Say no to nicotine

May 31st is Say No to Nicotine Day. I gave up smoking twelve or more years ago and I was a chain smoker. I remember one very busy job in export when I had four phones, four ashtrays next to them and a cigarette burning in each. Once in a while the Managing Director would show up and say "you know you're not allowed to smoke here, don't you?' To which I always replied 'Oh, yes, I do know.' And I carried on puffing.
Do I miss smoking? Well, no not really. There is really only one cigarette that you absolutely enjoy if you are completely honest and that is the first one in the morning before your mouth - and breath - start to taste like the bottom of a parrot cage. Everything else you don't taste, you just need to get enough nicotine and stuff into your system.
Whenever something upset me, I reached for a cigarette as some kind of antidote. Did it help? No, never did. Why did I think puffing on a cigarette might help in a crisis? Hard to say, really. Certainly logic didn't have anything to do with it.
Am I glad I stopped smoking? You bet.
Was it hard to give up? Not really. Of course I stopped smoking when I first got married and in both my pregnancies. I tried stopping a good few times after that but without success. Then one day I bought a copy of Alan Carr's book which was in a sale. I consigned it to the back of my bookcase and meant to have a look at it in the distant future. But it sort of haunted me, knowing it was there. Everyone of my acquaintance who had stopped smoking attributed it to this book. It was kind of scary. Do I want to read it and stop smoking or do I want to continue smoking and read it when I'm around 80 years old or possibly later? In the end curiosity won out and I started reading it. Half way through I knew I was going to be able to stop.
I still remember when I had my last cigarette. Not your midnight, tomorrow is a new day stuff. I had three cigarettes left one Saturday morning. I finished my breakfast and smoked my usual cigarette. Went shopping, did a bit of housework, had the second last one. Then I sat out in the Spring sunshine on my balcony, made myself a cup of tea and took out the last cigarette and smoked it.  .
My family didn't notice I had stopped. I wasn't cranky. Yes, I felt something was missing for a few days. At work it was strange not to go downstairs with the smokers and hover at the side of the building (I worked in a no smoking building as you will have gathered). But I got accustomed to it all much faster than I had imagined.
I am so glad I stopped smoking!

Goodbye Lady Nicotine

I was a chain smoker.  I'd tried to stop more times than a politician talks about austerity. I remember once doing really well for a week and then a colleague brought me 200 duty frees and I thought what a shame to waste them and hey presto I was back to where I started.

Of course I read all those horror stories about what smoking does to you.  Then I stopped reading about it.  Sure I had a cough, sure I had no control over my smoking and would still do it even when smothered with a cold.  But nothing was going to happen to me.  So I reasoned.

One day at work a colleague gave me the Alan Carr book on how to stop smoking.  I skimmed through it, not really wanting to read it.  I just wasn't ready to give up yet.  So I gave her back the book after ten days and she'd started smoking again by then so I figured it couldn't be that effective.

Eight years ago while prowling round the bookshops on holiday I came across Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking again.  It was actually on special offer so I just bought it, thinking I'd have another look at it some time.  Back home I put it in the furthest corner of the bookcase where I wouldn't see it. I already worked in a no-smoking building and had to nip down four flights of stairs in order to have a cigarette and as I had a busy job I sometimes didn't get to smoke more than two or three cigarettes during the day. At home I had long ago taken to smoking outside regardless of the weather.  In all I smoked between ten to fifteen cigarettes a day and I couldn't stop.  Yet Alan Carr's book bothered me.  I was very conscious of it there in the book case.  One day I took it out and skimmed through the first few pages.  Glowing stories of people who stopped smoking with no side effects did not impress me much but then I came to the chapter headed Warning.  I can't remember the exact wording but I know he wrote that maybe the reader was scared to read on in case they had to stop smoking immediately. He said to keep smoking while reading the book. Suddenly I felt that here was someone who knew what smokers were all about, someone who understood that panicky what-am-I-going-to-do-without-a-cigarette feeling.  And I started reading the book.

That was over eight years ago.  I haven't smoked since.  I remember that when I finished the book I still had three cigarettes left and I decided that when I had smoked them, that was it.  I smoked my last cigarette at around one p.m. on a Saturday. I still recall the sense of finality, of being finally free.  My family didn't notice that I'd stopped.  I wasn't bad tempered. I didn't feel any of the usual withdrawal symptoms.  Sure, it felt a bit strange at first.  Something was missing, especially after a meal or when having a coffee with the girls,  but not so badly missing that I wanted to smoke again.  In fact whenever I thought about smoking I remembered what I'd learned in Carr's book.  Nearly everyone would like to stop but they are afraid of that empty feeling. Carr's idea was to take that fear away and he certainly succeeded in my case!

So Goodbye Lady Nicotine. We had a time of it but I sure don't miss you!