Marsha

You CAN do this!!! You CAN quit smoking!! You CAN do this and it WON'T kill you!!! Believe it, it's true! And you CAN do this and NOT have to buy a bigger size wardrobe. You do not HAVE to gain weight when you quit smoking. And you can LIVE through quitting and you will be OKAY!! In fact, it will be MORE okay than you EVER thought!!! But there are two things you have to do for all of this to work. You have to not smoke. And you have to have faith. You have to believe in something that is not there yet. I know, I know, it scares you to death. Like when you got on that roller coaster that time, remember? Or jumped off the high dive. Or did one of those exercises in trust where you fall back and everyone catches you. Or you had to get out on stage and play the piano that you knew you hadn't practiced enough on. Or you gave birth and you lived!! Or when you had the flu and you felt so awful, so awful that you were sure God was punishing you for everything you'd done wrong and all you wanted was to get through it and be done with it. Cause you didn't know how much longer you could take this.
Well, that's what quitting is like………Worrying and fretting and putting ourselves through torture knowing that we are about to do something that scares us more than anything practically in the world!! It's worse than losing an arm, or maybe the same because it's like our arm. Something we are sure we will fail at because we are SO scared. And we think we need it to be ourselves. Something that makes us uncomfortable and forces us to leave our safety net at home. Like being in that car with all the friends that don't smoke driving cross country and inwardly being mad at them because you left your cigarettes at home and you KNOW they won't stop to get you any and you couldn't smoke in their car anyway. You know,…it's THEIR fault you are feeling like this. Heaven forbid I admit I am a drug addict and addicted to nicotine and that I may as well have loaded up some nicotine in a syringe, because I am such an addict that I would use whatever carrier necessary to get my fix. And remember what happened? The roller coaster didn't go off the tracks, you didn't kill yourself on the diving board, no one threw too many tomatoes because you screwed up your piece; those people didn't let you fall, and you got to your destination (albeit uncomfortable, because of your addiction), alive. Those are the trips we addicts dreaded. The ones where we couldn't get our fix. In fact, it pretty much used to tick me off. How would you like to be able to get in a car and drive 800 miles or go by train where you couldn't smoke or go from airport to airport and not care ONE BIT about smoking? How would you like to not be bothered ONE BIT if you saw someone smoking and you thought, "gee, that used to be me." Or... "hmm how funny, I just thought of having a cigarette, and I don't even CARE!!!!??? I can't believe I did that for so long!" You will and you can. And it DOES happen! That lingering fear that all smokers have of thinking nothing will ever be good again, or if I quit I will lose myself, I won't enjoy life, nothing will be fun anymore, I'll never be able to sit on my porch or patio again. Well, there go the bars, no fun parties for me anymore. X out the vacations. How will I escape my in-laws if I can't sneak out for a cig? What will I do with all the extra time? Heck, I will even hate driving. I'll get fat. Life will be a drag. Smoking is fun. I WANT to smoke. I am an adult. It's legal anyway. I'm sick of the smoke police and the do-gooders! If I want to have a (3) cigarette(s) in the morning with my juice, I'm GOING to! Smokers have more fun anyway! It's my right to smoke. What about my fun little breaks? I'll be bored, What'll I do? I LOVE my cigarettes. Ok…..that's it isn't it. I LOVE my cigarettes. I love them more than anything. I love them more than my kids or my husband… sometimes; I think I love them more than my life. And yet, I know I should quit. Deep, deep down inside of me there is this nagging, this voice that I know is telling me the truth. That I smoke because I am an addict. That I really don't like how uncomfortable I get when I need a fix and have to schedule MY time around something that I am allowing to control me. And when I say I want a cigarette, it's not that I really want it, it's that I need a fix. And worst of all, that I know that I am in denial. I'm tired of feeling ashamed of myself and making excuses as to why I haven't quit. I really DO KNOW it is bad for me. I can't ignore it anymore. I am tired of not respecting myself. I'm tired of thinking about quitting.

So. My story. I quit. I got sick of feeling like a second class citizen, I was not going to let cigarettes take any more time away from me and my girls, holidays, gatherings, my husband or my life. I had to face the fact that if I were the one with the tracheotomy, I would expose my addiction and be beyond humiliation, because I would be the one putting that cigarette up to that hole in my throat. I didn't know how much lower I could feel when I knew I was slowly killing myself yet made excuses to justify it! I did NOT want to be the last one to quit smoking and I DID NOT want any Dr. telling me I had to quit or that I was going to lose half my cheek. Those things scared me more than lung cancer. Throat, tongue, all that horrified me….. but never enough to make me quit, until I started imagining my daughters, my husband, my Mom coming to my bedside. How could I look at them? Oh yeah, yeah, I may never get cancer and I may life to 100. Well, someone told me once that I may "live" to 100, but HOW do I want to live to 100? Quitting is improving my QUALITY of life NOW. I had to quit for today. Not ten years from now. I had to quit for one day at a time. So last January, (after thinking that I should quit everyday for years), I started Wellbutrin. I couldn't get myself to set a date. That was just too final for me. Too scary. But I read all I could. I bought the Smokenders book by Jacquelyn Rogers called You Can Stop Smoking and a little book that looked like a pack of Marlboro Reds (I smoked Marlboro Lights- healthier) called Quit. After I quit, I bought the book Out of the Ashes, which was the best thing I ever did!!! I psyched myself up and every time I lit up I acted as if it were poison, because it WAS!! I held it in the opposite hand between different fingers. I put my cigarettes in a place that was not familiar. I made faces and only smoked a fourth or half of a cigarette. I tried not to inhale much. For once I was aware of every cigarette I smoked. (I smoked 35 years and was up to 2-3 packs a day. But was proud of the fact that I only smoked them half way down 'most' of the time and I threw a lot out! ) (I also didn't have lung cancer yet and worked out and was overall healthy, so I had a lot of excuses and denial going on). Basically I considered myself above most smokers. And I loved to smoke. (now I know it wasn't I who loved to smoke, but my addiction. If you refuse to feed it, it will die) I tried to cut down. I MADE myself think I hated them, that they were disgusting and that they were my enemy, because deep, deep down that's what I knew was true. I tried to ask myself what it was I really wanted when I craved a cigarette. I decided it was time to see these things for what they REALLY were. It didn't bother me to hate them right now, because I knew I was still smoking and could always turn back. I still had my little "friends". Every time I started to think, "inhale deeper, you're not getting enough, I knew that these things really DID control ME and that I wasn't above anyone after-all. I was aware of the addiction. It made me sick and it made me mad. It was great reading about how to stop and learning why I smoked while I was still smoking. I didn't feel too pressured and the reading was really making me believe that I just might have a chance at this. Of course I had to put lots of mental effort in to this, because if I was reading this stuff and in the back of my mind knew I would never really try to quit, why even bother reading? Every time I started to "romance" cigarettes, I forced myself to say something horrible and negative about smoking, which I was finding was getting easier and easier to do. I wrote down reasons why I wanted to quit on note cards and to this day have them in my purse or with me at all times. I wrote down things to say to the "nicodemon". I made a promise to myself that before I would EVER light up that I would have to sit and read all the cards first. And that I could always have one "tomorrow" if I still felt like it. It was a choice. No one was forcing me to do this. I remember once we were going to a big party and I had my husband put the cards in his suit pocket, which is where I used to ask him to carry my cigs when I wasn't carrying a purse. With all of this going on, the Wellbutrin, the reading Rogers book, and other material, getting ready to MAYBE cut back, I thought there is only one way to do this and that is to jump and do it. I can always smoke, right? I could always go back. No one is forcing me to do this…this is my choice. The books were helping me. So I started to try and cut back. Oh! And for once I was reading and listening and doing what they said. Normally I would have thought, "Yeah, yeah, I don't need to write anything down…that is for wimps and takes too much time. I don't want any of this self help stuff and I don't want to put much effort in to this. If it's not easy I'm not doing it." Oh that demon thinks of everything!! One day I decided to REALLY try and cut down and smoked like 15…wow!! Unreal for me!! The next day 9, then like 7, then 12, then 8, then one day I thought let's see if you can drive home without one. UGH!! I did it. I think with the cutting down that I was going through some of the nicotine withdrawal because I was so dizzy and just generally a mush brain. This was like a game and not too bad because nothing was permanent yet. The spaciness I felt in my head was like a different drug in itself! I was experimenting. I had made no commitment. But deep down I was excited and scared because I knew this might be it. I knew it would be the hardest thing I ever did and there was no way I wanted to go through this again!! Then one day I went all day at work without one, I got home and thought….why not just "see" if you can go till tomorrow…..go to bed EARLY!!!…..and I did…..and I hadn't smoked for ONE WHOLE DAY!! For the first time in years!!! I showed myself the strength I had and the demon/addiction was probably already plotting as to how to get me back. The only other time I "tried" to quit (now I know I wasn't committed and didn't try at all) was when my first daughter was like two years old and I quit for maybe 2 days. I had NO clue what I was doing and was at my neighbor's house (who died of esophageal cancer later) begging for a cig on the 2nd day. The only other time I tried was for about 2 hours……..I couldn't stand it! It was always SOMEDAY, I will quit. This is too painful…yada yada yada…you know. My Dad had died earlier than he should have and although he quit smoking….it was after a couple small strokes and way too late to have helped him. My Mom quit smoking after she had us. So I never remember her smoking. None of my brothers smoked and all of us girls did. But it was like NO ONE was smoking anymore. I have a sister in law who has been quit for more than 10 years. She was a smoker….like me. She loved it. She says that to this day she knows that she could never ever have just one because one wouldn't be enough. She would smoke the whole pack and want more. She was part of my inspiration. She told me that she would tell herself that, "Smoking is no longer an option". And now my girls were old enough to know their Mom was an addict and refused to kick it. I couldn't hide anymore. They were growing up and it was time I did too. I'm sure the Wellbutrin helped some with the smoking at the beginning. I am still taking it! My Dr. said that some people take it up to a year after they quit. I thought…..hey…I'm just going to keep this up. I think I am someone who masked some depression along with a trillion other feelings and emotions with smoking. I had to mess around with the dose with my Dr. and tried another anti-depressant which I hated until I felt like "myself" again. But now I wonder if it was just all part of quitting? If the feeling so horrible, the depression and tears, was all something I had to go through to get where I am. A cleansing so to speak. I knew everyone's quit was different, but I also knew that if it didn't get better all these people who had been quit for so long would be back smoking. SOOOOOOOO…Wake up!!! This isn't that bad is it? LOL So the next day I thought I could smoke if I wanted to….and then I thought wait a minute……you will have Day 2 if you don't smoke today! OR you could have day 0. 0 or 2? Hmmm. That was on Feb.7. I knew I would never say I was ready, and I knew I was as ready as I ever would be, so with one day down…I went through the next day and took a deep breath and wrote on the calendar on Feb. 6 "I QUIT SMOKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :O)" And that was it. Was it easy? NO! Were there times I thought I'd die? YES!! Did I cry for no reason? Yes like a baby! Was I depressed? YES! Did I ever think about really smoking again? YES! Did I hate it? YES! Did I suck on straws, pens cinnamon sticks, atomic fireballs, jolly rancher fire candies, tons of spinach and cabbage for some reason and drink tons of water? YES!! Did I pray that I would quit feeling this miserable and did I think I was going nuts? YES!!!! Did I think if this was life, I wanted out of here? YES. Did it get better? YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!! Was it true what everyone said? YES!!! Did the good days start to outnumber the bad? YES!!! Did the urges go away? YES! Did they come back sometimes? YES! Did they go away for longer and longer amounts of time? YES!! Or at least now when I rarely get one I know I can handle it. Did it start to not bother me anymore? YES!! Did I feel better? YES!! Did I have to face my feelings and emotions? YES!! Did I start to know myself better? YES!! Could I sing higher? YES!! Did I quit buying gum, room spray, car spray and breath mints? YES!!! Did I get as sick as much? NO!!! Did my allergies disappear? YES!! Did my face look better? Yes!! Did I quit coughing? YES!! Was I proud of myself? YES!!!!!! Did I gain a little weight? Yes, maybe 5-10 pounds, but I was careful, because I knew if I gained a lot I would start smoking again and then I would just be a fat smoker. Did I lose it? Yes, about 8 months, I was ready and feeling comfortable enough in my quit and I just quit worrying about it and quit eating like there was never going to be a next meal……now I am the same size as before…maybe 3 pounds give or take. Did I exercise? YES!! I walked 3 times a week as fast as I could for 30- minutes just like before. I did weights too. Being physical put me in tune with my body. It felt great and believe it or not becomes an addiction! A POSITIVE addiction! :O) OH……….. How I found Blairsville and Freedom Village. I was looking around after I quit, reading all I could from people who had quit smoking on a lot of good quit smoking sites….I guess it was like 3 weeks, and I came across Bob's page. There was TONS of great info there and I read everything. From there I went to Blairsville and met some very nice people and got tremendous support. From there I went to Freedom Village and met more very nice people and got more tremendous support. The on line book Don't Quit Smoking Alone by Michael Reilly was also very helpful. And so was reading what other people had to say who had been quit a year on Tommyboy's page. I copied off post after post in the beginning and would read them with other inspirational and positive things every night, especially when I wanted to smoke. Bubba James had a page called The Happenings and that was great fun. Do I think I could have quit without the help of a support group/board? I really don't know if I could have and would never want to find out! BV and FV were invaluable to me as a support group/ board/forum (whatever you want to call it) in keeping my quit. The giving and taking of support builds strength and arms you to win your battles. And the wealth of information from people who had gone through what I was going through helped tremendously. Helping others with their struggles helped me. Just like in "real" life. Well, I should edit this. When and if you get this far, please know that I did. :O) Well, that's it. My story. My ramble.

I thank God for giving me the strength and courage to finally believe in myself enough to take the first step. And for showing me that it wasn't so bad after all, that I had what it took all the time, I just couldn't see it. And I thank Him for my loving and most wonderful husband who never nagged at me and was always there for me and held me when I cried, and for the two best daughters in the whole wide world. Who would love me no matter what. Thank you for putting up with me, thank you for being patient, and thank you for loving me. I wrote a note to my Mom after I quit, promising her that I would never smoke again. She reminded me of that note a few times this past year. How could you break a promise to your Mom? ((((Mom)))). I am so grateful that I never broke my quit, because if I smoked, I would never have known just how wonderful being a non-smoker is!! And I would never have known that everyone ahead of me was telling me the truth! This is wonderful!! Smoking or not smoking is a choice. I will always choose not to smoke. And I will guard my quit like it's a matter of life and death. Because it is. My life. And the quality in which I want to live it.

P.S. Pack your sense of humor when you quit. You'll need it for the journey! :O) ………And always be yourself. Xoxo

There comes a point in ones life when you have to do what is right. When pretending not to see what is really there doesn't work anymore. When reason must come before pleasure. It is at these moments of truth when we grow and set ourselves free.

Xoxoxoxox Marsha,
Marsha Jan,
Greta, actress with Hansel,
Sista of Dawna