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| Photo by David Aeschliman |
Okay. So, um, you know how when you've had a cold for a week or more and you can't breathe out your nose and you're really uncomfortable, but at the same time you've become resigned to the discomfort because you don't remember what it felt like to be able to breathe freely? Well, the beginning of the second week of Octsoberfest was like that. Despairing acceptance of the near-constant craving for cigs. I couldn't remember what it felt like not to crave.
That was Monday & Tuesday. Wednesday through Friday it suddenly got easier, maybe because I was busy. It seems like I hardly thought about not-smoking and not-drinking at all. I did have a dream that I'd chosen to smoke a cigarette. I enjoyed the dream-cigarette, but I also worried that having smoked one would make it harder to resist smoking in the future. When I woke up I felt completely satisfied; perhaps my brain tricked itself into releasing the feel-good chemicals? At any rate, my craving for a cig was satisfied by the dream for most of the day. So the dream worked, and other things that helped this week were tea, deep breaths, long walks, and romance novels.
And then the weekend came and I went to Wordstock (which I'd been excited about for months), and I was overwhelmed by all the people and energy and got stressed out, and I really really REALLY wanted a cigarette and a drink ALL DAY Saturday, which made me a bit grumpy. And it occurred to me too that perhaps nicotine and alcohol help numb me to other people's energy, or maybe I was more sensitive to it because I've been spending so much time alone at home. Maybe both.
On Sunday I woke up feeling like I might have caught the flu and it was gestating, and my first thought was to go have a margarita because I like to pretend that drinking a mixture of tequila and citrus juice kills all the bad germs...I don't know that it doesn't, but I also don't know that it does. Instead I drank cranberry juice and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice mixed with soda water. Didn't taste nearly as good, for the record.
But the biggest thing this week was realizing that I'm going to have to connect soon with one or more really compelling reasons for quitting smoking, or this will not stick. "For my health" doesn't cut it. So I've begun writing my Dear John letter to cigarettes (as per my friend Niko's suggestion), the purpose of which is to acknowledge all the things I've enjoyed about my relationship with cigarettes but also to explain why I'm leaving them, why the relationship isn't working for me anymore. It's still under construction; I might post it at the end of Octsoberfest. Would seem fitting.
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