From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Jan 21 2002 - 03:04:23 MST
animated silicon love doll wrote:
> i've been smoking off and on since i was about fifteen (four years, or so). about two thirds
> of that time i've smoked cloves. i want, and need, to quit. i don't have much faith in
> patches or gum; if nicotine is more addictive than heroin, like they tell us, then a gradual
Simply quit. Unlike with heroin, there are no "jones" strong
enough to kill you. I smoked 20 years and quit cold-turkey 11
years ago. Once I decided (meaning "to cut off any
alternative") it wasn't that bad. I was spacey and feeling
wierd for a week and a little so for a month but it was not
insurmountable. Do schedule some low pressure time in the very
beginning though.
Part of what helped me was imaginging a big fat Jesse Helms
(senator from my home tobacco state) sitting on a big pile of
tobacco mixed with the bodies of human victims, laughing
demonically and counting his gold. I imagined good friends of
mine who smoked and even me among the victims, robbed of even
this short life much less Singularity. And I got really, really
pissed. I would remember it every time I thought about giving
up and copping a smoke. Something else that helped was being so
determined to quit that even if the withdrawal killed me (which
it certainly couldn't) I would rather die than continue enslaved
to those damn poison sticks. Another thing that helped was
remembering that the oh so logical rationalizations that the
mind will come up with are really "the addiction talking".
Ignore those just as you would if a foreign entity could inject
thoughts straight into your brain. When you're addicted, that
isn't that far from the truth.
Even with all the above I did have brief back-sliding periods of
a month or less a few times in the last decade. But after being
clean for so long my body felt so poisoned by taking it up again
and I was so disgusted about buying into it that quitting from
those was much easier (although it was still work). I haven't
been tempted seriously in the last five years. It helps that my
original reaction to smoke (from before I started) has
reinstated itself. I choke and feel nauseated to be around it.
And I despise the way it makes my clothes smell to be
around smokers.
Good luck. You CAN do it. Once you are determined to.
- samantha
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