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.
The weekend is upon us now, and as I head into day 10 of GUS, I find myself fending off mental attacks, cravings, and lots of general misinformation. Tobacco wants me back, and seems willing to say just about anything to make it so! But instead of running away and hiding, I'll talk back some. Engage, understand, blather. Why is it so hard to do this, when merely deciding to quit is so easy, such a no-brainer? Hmmm ...
This is not a pipe. Sometimes it's important to remember these basic things.
This is not happiness, perfectly packaged in a cute little box.
And this is just gross! When you're trying to quit, this is a helpful image to remember.
What does it mean to be addicted? Why is tobacco so mean!?!
Well, I was born addicted. I do seem to have abstained from the habit from birth through about age 17 though. How did I do it? Heh. <takes off glasses dramatically, lowers voice> I don't know. But somehow, despite how disgusting I thought it was, and how I felt immediate dislike and distrust for anyone I saw smoking as a child growing up, I found myself mired in the habit. Telling myself I'd quit one day and just have fun for now. Spending money I shouldn't have been spending on something that gave me nothing in return. Or did it give me something?
Friends. When you start smoking in high school, your number of friends pretty much doubles immediately. There's some kind of tobacco grace period where you immediately befriend all nearby smokers. Lasts about a month and a half, but feels like longer. If you're kind of anti-social, you will get a chance to bond with kindred spirits — other people who need a little extra something to work up the ability to get it together to actually go and deal with other human beings. You knew they were out there!
Time. Tobacco buys you time. You get extra breaks at work (well, at certain jobs, depending on the politics of smoking at your place of employment). You get to give yourself little 'pregnant pauses' throughout the day. If you are nervous and trying to pass the time, smoking wants to be your friend! Anything you have to wait for, it waits with you.
It gives something different to somebody just starting out than it gives to it's most loyal followers (us addicts). In the beginning it adds a smokey, magical extra dimension to your waking life. Well, that's what it seems like. Any otherwise already stimulating activity can be enhanced; a hot cup of coffee? After a couple drinks at the bar? Soooo much better with cigarettes!
Or are they? Has any other plant managed to make the entire f-in' planet its b$tch as successfully as tobacco? And most of that only happened within the past couple of hundred years. Damn you, Walter Raleigh! The tobacco plant has a strong self-preservation instinct. And it might just be sapping yours right out of you as it does so. It's full of alkaloids that interact as a noxious chemical soup in the mind and body, moving into just about every cell of your body, filling your head with future memories and promises all a touch more grande and lovely than they would be, without ... it.
But it's all a lie. The psychoactive chemicals in tobacco; nicotine and nornicotine primarily, sit in the chasms of your central and peripheral nervous systems, your 'body & mind' connections, as it were, and bind more tightly to the receptor sites than the intended chemical itself. It makes your brain prefer it to it's own ingredients. Now that's evil. But many beings are capable of doing what seems evil to others in order to survive. Who can blame poor tobacco for succeeding so thoroughly? It did what it had to do...
In his uber-awesome Pharmako/Poeia, which can be read online here, Dale Pendell describes tobacco thusly ~
All the treachery of our beloved poisons is evident in this plant. It is a stimulant, a tranquilizer, a narcotic, and, if we are to believe the ethnobotanical reports, a hallucinogen. It is also the most toxic plant regularly used by human beings. Tobacco is the model of ambiguity: healer and killer, ally and seducer.
"A healer?" you say. Well, in a sense. But remember, this is not a pipe. And tobacco is not your friend. It doesn't love you, and it never did. I mentioned Walter Raleigh earlier on. I remember learning of him in school, but I never learned that he was beheaded by King James for introducing the world to ~
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
Ouch!
[edited just a bit here, as Catesby has pointed out below, Raleigh was not beheaded (as I implied) for introducing tobacco smoking as a practice, but rather for a combination of treason and attacking the wrong person at the wrong time who had the right friends. and true enough. but James hated smoking and tobacco and Walter Raleigh, who was himself somewhat of a beloved figure. I tend to think that it was one of many heavy objects piled on the anterior of the camel...]
The end.
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
dadanation
dangoch
DRo
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).
Fri PM: SallyCat
Sat AM: sberel
Sat PM: sheddhead
Sun AM: 3rdGenFeminist
Sun PM: ?
Mon AM: bsmechanic
Mon PM: ?