Observations of a Misfit

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November 05, 2007

When The Author Finally Quits

Today is my one week smokaversary (just made that up). Yes, I quit smoking. It is a bigger shock to me than to you, I assure you.

I have been happily, shamelessly, blithely puffing away on cigarettes off and on since I was about twelve years old; and I’ve been smoking pretty steadily since I was about 25. Since I have a birthday coming up in the late 40s range, you can probably do the math.

Every year around this time, the idea of quitting crosses my mind for many reasons: I’m not getting any younger and I know the cumulative effect of smoking will eventually catch up to me; cigarettes are getting more ridiculously expensive and I resent supporting the government and fat tobacco barons; and, let’s face it, being a smoker is being a social pariah; never mind that your chances of meeting a nice guy are reduced exponentially.

There were other factors that weighed heavily in my decision to actually quit, including the illnesses and deaths of a couple of close family, and a cancer scare I had earlier in the fall that brought my mortality quite close to home (although planning my funeral was kind of fun).

On Monday October 29, with most of a new carton of cigarettes still in my freezer that I bought with my $5 birthday coupon from Lorillard Tobacco Company (Happy Birthday! We are pleased to give you $5 toward your next carton of cigarettes and cheerfully cut 15 years off your life!), I made the decision to quit for good.

After some research on various methods, I chose laser treatment, which gave me a big endorphin buzz for a few days to get over the bite of the withdrawal. I had my booster buzz today and can go back for a third any time before six months.

I threw out an open pack of Newports and gave away the remaining eight packs to the guy who runs the convenience store nearby. You know you are SERIOUS when you have 8 packs of cigarettes in your freezer and you up and quit. I traded them for a case of spring water. Yes, he got the better end of that deal, but I don’t care. He’s a good guy and I like his store.

I had no idea what would entail the withdrawal symptoms; I expected crabbiness, short-temperedness, ravenous hunger, impatience, depression, mild psychosis.... but I sure didn’t expect chronic sleeplessness!

Every night for the past seven nights it’s as if some cosmic alarm clock is playing a joke on me, waking me up every single hour for the next five hours. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat, sometimes I dream about sleeping. Maybe it was all the celery I’ve been eating. But, no matter what I do, I can't sleep more than two hours at a time.

Getting through the morning (when I never smoked) and the afternoon (when I rarely smoked), or driving in the car (where I almost never smoked) or calling on clients (where I never smoked) or running any errands should be no problem. It’s the 6 PM – 12 AM slot that will be challenging. I chain smoked half cigarettes between 8 PM and midnight, and I rarely, if ever, wrote anything without something burning in the ashtray.

If I had to do it over, I quit on a long a weekend when I could be up all night and not worry about functioning too much the next day. Had I known, I might have planned it differently. But, just as well. I had to quit and damn the torpedoes.

I trust my body knows what it’s doing with this insomnia, nausea, migrating aches, and semi-catatonia.

Of course, I called my mom to whine, since that’s what moms are for. She did not experience insomnia when she quit smoking. I remember she became a frothing maniac, fired everyone in the office, got really froggy and we were all ready to tie her down and give her a shotgun of tobacco smoke to calm her down.

On Halloween, I had no cigarettes in the house to tempt me. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, I walked around the neighborhood without smoking. I brushed my teeth like 47 times (I’m going to have the sparkliest teeth on the planet) and took a nap before the trick-or-treating.

Surprisingly, despite the lack of good sleep, I have not hallucinated, fallen down a flight of stairs, confessed to terr-ist activities, or accepted a marriage proposal. Deep in my cellular makeup, deep in my bones is this powerful nicotine addiction. I have no psychological needs whatsoever. I have no interest in smoking. But my body is NOT happy. It’s like being tortured by the KGB.

Things really did not get better, as was promised.

TO BE CONTINUED