Letters to the Editor
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Coupla things
1. If you have never been a smoker, and I mean a long-term smoker, not a party/college/dabbling smoker, kindly STFU. I know y'll mean well, but just shut it.
2. Those claiming that nicotine is as or is more addictive that heroin or cocaine or meth or whatever have never witnessed another person's experience of withdrawal from those substances. Again, please STFU.
There is an industry devoted to marketing the popular belief that quitting is a long awful profitable process and that you won't succeed without expensive patches or gum or lozenges or prescription drugs or counseling or whatever the fad du semaine happens to be. The success rate with these products and services is criminally low.
If you have a preconceived notion that the experience of nicotine withdrawal is a horrific mindfuck and dread the notion of quitting, then it'll probably be a bad experience for you.
The colds and other physical problems we've related here have little to do with nicotine and much to do with sucking burning fumes of tobacco and dozens of mystery substances into our lungs for xx years. Nicotine won't kill you in such doses, but the delivery mechanism is a real bitch.
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how I dealt....
aw, yes, yes and yes....I quit last June. I also had quit drinking a few months before...since then I have lost and then GAINED weight, had a root canal, but it's my skin that has me baffled....acne and rosacea, weird rashes on my back and chest. Never looked weirder or worse. Beige and feisty phlegm every morning that I hork up in the shower. Very hot. Thing is with smoking came a lot of unconsciousness surrounding my body and what I did to it for 20 years. For 20 years I assiduously avoided any and all discussion with my conscience about the toxic havoc I had unleashed inside me, all in the name of mild boredom, surmountable addiction, "stress", weight management, and "looking cool". Now that i'm really IN my body I'm getting a good look around. Sometimes I think too much focus is my problem, and you know what? When I turn my thoughts to helping others, to other people and things...my physical body just heals. I don't think throwing more Rebecca Focus on the flaws will help. Get busy doing something, anything that has nothing to do with you, for long periods of time, and you'll see how things straighten out. also Perscriptives makes the BEST coverup.
cheers! am a fan...
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tougher than 3 year old beef jerky!
I applaud the author. I don't smoke but putting myself mentally in her shoes I think I probably would have folded like a cheap card table after the first phlegm glob.
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Congrats, Rebecca
Contemplating another quit attempt, I needed to read this today. Warts and all, I still found motivation in your story.
You mentioned getting a canker sore early on... the last time my boyfriend tried to quit, he got a mouthful of canker sores and had to seek treatment. His dentist told him it was plausible they were connected (pH levels changing, etc) and he lit up a smoke on the way home after applying the perscribed ointment on his dozen or so sores. I fear he'll never try again because of that.
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Dont #%*@ing kid yourself, its absolutely all tied in
But seriously! Who quits smoking and THEN drops their cardio routine. Had you stayed with that, it might have been a little easier. The nicotine levels in ciggies are off thre scale these days.
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If I had your attitude
I'd feel like crap, too. Based, that is, on your previous writings.
Welcome to the real world. Slingback feminist postmodernism, of the kind where you attack/make fun of anyone who doesn't share your narrow values, works only if you have the advantages of youth, friends in the right places who think just like you, and affirmative action. As you age, you become more like Deborah Dickerson, or Camille Paglia. Just as objectionable, but no longer Sex In the City cute.
Take some comfort, though. Judging from its Camille/Hillary/Deborah worship, Salon is aging right along with you.
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Pepperoni for health
The only way for your body to compete against all the wonderful weird toxins and emerging microbes of the current age is to strenghten it. This means the occasional pepperoni pizza or heart clogging steak sub. Not one, not two, but four, five or six vodka cocktails at a sitting at least once a month. You must train your system to deal with the bad guys.
And lay off the yoga. That's not exercise - that's a joint ruination system. (I can break a good sweat by sitting still in a 90-degree room. What the hell does yoga have to do with it?) It's also as disgustingly virtuous as the no-smoking fanatics. Go climb a mountain instead.
Seriously, I know so many clean living people who get the flu every year, of great severity and duration. But you can practically feel the virtue seeping from their pores, the dusty scent of echinacea.
Not that I'm not going to have to quit smoking one of these days, and I am not looking forward to it. Oddly enough, when I was in the Bahamas recently, I barely smoked at all, and didn't miss it. But then again, there is no stress in Paradise, is there?
For a funny take, back in the day, when Salon was actually maybe a little counter-cultural and edgy...
http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/02/08/i_smoke/index.html
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Why can't self-pride carry us through?
I quit smoking about the same time Rebecca did in October after five years. I was one of those kids who smoked in college and grad school to be somewhat cool- hey, I was living in Hyde Park, even our senators/presidential candidates smoked.
Since then I've been running almost daily, a practice I never did while smoking- and still feeling tired, puffy and vulnerable. It feels as though my youth all but disappeared since stopping. Even more interesting has been gaining the sudden approval of the non-smokers of the world, more than that the anti-smokers, as if I quit to make some grand geopolitical statement and really honor my liberalism. Fact is, a pack of premium cigarettes in Cook County now runs about $7.50.
The bus ads are true, my teeth are whiter and breath is cleaner, but that's about all. Smoking, especially in places where it's banned, still brings an odd sense of autonomy yet still opens we the smoker up to a community outside the mainstream. Not smoking means sitting in that social gathering and not having a reason to step outside for a moment and chat with people otherwise overlooked.
Cheers to Rebecca for pointing out all the real difficulties in quitting.