Smokers’ corner

This is a peculiar time of year for a smoker. You drink more, you smoke more, then inevitably you catch the horrendous bug lurking in the air conditioning at work. You then spend the majority of the Christmas warm-up wheezing and spluttering like a Victorian peasant child with cholera, while continuing bravely to try and smoke -leaving you with that niggling chesty bellowing cough which just won’t budge.

In all of the non smoking literature I’ve seen, it’s generally cited that the physical urge should begin to wither away after around 2-3 weeks and ‘cravings’ should cease. It may have taken me over 2 months I feel like I’ve finally got there.

In all of my previous Decembers as a smoker, I have done exactly this. This year, however, in what seems to be the worst since records began in the office illness stakes, I’ve escaped relatively unscathed and, along with a touch of luck, I account this down to me not smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Last time round I decided that I was so competent at this whole quitting smoking lark that I could actually write my own manual to help others to follow my path towards a smoke-free existence. So confident was I that I suggested I could don a superhero costume and scamper around the city beneath the cover of darkness assisting Manchester’s would-be quitters in times of smoking peril.

Confidence in anything you apply yourself to can only be a good thing, but there is unfortunately a fine line between confidence and cocky complacency. After previously deciding that I should return to complete abstinence heading towards the festive partying period I have, for the last week or so, failed to heed my own warnings and continued to have little blips when drinking.

I’m pretty sure it was either me or the Chinese Philosopher Lao-tzu (I always get the two confused) who said that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one cigarette”. I’ll check the exact details of that quote later but I think that’s just about the gist of it and it’s quite prophetic for my current attempt at remaining a non-smoker.

Completely out of character, I have been partaking in a few ales here and there and have found myself having a couple of cigarettes. I’ve predictably succumbed to the temptations of festive indulgence that I had predicted could be my downfall so I don’t think I can start to design my superhero outfit just yet.

Luckily enough, however, it hasn’t transpired to be such a huge downfall after all. Since the start of this I figured that if I were to give in to smoking again then one or two could, and most probably would, lead me to crash and smoulder spectacularly. But I haven’t.

I’ve still not become a smoker again despite these brief dalliances and although it may seem like a bit of a cop out, I actually think I’m well on the way in my quest to banish cigarettes.

If there is one thing that I’ve discovered from researching the generally recommended techniques to stopping smoking, as I did last week, is that my approach to quitting has certainly not been orthodox. I’m not suggesting I’m some form of maverick of the quitting smoking game, more likely a bungling incompetent but it’s definitely working for me.

In what has been somewhat of a revelation to me, I don’t feel as though I really have a dramatic physical urge to smoke any more. On the odd occasions I have smoked recently, it’s felt a bit more of a fanciful impulse and I haven’t exactly hugely enjoyed them either, and then still continued to spend most of my time not smoking. Smoking being part and parcel of your daily life is the major thing that I needed to overcome and I’m continuing to do it. Smoking first thing in the morning, going for smoking breaks in work, lighting up every time you leave a building, getting up five times to go outside while you’re having a couple of drinks with mates, these are the major things aside from the obvious health implications of wanting to eradicate.

In all of the non smoking literature I’ve seen, it’s generally cited that the physical urge should begin to wither away after around 2-3 weeks and ‘cravings’ should cease. It may have taken me over 2 months I feel like I’ve finally got there. During my day to day life I don’t even think about smoking, much less obsess and curse the fact that I’m not allowed to smoke as I was doing at the start.

Recently I have drunkenly smoked a couple of times then have immediately returned to go about my days without it crossing my mind. Consequently I feel like the majority of my physical addiction has gone and all I have to do is continue in the same way and gradually remove the urge to want to smoke from my brain altogether along the way.

So, I may not be quiet as spectacular at quitting these fiendish little grief sticks as I’d thought, but in feeling like I’ve banished my physical urge I’ve not only shown myself that I can get through this long-term even if I do give in to occasional drunken stupidity and can look forward to a phlegm and splutter free Christmas for the first time in years.