Ain't no sin to be glad you're alive

Three years in: still breathing, still quit.

Recovering my senses

Still here.

I feel like I'm still relearning how to think and feel without being strung out on a nicotine yoyo.

Jake and I quit drinking coffee a couple of weeks ago, just for kicks, just to see if there was something like a chemical baseline for us. So now on top of the novel sensation of being able to take really deep, satisfying breaths, there is the novel sensation of waking up in the morning and being more or less alert right off the bat.

This is a weird ride. What happens if I am not running from one distraction to the next?

Still breathing

And still quit.

I think I deserve a pay raise for all the extra time I'm putting in at my desk. I'll look up and most of the day has gone by.

I hope everyone is having a beautiful October.

On Being Pro-Choice and Unpatriotic

I've been reading a book about quitting that I wanted to share with you all. It's called Hooked - But Not Helpless, by Patricia Allison. A close friend of mine used the book alone when she quit smoking ten years ago, and I'm finding it extremely helpful.

The key concept in the book is that while smoking is certainly a pernicious addiction, it is also a choice. For this reason, she recommends something many of us would consider unorthodox at best: she actually suggests keeping a pack of cigarettes near us at all times while we are trying to quit. How crazy is that?

And yet, it's helping me. I have that pack in front of me right now. When I start to get edgy and my addict's brain starts looping on "I wish I could have a cigarette..." I am forced to remind myself that "Oh, right, I have a pack right here. I could choose to smoke if I want to." And then I can think about the choice I really want to make, since I can't both smoke and have the life I want for myself.

I also appreciate Allison's advice on dealing with cravings, which is again not the usual, "Quick, distract yourself!" directive. Instead, she says, Deal with it. Just learn to be okay with being uncomfortable for a little while. Remind yourself that this is the price you are paying for your ticket out of addiction. Remind yourself that the negative feelings will pass.

Friends, to my ears, that advice is so good and so sound and so counter to our culture's run-and-fix-it-or-at-least-stuff-it-down approach to feeling bad, it almost makes me feel un-American just thinking about it! Sit with a bad feeling and deal with it! Truly a novel idea.

What do you think?

Still here!

Not much time for writing these past two weeks, though I've been processing a lot of thoughts and feelings around addiction and recovery. But I wanted to at least check in and say: yes, I'm still quit!

I haven't copped a buzz from Chantix for at least a week now. We have gone down to just 1 tablet per day, but we are planning to stay on it for at least another month. No unbearable side effects: occasional nausea within an hour of dosing that passes within ten minutes or so, and more annoying but still bearable, considerable sleep disturbance. I've more or less quit caffeine, also, so I'm pretty sure it's the Chantix that's waking me up a few times a night and kicking me out of bed for good right around sunrise.

But oh, man, the summer air is so sweet. I had completely forgotten how sweet the world can smell.

The View from Here

Well, well. Just returned from an annual camping trip with friends. My quit date was supposed to be yesterday. I ended up quitting Saturday instead, so sometime around 3pm today makes 3 days quit.

Here's what happened:

It was Saturday afternoon and ungodly hot at the campgrounds, which are nestled on the lower third of a big hunk of private property in the coastal range of northern California. We were lounging with a group of friends in the grotto of a terraced organic garden, wiggling our toes among the lily pads, when one of us who had made the hike before offered to guide the group up the mountain to the source of the spring that feeds the garden.

Nevermind the fire danger, I didn't want to drag a nasty cloud of smoke up that hill with me. I had half a pack with me and another full one back at my tent; I tossed the half pack in the trash when we hit the trail.

It was not an easy hike: about 2000 feet up in 100 degree heat, but we found refreshment at faucets along the irrigation line and we paused here and there to introduce ourselves to the locals: groves of Pacific madrone shedding their bark in elegant peelings of orange and green, a tangle of fat blackberries in a swath of flaxen meadowland.

Halfway up we met the old man of the mountain: the lone redwood spared when this land was clearcut some forty years ago. He breathed down at us and we breathed up at him. The wind in his great shaggy branches sounded like whispery laughter. It was good.

We reached the summit as the sun was setting. We found the oasis, the half-hidden pool that sustains all life on the mountain. It was deep, green, a primordial soup. The air around it was heavy. There were fresh animal tracks around the edges. We gave thanks.

And then we turned, and beheld a vista that stretched for at least a hundred miles.

I thought a lot about my smoking addiction on the walk down and later that night under the stars. I'll post more about this in the coming days. For now, though, let me just say

I am so
very
grateful
to be
alive.

Thanks for listening.

It's definitely working...

...but so far, I'm feeling an aversion to alcohol rather than cigarettes. I know this effect has been reported, but has anyone else here noticed it themselves? I don't mind it, but I'm not much of a drinker to begin with. I suppose I am used to consuming half a dozen drinks a week, but for the past week I haven't been interested in finishing so much as a short glass of beer, and here it is the height of summer.

Had a little nausea last night, but it passed within a few minutes. I'm smoking less, at least when I'm not parked in front of the computer. Still getting a nice happy feeling from the Chantix. Untreated anxiety and dysthymic tendencies, much?

Jake and I have decided on a quit date of next Monday. This weekend is an annual camping trip with friends, so it seemed most prudent to wait.

Meanwhile, HUUUUUGE props this morning to Tabatha on her first quit day!!!!