IT’S now getting on for a month and a half since my last cigarette.
In fact, it’s probably longer than that. To tell you the truth, I was never one to count the days, which only brings home to me how fortunate I’ve been in comparison to other giver-uppers with my relative lack of tribulations.
As you know, my original plan was to stop smoking at midnight on New Year’s Eve and then record the hideous withdrawal symptoms for posterity. The best laid plans of mice and nicotine junkies, however, are made to fall apart, and I ended up smoking my last cigarette on Christmas Day before a cold temporarily robbed me of any urge to smoke. I’ve had no withdrawal symptoms worthy of the name. The odd pang, I’ll grant you, especially when I have a pint pot in my hand, but nothing drastic enough to traumatise me.
As I said, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve known people whose attempts to give up, even if successful, were an exercise in miserable torment. “If I can only survive another day…” “If I can only survive another week…” Some were still going through this sort of thing after months away from the weed – and I was one of them during my last (failed) attempt to give up many years ago.
I have a feeling that your state of mind when you smoke your last cigarette has a lot to do with your success or failure. I don’t mean that in a touchy-feely motivational sense, although there is nothing wrong with touchy-feely motivational techniques so long as they get the job done.
I do not stand in front of the mirror and tell myself that I’m a non-smoker.
I am not a non-smoker and I can’t see myself as ever being a non-smoker. Rather, I am a smoker who became thoroughly bored and disgusted by smoking and decided not to do it again.