Me and smoking

Today, yet again, I am trying to quit smoking. I have been down this road to many times to count and every time I say it's going to work but then I end up smoking again. I'm not going to say I will do this and I am never going to smoke again because I think saying that will set me up for disappointment if for some reason I start again. I always feel real bad that I start again.

I was doing good while I was at my sister's in Ohio then she started getting on my nerves and I bought a pack of cigarettes. I only had 2 a day for a few days then went to see my nephew in Indiana and he smokes so I was smoking more there. When I got home it got totally out of control and I found myself up to a pack a day again. I am on Chantix which helps to cut down the cravings by getting rid of the nicotine receptors in the brain. It makes it easier to do without on days that I don't have any butts but the habit is still there. I find myself wondering what to do with my hands and mouth. There is and oral fixation there that I need to get rid of or I'll end up over 300 lbs before the summer is over.

Now I'm not blaming my nephew for me starting smoking again. I already had the butts on me. He just made it easier to smoke more because he let me smoke in the house and let me smoke as much as I wanted. That was all I needed to smoke. If he had asked me to smoke outside I would have thought twice about if I wanted to go up and down the stairs and probably wouldn't have smoked as much as I did. His stairs are almost vertical and the treads are higher than normal stairs so it would have been harder for me to go up and down them so I think I probably wouldn't have wanted to do them to often. When I was at my sisters she wouldn't let me smoke on her property so I had to walk around the corner to sit on the church steps to smoke or go out in the back and lean on the car to do it. Since I've been home I haven't been out of the house much and definitely haven't gone out to smoke. I have signs on my doors saying this is a smoke free zone and smoking isn't allowed in here but I've been doing it anyway. I almost took the signs down the other day but I didn't. Now I just have to let my friends who smoke know that the signs are true and there won't be any more smoking in here. At least I hope that I can keep this up.

I want to do this very badly and hope and pray that I can do this. It's going to take a lot of will power and I'm not sure if I have it. It's real hard to quit something you have been doing for most of your life. I started smoking when I was 9 years old as a way to get in the "in crowd" in the neighborhood we had just moved into. My mother had remarried just after I turned 9 and moved us from Conniticut to Mass. It was a total shock to me to move from my grandparents house to the house in Ashland. I didn't make friends to easily as it was and one of the ways I thought I'd fit in was to smoke. It seemed that all the kids my age or older were doing it. Heck I even went to the store to buy butts for my step-father so it wasn't to hard to buy some for myself. I couldn't remember sometimes when I went to get myself a pack if it was Winston's or Marlboro's that I liked. So for the first year half the time I didn't get the right ones. It was Marlboro's that I liked and after that first year I started inhaling. I hadn't done that for the first year. After that it was down hill. I stopped doing things that I had liked to do like running and playing sports like hockey. I started isolating more and I also started smoking pot and drinking. When I was messed up on either the drugs or drinking I came out of my shell more and was a totally different person. It seemed like I was looking at myself from the outside. I went real wild especially after my step-father died and my mother kind of turned her back on us kids. I guess you could say I was a wild child but not as bad as one of my sisters. I did things I'm not proud of and still think things would have been better for us kids if our mother wouldn't have married the second time. Of course if she hadn't I wouldn't be the person I am now.

So for 42 years I have been smoking. That's a lot of years and a lot of nicotine receptors. I need to keep taking the Chantix and keep trying every day not to light up. For right now I need to get the ashtray out from under the couch and empty it, wash it and put it away so I'm not tempted to light up in the house if I do have a slip. And I know I will have slips, I just have to get passed them and keep reminding myself that I can do this. I don't want to end up with lung cancer or some other form of cancer even though the odds are against me that I won't end up with some form of cancer. I just have to work hard and am going to ask people who read this to pray that I can do it. Thank you.