Posted by Beth on 16 April 2007
The thought of quitting smoking makes my stomach lurch. I feel the muscles in my neck tightening and I have to light up immediately after the though crosses my mind.I think of all of the issues that I have to deal with on a daily basis. The stress of work is constant. The business that I am in is demanding, deadline-oriented and extremely dysfunctional. My family expects a lot out of me and I’m the only one that can be counted on to follow through on things.
It seems as if the only moments that are truly mine are the ones that I steal away for a cigarette. It calms my mind and settles every part of my being.
How can I ever truly let this go? Sure, I may be successful for a time. I could even stay smoke-free for six months or maybe a year, but something will trigger me at my weakest moment and I’ll come back to it. It will be my guilty pleasure. Perhaps I don’t really want to quit. Why should I live without cigarettes if they make me so happy, if they are apart of me? I’m so sick of people telling me what’s best for me; they don’t have to live my life.
Does this sound like you? I can certainly relate to these sentiments, as it’s the normal state of mind for anyone who has put a few days between them and their last smoke.
This post might be disturbing for folks who are in the first stages of cessation, but sometimes it’s good to be brutally honest. There is NOTHING easy about quitting, but if you keep it up it will kill you.
It will kill you. The only way this won’t happen is if something else kills you first.
So it’s really a matter of how badly you want to live, and whether or not you honestly want to endure an extremely painful death. When you have feelings like those that are illustrated in the first portion of this article, you might take a field trip to the cancer ward and find some poor bastard who is living out the last miserable days of their life in a mixed state of agony and mindless sedation from morphine.
Stay focused. If you really want to quit you can do it.
But it is ultimately your choice. And nobody else, even the people who love you the most, can make it for you.
Posted by Beth on 14 April 2007
My father is a smoker. He has no intention of quitting during his lifetime and he makes his opinion well known. In fact, he chooses to stay in hotels when he comes to visit because I don’t allow smoking in my home. I’m allergic to smoke, a reality that he is still unwilling to truly believe.
Because of our difference in opinion on the matter, we miss out on time spent together. Whether I visit him or he visits me, overnight visits are always spent in separate quarters. To me, we miss out on a lot that is to be had in a father/daughter relationship. A leisurely morning spent talking over coffee or the hours before bed that would normally be spent watching a movie, playing a board game or looking at family albums.
My father’s decision to smoke affects more than just his physical health. It affects the people around him and ultimately, the time that we spend together. In order to be together, one of us is uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable because my body has a physical reaction to second-hand smoke, and he may be uncomfortable because he’s being careful to blow the smoke away from my general direction or he may go outside to smoke. In any case, those visits only last for a matter of hours because we are both anxious to go back to resuming our normal lives.
I know that we all make our own decisions and we live with those consequences. Yet, I also know that my father’s addition to nicotine and my intolerance of his habit robs our relationship of precious time together because of the different choices we’ve made in our lifestyles.
So to all of the smokers who may be interested in quitting, please use the possibility of vastly improved relationships as encouragement. That benefit is, of course, second to the first benefit, which is extending your life span and living a fuller, happier life.
Posted by Beth on 11 April 2007
Years ago smoking was romanticized in Hollywood, and to some extent, smoking has had some staying power in the entertainment industry. I was watching a movie from the late eighties recently and noticed that there was smoking in a company boardroom. A current film would never depict such an outrageous scene now because there isn’t a boardroom in corporate America that would still allow smoking indoors. And we all remember the Audrey Hepburn days when smoking long, thin cigarettes in a lovely holder was very chic. I think that we can all agree that those days are long gone.
The smoking that we see in Hollywood now is seen as an endearing character flaw. Case in point, Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. She writes a sex column after partying all night with her friends, dating men, breaking up with men and generally making decisions that she second guesses and constantly discusses with her sympathetic friends. Carrie’s character is the eccentric one who must rely on her smoking habit to relieve stress and give her something to do while she’s thinking about the next sentence she will write for her column.
In defense of the writers for the show, Carrie’s friends chastised her for her habit and she eventually quits after one of her boyfriends refused to date a smoker.
So while Hollywood has made great strides in snuffing out the popularity of smoking in films, smoking can still be an intricate part of some characters, and young impressionable minds may still buy into the notion that smoking is cool.