Day 1: DONE

Say hello to my little friend:



Day 1 is done and I didn't smoke a single cig. I do have something to confess, though:

I want a cigarette. In my mouth.

Want to hear the good news?

I don't really want one. I mean I DO, but I don't. I've had the cravings wash over me every so often during the day. But they haven't been overpowering. I can remember during previous attempts to quit how the agony of wanting a cigarette would be all consuming. If you've never tried to quit smoking or never been addicted to something then you have no idea what it's like to have every nerve ending in your body screaming out for a chemical release from the pain you think you're in.

But I'm not going through that... Well, not as badly. In fact, I'd like to make a distinction about WANTING to smoke vs. FEELING LIKE I want to smoke.

I feel like I want to smoke right now. It's something I've done every day for nearly four years. Smoking fundamentally alters the chemistry in your brain. It's extremely hard to quit smoking cold turkey (or at all) and have it stick because cigarette smoking literally changes who you are, on both a physical and psychological level.

Thus while I may feel like I want a cigarette, in actuality I don't really want one. My conscious brain, the part I use to make decisions like which Wu-Tang album to buy (36 Chambers) or how many french fries to eat (all of them) doesn't want a cigarette. That's why I feel this time might be different: I really really want this. Before, I was scared of the prospect of never smoking a cigarette again. It just seemed so final, I wasn't ready to say goodbye to sweet lady nicotine and her cancerous charms. But I am now. Fuck her, she don't know me, I look good.

Of course I have to add that there's a distinct reason why this time is different: I'm on the patch.

I'm sorry.

Nicotine takes about three days to leave your system. I have quit for that long but by the fourth day I'm almost always smoking again. I'm pretty sure my problem is more psychological than physical. As I said before I'm currently wearing a patch that streams 21mg of nicotine into my system over a period of 24 hours.

A part of me is worried that I'm over confident in how in control of this I feel. I'm not in such a state that I would eat a field of tomacco crops, but is that only because I'm on the patch?


Yes. Yes it is. What I'm hoping for by wearing the patch is that I can make a psychological break with smoking. I want to wean myself off nicotine while at the same time re-acclimating myself to a non-smoking lifestyle. I think that when I tried before I did too much, too fast. I'm at a point where I'm ready to kick this gross ass habit to the curb but if I quit cold turkey I don't think I would be able to handle feeling like shit and losing the psychological dependency I have with smoking.

So far the patch has worked just fine. It's currently on my upper left arm, that being the least hairy spot on my arm (even though I am not a hairy man I was surprised by how many little hairs there are up and down my arm).

However, there is some weirdness associated with it. Some things I've noticed in the first day of wearing the patch:

//It's warm to the touch. When I first put it on it immediately got hot and felt like someone was pouring warm coffee on my arm. It cooled down rather quickly, but even now I've asked people to touch it and they can definitely feel the warmth through my shirt.

//Moving my arm into certain positions sometimes leads to an intense throbbing pain shooting up and down my arm. This freaks me out slightly but it's only happened a bit, I should probably do some internetting to find out why this is.

//I find myself constantly touching it or rubbing it. This thing is going to be a part of my body for two months (ten weeks), I wonder if by the end I'll have forgotten it's there.

I'm told that tonight I'm going to have some vivid dreams. I'm nervous yet excited for what lays ahead.

Tomorrow is DAY 2. I feel like Forest Whitaker (in a good way).

Brother Ali - "Forest Whitaker"