I quit smoking five days ago, on Tuesday, after 36 years of smoking numerous cigarettes every day. That first day, I was scanning through the Boing Boing feed and came across this graph, which was originally posted here. Those first couple days were full of weird congruencies, reminding me of how bad tobacco is and how much I’d gain by quitting.
As Harold commented, “Begs the question: How do you know what your dog’s anus tastes like?” Not sure the answer to that, but I’m not going to smoke a cigarette to find out.
The weird thing about quitting was the response I got from both my M.D. and a cognitive psychologist I visited for advice.
My M.D. was horrified that I had quit, “cold turkey,” as he said, without consulting with him to “make a plan.” Dude, said I, I have a plan (don’t smoke) and I hardly think that I’m going into that good night cold turkey. I had bought a box of 2 mg nicotine gum the day before. Later that same day, the cognitive shrink told me pretty much the same thing. Neither of them could grasp that they should be using the past tense as regards me and smoking. Throughout our conversations, they insisted on saying “when you quit.”
I had already read that one should pick a “special day” to quit. Tuesday, of course, was the day that Chief Justice Roberts fucked up on giving the oath to President Obama (oh, joyous words!), making the day pretty damn special for me and millions of others. Quitting Bush, quitting smoking: makes sense to me. Gaining Obama, gaining a smoke-free life: ditto.
The thing about quitting is that the nicotine replacement therapy is more expensive than smoking (well, in the short term, obviously). The 2 mg gum is about 75 cents per piece. So, in search of a cheaper remedy, I contacted my insurance company. Turns out, Washington citizens are entitled to free or low-cost replacement therapy–but I guess you have to be insured, which I am. So I called Group Health and they connected me with a “quitting coach.” I had a 20-minute conversation with Tommy the Coach and he, at least, was enthusiastic that I had quit. Tommy the Coach read me the prescribed use of the gum: “You must chew at least 10 pieces per day” (about the same as the number of cigarettes I’d been smoking for the past year or so) for 30 minutes per piece. I said, “Sure, will do,” with my fingers crossed. I’ve been chewing more like four pieces per day, as I break them in half to avoid the nausea that results from a dose of nicotine entering my blood stream through my stomach rather than my lungs.
So far, so good. I figured it’d be a lot harder than it has been. The worst thing has been what I’ve been describing to friends as “the phantom limb”: the one that keeps dragging an imaginary cigarette to my lips. Makes sense, though: I’ve just amputated a habit I’ve been indulging in for 36 years. The neural pathways are deeply ingrained with that motion. But the weird, uncomfortable sensation of the phantom limb is already fading, thank Goddess, and my brain, old dog, is apparently still capable of learning new tricks.