GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or thinking of quitting, please -- join us! You can also click the GUS tag to view all diary posts.
Good morning, GUSsacks! After an extremely stressful weekend that required a visit to the doctor to get over, it feels really good to be back with you wonderful people. But just as every storm has its rainbow, my bad weekend also has its important lesson. Join me after the break for details....
It isn't so much that I fell off the wagon this weekend.
It's more like two huge crossbeams, marked 'DEPRESSION' and 'STRESS', caught me smack in the forehead and left me spread-eagled and half-conscious in the middle of the road.
Actually, it was stress that hit me first; a call at 11:30 on Friday night from a girlfriend I haven't seen in three months. She's got a lot of family issues that I'm not at liberty to disclose (even over the intertoobz), but to make a long story short, she'd spent the last two hours cutting her arms and legs with her room-mate's straight razor and wasn't sure that she wanted to stop. It took another two and a half hours, but I finally convinced her to get over to the hospital, get her cuts bandaged up and talk to a counsellor. I finally fell asleep at about 3 a.m., then got up at 7 on Saturday for work.
Saturday was the day that the depression rose up like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I went to my primary job at the bookstore, which was fine aside from having to work with a part-timer who doesn't know her ass from her elbow (yet she still gets more hours than I do -- go figure). It was losing my second, newly-acquired job that twisted my head around and dropped me into a pit.
Five days later, I've got a little more perspective on what happened -- it's a fly-by-night telemarketing company, one that is so focussed on sales numbers that they go through staff like the rest of us go through underwear. I didn't have any sales by the middle of my second shift, so they pulled me off the phones and sent me home. It's an understandable situation, one which normally wouldn't affect me much. On top of the stress and depression, and coupled with the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, however, it threw me into a mental state where I was convinced -- firmly and utterly convinced -- that the only reason anyone wanted to talk to me was for their own personal gain, and that nothing I did mattered.
So I bought a pack of smokes on the way home and cried my way through half of it in six hours.
Of course, I'd been smoke-free by that point for eight days, so re-introducing nicotine into my system that quickly threw me into an even bigger tailspin. When you mess with your brain chemistry that radically in that short a time, it has consequences -- and if your brain chemistry is already out of whack, the reaction can be even worse. So Sunday night I wound up being the one on the phone with a friend, crying and asking for help before something worse happened. Which is how I ended up in my doctor's office on Tuesday evening.
And I was surprised. She's been at me to quit smoking for months, ever since I started going to the school clinic. I fully expected her to tell me to go cold turkey again -- and I wasn't sure if I could face it a second time. The mood swings had been violent enough that I felt physically drained, exhausted; yet at the same time I hadn't slept well in a week and a half because it felt like I was hooked permanently into an intermittent, low-level electrical field.
Instead she recommended that I taper off -- one less smoke per day over fifteen days until I get down to 5-7 smokes per day. Then we'll meet again, assess my mental state and see if the tapering-off approach has been more effective. She's also recommended that I go back to counselling while I quit -- at least weekly, twice weekly if I can swing the time, so that I have an impartial observer checking my mental state on a regular basis. (She's extremely happy that I'm quitting, though -- and she thinks GUS is a fantastic idea. So now we can say we're doctor-approved!)
I guess if my story has a moral of any sort, it's a very simple one: Everyone is different. We all started smoking for our own unique and individual reasons; the decision to quit and the technique we use to do so is also going to be unique and individual. Some people will taper off and be miserable the whole time; others will go cold turkey and never look back after day two. Some people will need to keep their hands occupied; others will need to simulate the oral component of smoking with straws or cinnamon sticks. Some people will need a big support group; still others will hermit away from the world until the cravings leave them and they no longer want to kill people. Some people will require a doctor's supervision, others will get through it without medical care.
The important thing is deciding to quit; everything else is details. But the details are where the devil lives, so pay attention to them.
Current members of the GUS team! Please post a comment if you would like to join, or if your name is here in error:
1BQ
3rdGenFeminist
Abra Crabcakeya
amk for obama
Anne933
ArthurWolf
bgblcklab1
BirderWitch
blue husky
Blue Intrigue
bluestatedem84
breedlovinit
bsmechanic
Chocolate Chris
coppercelt
dangoch
duckhunter
Fineena
flumptytail
FrugalGranny
gchaucer2
Im a frayed knot
Indexer
interceptor7
itsbenj
jvolvo's Mom
khloemi
ladypockt
langerdang
LarsThorwald
lmdonovan
luvsathoroughbred
maggiemay
magicsister
Mikeguyver
MinervainNH
nannyboz
ncsuLAN
Nick Zouroudis
Ordvefa
Pennsylvanian
rosebuddear
SallyCat
seenaymah
smartcookienyc
spmozart
Turn VABlue
uc booker
Vacationland
Wood Dragon
Anyone (on or off the buddy list) is welcome to write a diary for GUS. If you are interested, please leave a comment in the Butt Can (tip jar).
Thu PM: rexymeteorite
Fri AM: itsbenj
Fri PM: SallyCat
Sat AM: sberel
Sat PM: sheddhead
Sun AM: 3rdGenFeminist
Sun PM: breedlovinit
Mon AM: bsmechanic
Mon PM: ?