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Memoirs of my fifth day not smoking (here in list form for your entertainment): Woke up tired. My body, while nicotine free, is still greatly missing the stimulants. Got out of bed and made coffee. Laid back down in the bed and tried to decide if quitting smoking constituted a legitimate need for a sick day. Got out of bed again and got dressed. Went to work. Chewed three pieces of gum during the seven mile drive. Arrived at work, dropped personals off in my office, went to kitchenette to make coffee. Ate five Twizzlers while waiting for the coffee to perk. Checked email, logged in to QuitTrain. Ate a bacon, egg, and cheese buscuit, and then took my daily Chantix pill. Logged in to QuitTrain. Reading about quitting gives me the craves. Ate five more Twizzlers and logged out of QuitTrain. Began working on an analysis; got severely distracted by a speck of floating dust, ate a Twizzler. Didn't help. Ate four more. Pulled analysis back up and realized I wanted a cigarette. Logged in to QuitTrain, and NOPE'd again for good measure. Let calls continue to go to voice mail - no desire to be fired for a mouthing off today. Looked at analysis. Added some numbers. The sum line looked like a cigarette. Sucked on a lolllipop. Recalculated because my addition was wrong. Logged in to QuitTrain. Played Chicks or Sticks for five minutes while deep breathing. Dammit. My math was STILL wrong. Recalculated. Got more coffee. Noticed the clock. I have only been at work for seventeen minutes. Ate two more Twizzlers. Phoned a friend. Re-committed to being ultra-productive at work today, but played Chicks and Sticks instead. Googled whether or not anyone has ever died from quitting smoking. Googled whether or not anyone has ever been convicted of murder while quitting smoking. Googled how many calories are in a Twizzler. Ate twelve more Twizzlers. Committed to exercising every time I get a craving. Ate lunch. Food exacerbated the whole tired feeling. Got another cup of coffee. Had a craving, thought seriously about getting some exercise. Ate a Twizzler instead. Walked to the store to buy more Twizzlers. Logged in to QuitTrain. Tried to complete analysis - realized it's not going to happen today - decided to work on system testing instead. While test system booting up, logged in to QuitTrain. Got distracted by Chicks and Sticks and forgot about test system. Ate thirty-two Twizzlers in a fit of the craves. Felt ill from Twizzlers and considered walking to the ladies room to evacuate. Decided I was too tired for that much activity. Made a fresh pot of coffee. Forgot to drink any of it. Ate some rice crisps. Not sweet enough. Ate three more Twizzlers. Closed test system and cleared voice mail messages. Sent tasks to everyone in the office to call these people back so I don't get fired for mouthing off to them. Logged in to QuitTrain. NOPE'd again. Ate three Twizzlers while watching the clock tick down to quitting time. Discovered the time-slowing properties of quitting smoking. Left work an hour early. Chewed two pieces of gum on the seven mile drive home. Drank an ale. With Twizzlers. Ate dinner. Watched Girl's Trip, which was funny enough for me to not think about smoking at all for like two whole hours. Ate an entire box Mike & Ike's. And popcorn. Opened another ale, set it down on the counter to go to the bathroom, forgot about the ale and went to bed early.

I’m more than two weeks smokefree. Yay me! i just sat down to work email and wanted to, visualized it actually, reaching for my pack of cigarettes. Like a ghost or shadow it was. It caught me by surprise. Reminder: I have not given anything up by not smoking. This is just the many, many years of habit acting on my brain and physical being. The muscle memory. It will take time to rewire me so I have to be patient and not give any more thought space to smoking thoughts than the initial thought itself. There is nothing to miss about smoking. I was its slave. I am free without it. I can hike up the rough trail of the mountain, I can watch a whole movie, and I can ride in a car without the window open. I have more time to be the me I want to be because I’m no longer held back by smoking.

Too busy eating to write a blog today. I need to be saved from myself - can someone please just tape my mouth closed so I can't eat anymore junk food???

Day 3 lasted for-freaking-ever. First day back to work after quitting, and I had exactly zero concentration. Glued to my support system all day, I really didn't get anything productive accomplished. While it feels like I wasted the entire day mooning over the emptiness of not smoking, I can't really say it was a waste, can I? I mean, that's one more day under my quit belt - and the last day (supposedly) of nicotine in my system. So, with the physical withdrawals done (mine consisted of sweaty palms, shaking hands, and a whole lot of whining), I guess it's time to start "ferociously" addressing the emotional withdrawals. I just wish I knew HOW. A fellow quitter (Sazerac) suggested to me yesterday that I: Get ferocious about banishing your smoking/not smoking thoughts. Replace them with something that feels good, sounds good, looks good. I know it is hard, and it nearly made me really crazy but, the earlier you take control of your brain, the easier it gets. I wish I had been more aggressive sooner re-programming my brain. Sounds easy in theory, but I am still "romancing" the cigarette. Yes, yes I am. I still think I wasn't entirely ready for this quit; I didn't have a count-down, I didn't clean everything beforehand, I didn't even have that last cigarette outside the night before I quit. SEE? The romance isn't dead over here. I want to smoke, but I also want to be a non-smoker. God, how gross is that? Smoking smells bad. It makes my teeth and fingertips yellow. It gives me more wrinkles than I've earned. And those are just the VAIN reasons. There's also emphysema (I see my father slowly suffocating even with his oxygen machine), there's cancer (oh, a whole family history - everything from cervical to skin to breast to brain), there's heart disease (not-so-much in the family history, but I'll be darned if I'm going to tempt that fate). I'm totally embarrassed by the way I perceive non-smokers being able to smell it on me. My kids hate it. My family hates it. I hate it. And, I still want to smoke. It won't even do me any good right now - I've been taking that Chantix medicine, so it's blocking the nicotine receptors making it so even if I DO smoke, I still won't get that release of dopamine. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It just doesn't seem to matter how much I know about this addiction, I still can't control that little nicotine voice in my head that tries to tell me I can have complete control over it. I KNOW I WON'T AND CAN'T, but I keep thinking that I can. And, my mind can be very convincing. So, I'll keep battling and blogging. Because, I also know it's going to get better. It's going to get easier. And, I am going to figure out how to retrain my brain.

Tempting and teasing my addiction was probably not the best approach to the second day of this quit. I mean... how much harder do I really need to make this for myself. Against all odds, I survived Day Two with my quit intact. Drinking. Partying with friends. Escorting my best friend outside for her smoke breaks. The resulting urges to smoke were, needless to say, powerful. I discovered that my poor and slow texting abilities are a boon to using this forum. By the time I type it all out, the urge has begun to pass. Yay for sucking at texting! Tomorrow will be my first day back to work as a non-smoker. I have no idea what to expect of myself when it comes time for my normal breaks. I usually walk outside, but maybe I can take walks inside for a few days. Grrr. I hate that I relapsed. Withdrawal is no fun. You know it's bad when you're actually looking forward to it all just being in your head. LOL!

I wasn't prepared to write my first blog post ever in my life tonight - but, I mean, here's this option right here and this site has just made it so easy and I always said I wanted organize my old posts to remember how awful it was... Here I am. Again with the first day. Again with the relentless discomfort that follows every life segment. Wake up. Remind myself that "No. You don't smoke anymore." Drink coffee. "No. You don't smoke anymore." Driving. "NOPE." Finished breakfast. "NOPE." And so on throughout a seemingly endless series of NOPE that represents, what? It's only been a day? ONE day? But, my reality is different than that. It still sucks, and it still feels incessant (this constant tendency to want a cigarette and the resulting need to remind myself of my NOPE and to redirect my thoughts to something (anything, really) else. Yet, this all feels familiar to me, and not nearly as scary and horrible as last time. I hate to say it, but until.this morning, I wasn't sure that I wanted to quit today. I saw my pack of cigarettes on the table when I came downstairs this morning. Seventh day on Chantix. I COULD quit today... OR I could keep smoking for a whole 'nother week because I like smoking. Wait. What? And, that's when it hit me. I LIKE smoking?!? No I don't! Who said that? Me? Surely not. Ugh. So here I am. Again.