad
- I never liked spending so much money on smoking
- I hate being chained to cigarettes as they had to be on my person 24/7 in case the urge to smoke struck
- I was constantly convincing myself that I WANTED to smoke and that I LOVED smoking when in fact if I had heard those words from, say, an alcoholic's mouth, I wouldn't believe it.

The list is a lot more exhaustive than that, really, but I think that gives you a decent idea. When it comes down to it, if I had to make a list of all the reasons I wanted to smoke, there would be only one item on that list:

- I am addicted.

...and that is never a good reason to engage in any activity.

So I took my window of opportunity [being in bed, in agony for 3 days] and quit smoking. I read websites like www.lung.ca as well at the www.whyquit.com site, and everytime I had the urge to smoke I would look up some horror story about how someone my age or younger died in horrible pain due to a disease linked to smoking. With every inch of my being I pushed myself to not think about the things I missed about smoking, but to concentrate on the awful reality that I was slowly tearing my body apart [the pain helped, really]. Needless to say, after the first 72 hours I felt like an Olympian - I had done it. I had pulled through until the nicotine had left my body. All I needed to deal with now was the psychological issues I had with smoking....