mainsqueeze's Diaryland
Diary
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quittin' time
Taken from paper journal, entry dated 5-13-2007:
Well, I made a decision yesterday, one that anyone who knows me will be shocked to hear: I am going to quit smoking. I'm not one of those self-loathing smokers (although Dan may disagree with that) who is perpetually trying to quit--I LOVE SMOKING. I do. I love it. I love sitting on the patio with a cigarette and a notepad and writing about my day. I love drinking a beer after work, a pack of smokes on the table next to me and earphones in. I really, really like smoking. What I do not like, however, is that I have had to make two trips to the hospital over the past six months due to smoking-related illness. Ever coughed so hard you burst blood vessels in your lungs? I have, and it was scary. Every morning when I get out of bed, I nearly double over with the force of my hacking cough. In fact, the last time I went to the doctor he told me that I had actually developed not just chronic bronchitis but smokers' asthma, as well. I like smoking. I don't want to quit. But damnit, I am going to. I have to.
I started smoking when I was about fifteen or so, for two reasons that my teenaged self found perfectly logical and sane: 1) To make a boy that I had recently broken up with think I was cool; 2) Because somebody told me it would help me lose weight. I started off with Marlboro Light 100's in 1998, walked to the Roadhouse Casino every couple of days and bought my smokes ($5 a pack) from the cigarette machine next to the bathroom when nobody was looking. I smoked before school at the bus stop and behind the welding wing at lunchtime, always with a gaggle of fellow students--it was never fun to light up alone. As the years passed, I started smoking more and more, ditching classes with Matthew and smoking endlessly while doing doughnuts in the parking lot. I smoked with Nikki over coffee in the morning while she read celebrity gossip mags or when we watched television together. I smoked with Jeromy and Steve out on the balcony of their old apartment and then after Jeromy quit, with just Steve, at night, talking about music and horror movies and why Gwar was so awesome. After five years, I found myself craving a cigarette immediately upon waking, before coffee or breakfast or anything. In 2004 I switched to Marlboro Milds after I came down with a wicked respiratory infection that left me feverish and babbling and still--STILL--unable to quit. The lights were too harsh and actually hurt to inhale, so the obvious answer was to just change to a menthol cigarette. Right? More of that good ol' smoker logic. My habit began to spiral out of control once I took a supervisory position at a local casino-- being a boss means you are subject to less supervision, which means more screw-around time, which means more opportunities to light up. Two packs a day has been the average for the past three years.
I'm not really entirely sure why I have finally made the choice to quit. There are three or four main factors-- my boss actually told me that I need to cut back at work, and any addiction that threatens my job is one that I will not tolerate. Dan has been riding my ass HARD over the past few weeks, and his arguments actually make sense. See, smokers KNOW that it isn't good for us. We do, we understand it, so repeating that over and over is not going to help. Dan goes the "social conscience" route, or the "how hypocritical of you" route, both of which seem to be a bit more effective than the standard pleas of "But it's so bad for you!" I don't like that climbing stairs has become a little bit of a challenge lately-- actually, I can climb the stairs okay, but I have a hard time catching my breath once I'm at the top. At my physical exam last month, my spirometry results indicated that I have a lung age of 53 years old. The broken blood vessel beats all, though-- coughing up blood is a hell of a wake-up call, you know?
3:40 a.m. - 2007-05-26
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