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Monday I started the process to quit smoking. I haven’t had a single puff since Sunday night before I went to bed, afterwhich I began using the Commit lozenge.

In a few minutes I’ll be 48 hours smoke-free. I’m having a difficult time taking/using the minimum of nine lozenges a day, the most I can manage is about six. They take an hour to dissolve, can’t eat or drink while that minty tingling is happening… and it is suggested that you take them between one and two hours apart. Now, is that an hour after you start one, or an hour after you finish one? …no clue. Either way, if it takes an hour to dissolve and I wait two hours between them, which is astonishingly easy, I’d need to be doing it for eighteen hours a day… uhm…

I sleep a lot more than the typical person; between ten and twelve hours, if I have the bed to myself (otherwise it’s more like between four and six, heh).

I smoked cloves, significantly lower in nicotine than a typical cigarette.

I can handle some withdrawl symptoms… I did quit cold a few years ago, of course that only lasted a week, heh.

Without just saying “pfft, I’m at step two already” …which isn’t supposed to be for six weeks, I’ll try to get into some sort of habit, hah, of taking these things every two hours, which is really three hours after I started ‘not sucking’ on one. If I don’t get up to nine a day, well… that’s because I was sleeping.

Overall it hasn’t been too bad. I do get fairly strong cravings after eating and drinking coffee. With after eating being when a nice clove would be oh so very perfect, and of course… anytime I sit down here at the computer I automatically reach over for the pack of cloves and lighter that aren’t even there.

I’ve been spending most of my awake time with knitting, it’s something that I associate with not smoking, it keeps my hands busy, and with a lozenge also my mouth busy putting a slow dose of not exactly calming nicotine into my body.

I did choose the 4mg version, versus the 2mg, because I would always smoke my first cigarette within thirty minutes of waking. Perhaps if I chose the 2mg version I’d be popping those suckers like there wasn’t a tomorrow? Oh well.

I don’t want to do this wrong and end up smoking again, but I just can’t imagine finding time to take nine of those things a day. I’m also not quite sure why this whole process is supposed to last twelve weeks. Either way, I’m doing my best to stick with the program. I’ve not had an overwhelming desire to kill anyone, outside of well… normal hostility of really hoping that the cop that jumped in front of me on I-270, having just clocked me with his laser gun going 76MPH, does that to the wrong person and becomes road kill.

Matthew is on day six of his cessation of smoking, he’s doing it cold, without NRT, but then he generally would smoke less than I would, and has been on a slow decline in numbers of cigarettes smoked anyway. I feel better about my decision to quit, knowing now that I won’t be negatively influencing him by my continued smoking.

My mom was supposed to quit with me on Monday, but she backed out, wanting to wait until a weekend so she could have a day or two under the belt before she had to go to work. I can’t force her to quit, but considering how her continuing to smoke in the house would negatively effect my process of quiting, well, that has now been forbidden. If she wants to continue to smoke, even if it is only for the rest of the week, she has to do it outside.

My cigarettes have been on a continual rise in cost, now being just shy of $5 a pack, I’m burning $150 worth a month… it had to stop. I can already breathe more easily and my nose isn’t nearly as stuffy as it typically would be. Actually, the lozenges do cost slightly less than the cigarettes, basically $4 per day versus $5 per day… the cost of quitting smoking is no longer substantially more, yay!

Not that it is really appropriate to comment about a speeding ticket under the moniker of a major life changing event, but I’m still thoroughly disgusted by receiving it. Anyone familiar with I-270 near the DC beltway would realize that 76 MPH is actually on the slow side. I was going that fast simply to avoid being run over by all of the cars going just as fast behind me. It just happens that I had crossed over into the 55MPH section… cop sitting along the left side of the road, hits me with laser, jumps out in front of the car and points straight at me. If it weren’t for the whole killing being bad thing, I’d have run him over for the shear stupidity of doing such a thing. Several cars behind me also pulled over, only to realize that this cop was playing the out of state game, apparently if you have a Maryland plate you’re allowed to go that fast — since I was simply keeping up with the traffic ahead and behind me (again, to keep from being run over).

There’s no debating it, I was speeding… it doesn’t matter why to the cop, he’s doing his job. My lump is the $145 ticket payable toward the end of the month, as if my financial situation wasn’t delicate enough. I was going down to Ikea with mom… my first instinct was to just turn around and go home, but… that would have made the trip totally worthless and hideously expensive at that. So, I went, bought what I planned to buy, those damned shelves ended up being seriously more expensive than planned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 at 12:58 AM and is filed under Journal, Sidenotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.