Smokers’ corner

I was moaning last week about it being cold and claiming it was tempting me to smoke when outdoors, merely for the warmth. In retrospect, the turn in the weather has actually provided me with an unlikely source to combat quitting smoking. I don’t really want to tell anyone this, but I will...

Christmas is a time for indulgence. Food, drink, crap television - whatever your vice, it’s the time of year where it’s socially acceptable to think “ah sod it, I’ll make up for it in January”.

Being able to see my breath when walking to work in the morning allows me to, pathetically, pretend I’m smoking an imaginary cigarette complete with faux-smoke. I look a bit odd when doing this but with my dignity long since eroded and the urge to smoke starting to rear its yellow stained head a little more often than I’d hoped at this stage, it’s gone some way to help.

Last weekend I went to Birmingham for a night out and having drank my bodyweight in Havana club rum, I ended up having a drunken cigarette. Interestingly, I didn’t feel particularly guilty, nor did I want any more after I’d had one. In an ideal world that would be my level. I’ve often admired (and by admired I mean secretly hated), the ability of some people have to be ‘social smokers’.

These people nonchalantly lay their hat midway between being a smoker and not. In my last article I differentiated between the mental compunction to want to smoke and the physical dependency and I think these social smokers give way to random bouts of the former while sidestepping the malevolent commitment of the latter. The utter bastards.

As much as I would like to be able to do this, it’s just not feasible for me. Nearly every person you’ll ever meet will say “oh I’ve got an addictive personality” without any evidence to support it, much like other arbitrary statements like “it’s just my luck” yadda yadda.

I, unfortunately, try and deny any accusation of having an addictive personality yet it’s wildly obvious to anyone who knows me that I could probably get addicted to celery if I had it enough, and if it wasn’t the physical embodiment of disappointment in vegetable form.

So with my smoking, it’s all or nothing. I either need to completely abstain from Satan’s little leafy coffin nails or go full-blown Dot Cotton.

I have now had a couple of cig’s during this challenge which, by rights, could have caused me to dive off the smokey wagon with frenzied vigour and chain-smoke a 20 deck within the hour. The fact that I haven’t could perhaps indicate that I’ve had the mental strength and commitment to overcome these little tasters of temptation and stick to the task in hand? I could think that. But I’m British and northern and I must therefore take an appropriately self-deprecating outlook with a subtle smattering of positivity.

I’ve rationalised that I’ve been stupid to tempt myself by having these couple of ‘cheeky ones’ and if I continue to do so, then it’s only a matter of time before I’m again happily tooting myself into a wheezy nausea. The smattering of positivity in this being that this can only act as an epiphany to give myself a slap on the wrists to stop it.

Keeping things in perspective, having one cig on a drunken night is hardly a complete disaster and is far removed from how I was prior to this challenge, comfortably smoking 15 a day, more if I had a drink. However, with the Christmas period edging preposterously closer, it’s important to stay focused and mindful of my own shortcomings. Christmas is a time for indulgence. Food, drink, crap television - whatever your vice, it’s the time of year where it’s socially acceptable to think “ah sod it, I’ll make up for it in January”. Problem is, ‘Christmas time’ seems to start earlier every year – the markets are up, there is talk of Christmas parties and with this comes the temptation to indulge.

If I did continue to give in to the odd temptation here and there as a one-off, the onset of the Christmas mentality may lead me to give in more and more and I’d soon be back to square one and have to write a damning confessional for my next article and concede that I’ve failed.

This, I’m not prepared to do. Therefore, a return to complete fascist prohibition is in order.

The plan to begin swimming as part of a newfangled smoke-free health regime has not taken off quite as well as I’d hoped. Largely because I’ve not yet been swimming.

I’ll probably go next week or something.