Smoking...

I have tried to give up smoking for years now. It's hard, but increasingly I am feeling a sense of urgency. I need to give up. None of my friends smoke, no one at my work smokes and, after recently jumping back into the dating scene, promoting myself as a smoker is rather embarassing - it also limits my options. On top of all this, smoking kills - we all know that one - and this year I would have been smoking for fourteen years, which is a hell of a long time. I have a bad cough and I will probably get lung cancer in my thirties if I continue to smoke.

This year, I decided that by the time I was 26 I would be a non-smoker. Well, I turned 26 last Wednesday and continued to smoke. What the hell is wrong with me? I have a stop smoking book, you may have heard of it Allen Carr's Easy way to give up smoking. I was meant to read it before my birthday but there was always something else better to do.

Well, last night I smoked the last cigarette in my packet and thought to myself, this is it. No more. As you can imagine (if you know what it's like to be a smoker), I am having intense cravings right now. But that's ok. Although I didn't read the entire book, I did get up to the point that explains cravings and how just one little cigarette can ruin everything as far as cravings go. It's basically just a nicotine "top-up" that depletes within an hour or so giving you more cravings. The book has a good analogy on smoking addiction. Carr compares nicotine addiction to wearing extremely tight shoes all the time, only to feel the pleasure and relief of taking them off. I like that one ;-) If you don't get it, think about it harder - sorry, I dont have the patience to explain it at this point in time.

So... any happy thoughts or energy sent my way to keep my head screwed on the right way would be greatly appreciated! Hopefully, in my next post I will be a full time non-smoker ;-)