BLOG IN YOUR FACE

I am not one to sit here and lecture on the topic of everyone’s favorite little cancer sticks. However, I am going to do so anyway and I’ll tell you why: You see, I freeking LOVE smoking cigarettes and nothing will ever change that…NOTHING…EVER. I had my first cigarette at the age of thirteen or fourteen and smoked on and off; socially and alone; drunk and sober, all the way up and past the age of 25 (currently). Fortunately, I have all but completely given up the habit (not the addiction) within the last five or six months. Why and how? Because of Jaci, that’s why. She is one of the only things in this world that I love more than a good smoke. I am blessed to have her as motivation to keep me away from those sweet, luscious cigarettes. She seriously would call off the wedding if she caught me lighting up one more smoke between now and then. How did I manage, for the most part to finally say “Screw It” and refuse to give in (to smoking) anymore? I had quite an unconventional method, which I will discuss shortly; but first, I would like to give you a few scenarios:

Scenario #1 What it actually feels like to have chronic bronchitis:
Your breathing passages have thousands of little finger like hairs that line the insides of them all the way down your trachea and into your lungs. These little guys are call cilia. They brush back and forth and catch all kinds of dust and other nasty stuff that you breathe in and through the brushing motion they slowly start working it back up the way it came. Eventually it triggers a tickle and you hack something up and spit it out. When you smoke, the mucus down there gets so think that the cilia can’t even move anymore which means they can’t expel impurities anymore. This leaves only one way for the lungs to clean themselves and that’s when you hear the beautiful sounds of the chunky smoker’s cough.

Problem is, that mucus gets so think that no matter how much you cough and hack, it ain’t comin’ up!  So bacteria get in there in you airways and set up shop. Have you ever seen those Mucinex commercials? Then you know what I am talking about. Anyway, the bacteria cause the airways to become permanently red and swollen and you get a cough that never ever goes away no matter how many REEEEE-CO-LAAHHHHHHs you suck down. Once chronic bronchitis gets advanced enough you will probably get pneumonia a couple times a year and you will never get a good night’s sleep unless you sleep propped up in a chair and we all know how comfortable that is.

Scenario #2 What it is like to have emphysema:

First you are going to find yourself a little out of breath. No big deal right? Well, once the advance symptoms of emphysema set in you are in for a heck of a ride and it happens QUICK. Pretty soon you won’t be able to walk even a city block without wheezing and having to stop for a break. Then you are going to go to your doctor and he is going to prescribe you some inhalers and steroids and those aren’t going to work so you go back. Then you will get sent to a specialist and you will get your lungs scanned, wherein you will be told that you have emphysema which is absolutely 100 percent irreversible. You will have to go back very often for blood work, chest x-rays, dobutamine stress tests, CAT scans and much more just so Doc can tell you that you are slowly dying! You might be able to get a lung transplant but if you are over 50 years old it will most likely kill you. Expect to lose about 15% of what little lung function you have left every ten years until you have none left. Your nervousness about impending doom will surely require some expensive anti-depressants and put a whole bunch of stress on your family. If you make it to your 60^th birthday, you won’t be able to blow out any candles; in fact, emphysema patients normally can’t even blow out a match.

Scenario #3: What it is really like to have lung cancer:

First, you will probably catch a nasty case of pneumonia and when you go to the hospital they will scan your lungs and notice a whole bunch of tumors all over them. Or, you might have extremely painful shoulder and back pain until you can’t stand it any more and when you see your doctor he’ll tell you that it is because the cancer has spread to your spine and kidneys and he won’t be talking about Zodiac signs!

Most Lung cancer is inoperable so if your doctor doesn’t bring up surgery, don’t bother asking. I hope your family owes you some major favors because they are going to have to drive you to radiation treatment five days a week for five weeks. Then you get two weeks off and then repeat process! Radiation will burn pretty bad and give you spasms as painful as heart attacks. After the radiation doesn’t work you get to start on that yummy little stuff called Chemotherapy, which is simply a fancy term for poison. You will probably get thrush from the chemotherapy, which is a yeast infection in your mouth and your Cool Mint Listerine won’t help that out a bit. If you survive that, you may be cancer free! Or you could be worse than when you started and it could have spread to your brain, liver and bones. Even if the cancer goes away, it will come back. Lung Cancer is the bad boy of organ cancers. You get about 4 months to live without treatment and maybe two years with treatment. Maybe since you are dying you can take one last exotic trip…oh, wait…probably not since that would require you to bring at least two oxygen tanks for every day that you will be gone. Same goes with emphysema there.

Something tells me they don’t make Louie Vuitton or Prada bags to carry around your O2 tanks.

Alright, back to my rant and rave: I went to college for Sociology and Allied Healthcare and I did a lot of research on addiction (including some “field” research, if you will). One thing that I learned is that scare tactics DO NOT work when it comes to trying to get somebody to break a habit. In fact, there is really nothing that we can do; it is all up to the individual and when and if they are ready then they are ready and that’s that. So don’t consider the scenarios above to be scare tactics. Consider them just some informative information (how do you like the double-word-grammar-no-no thing?) about what your future holds if you are a smoker.

Back to me: Like I said before, I have smoked cigarettes for the past 10 years or so on and off. I still slip up every once in awhile and it is always because I have no will power after a couple of beers. But as far as breaking the habit, I am fortunate enough to have had tremendous success. Once someone is addicted to smoking, they will always and forever be addicted. Take my Grandpa for instance. He kept his smokes in his front pocket. Even though he quit smoking years and years ago, you can see him pat his breast pocket when he gets nervous. It is the same with me. I crave cigarettes everyday but I have learned to manage that craving to the point where I simply don’t feel like smoking anymore. It is hard to explain unless you have been a smoker and quit as well. I gave up the habit by doing the following things (and may I remind you, my method was unconventional):

Smoke Away System

You may have heard of it. It is a series of vitamins and herbs that supposedly cleanse the body of impurities and yada, yada, yada. I don’t know about all that. I took the vitamin regime nonetheless. What really helped me were the emergency homeopathic medicine pellet things that also came with it. Whenever I really wanted a cigarette I just popped one of those under my tongue and it dissolves rather quickly and actually helps take off the edge.

Stimulants

Nicotine is a drug called a stimulant. So while I was trying to break the habit I started using other stimulants because my body just craved something of that nature. I drank a lot of coffee, ate a lot of chocolate and used nasal spray.

Water

I was always pissing like a race horse because I carried around a big Nalgene bottle of water. Sometimes chugging big mouthfuls of icy water helped with cravings.

Binge Eating

I allowed myself to eat whatever I dang well pleased. I ate and ate and ate and ate. Cheeseburgers from McDonalds, Skittles and Salt and Vinegar Pringles were my favorites, but trust me, for 2 or 3 weeks I hardly ate a morsel of healthy food. I was a major fatty-boom-batty and I gained somewhere in the ballpark of ten pounds. I know this isn’t healthy but the thing is, those temporary ten pounds were a whole heck of a lot better than the health problems I potentially faced if I were to smoke the rest of my life. The way I see it, with the exception of rat poison and pizza that hasn’t cooled off yet, anything is better to shove in your mouth than cigarettes. As long as binge eating is serving the purpose of breaking the cigarette habit, I am all for it. Who cares about the weight gain and cholesterol-shooting-through-the-roof. That stuff can be temporary if you choose for it to be. The major side effects of smoking are far from temporary. It’s a fair trade-off in my book.

The Little Game I Made Up

This one is a little hard to explain. The thing is, I did not quit cold turkey. I wanted to see just how much of my cravings were genuine and how many of them were temporary. The results were pretty surprising. I found out that I really didn’t need as many cigarettes in a day as my body and mind would have me believe. Here is what I did:

If I felt the urge to smoke I would look at the clock. If it was, for example, 12:00 I would tell myself that if I was still thinking about smoking at 12:05, then I must really need a cigarette. If I looked at the clock and caught it at exactly 12:05 then I would allow myself to have a cigarette. If I looked back at the clock and it was 12:06, or any time after 12:05 for that matter, I would not allow myself to have a cigarette and the five minute clock would start over. This is because when we think we need a cigarette, the craving usually only lasts a few seconds and we forget about it and our mind wanders to something else. It was amazing how many times I would look at the clock and it would be 12:37 and I had completely forgotten about wanting a cigarette. That felt good to know that I held off and did not give into that fraction of a second of temptation.

Yeah I know it is a silly little game, but like I keep saying: My method was unconventional. It worked for me. After  playing the 5-minute game for awhile I began to increase the time intervals to 10, 15, 20 minute etc. Pretty soon I was going hours and hours without thinking about smoking.

Tried to Lay Off the Boozing

This was and is the hardest and the only time I can’t seem to completely give up smoking. Every once in awhile when I am out and about and I have had a drink or so, I will bum a cigarette off someone or even go and buy a pack somewhere. Then I feel like crawling in a hole and dying afterward because I get so upset with myself. If you are a smoker, you know how hard it is to not smoke when you drink. I should take my own advice when I say that if you are serious about quitting smoking, you would do well to not mess with alcohol during the process. It makes things so difficult and can ruin weeks and months of progress in one night.

Don’t get me wrong: I think smoking is cool and all; I mean it must be cool if Dean Martin did it. Dean Martin is like the TARE on any scale of awesomeness. He sets the standard. Woops, sorry…anyway…smoking is cool and all but it is just not worth it. Everyday I wake up and hope that I never smoke again. Not because I don’t enjoy smoking, but because I want to be around to watch Jaci and my children get into their first car accident and hear them whine and complain the first time they step in a steaming pile of dog crap. Those are things I just don’t want to miss on account of being dead. And also, I choose to pick my own poison and I don’t choose chemotherapy. I choose Jack Daniels.

Feel free to comment below. You may need to click on the article’s title (headline) in order to open up the comment field below. You may also e-mail me any thoughts you might have to ahubbard13@bloginyourface.com and if I like what you have to say I will post it alongside this blog. If I don’t like what you have to say I may also post it alongside this blog along with my personal comments on where you should shove it!