finally addicted? ·
5 March 05

It’s not easy quitting smoking. I think I’m finally become addicted by habit and a psychological need to have something smoking in between my fingers. After going threw my horrid, but equally pleasurable, fever, I thought I had tested my strength of will by focusing on actual reality. I think I’ve become dependent on cigarettes not as a need for nicotine, but as a distraction for my depression or awareness of the monotony around me.

Although it’s only been just over a weekend since I quit smoking, I’m already getting this nagging feeling at the prospect of being outside and not having something burning between my fingers. I told myself I would quit drugs, quit smokes, and even quit alcohol. The latter and former don’t seem that difficult to do – in fact I never crave alcohol or drugs when I’m going out, staying in, or at any time. I’ve finally come to accept that smoking is a horrificlly addictive substance.

I’ve made comments in the past on forums on my own opinion of smoking, but then I used to think I could quit anytime, and I don’t think I have that same confidence. Perhaps it’s my tired state, and the gorgeous Monday morning sunrise, but there’s something quite particular about this need for smoking that I am craving. It’s almost as though my head is filling with blood, excessively, in an attempt to explode to prove some moot point about not need cigarettes.

Both my mind and my body are saying that I don’t need the cigarettes, but somewhere deeper there’s an equal opposite which says It would be nice to smoke a Marlboro. I can almost see the veins in my arms pulsating at the prospect of more nictoine, like some heroin addict becoming excited at the prospect of seeing a spoon and a bunsen burner.

The feeling is rather horrid, and for me a personal tragedy. I am quite a proud person, due to my experiences of growing up with nothing going for me in all essence. To look after myself, and be self-reliant both physically and mentally is one of my greatest strengths that has obviously taken a detrimental blow. To many it’s not a big deal, just get help.

Not stressing over whether or not I will smoke actually puts me back in control, because it gives me a choice, and I think not having choice suffocates me

I’m not too proud to ask for help, I just never ask for it because 99.9% of the time I get through whatever it is I need to with difficult, with grief and suffering but without help from anyone. I’ve grown up depending on myself – though I am not independent as I live with my parents still, mostly due to bad luck and spending all my thousands from work. I pay my contribution to the household, I pay for my DSL connection and have paid for all the items in my room – I suppose you could say I’m a sort of guest, although for my parents I am a permanent resident.

Writing this, as I maintain, is my therapy and having written all this I’ve got back to my state of shit happens. I remember an example I once used to describe the lunacy of our world. With time-keeping and work, people rarely follow the rules and often find themselves late for something, even if they’re early. You see idiots running up and down stairs chasing a bus or a tube train. Once they travel to their destination, they still panic en route – knowing that the transport is now out of their hands and they are but a passenger, yet they still stress.

In that same pespective, I’ve decided that if I smoke, I smoke. Why should I stress over the deliberation of smoking or not smoking? I have enough stress in my life as it is, I’m always on the brink of collapse, smoking is an important thing to worry about but I may die before I get cancer. Not stressing over whether or not I will smoke actually puts me back in control, because it gives me a choice, and I think not having choice suffocates me. If I have the choice, I can relax, regardless of what that choice is. If you’re talking semantics, then we always have a choice: I can choose to decide whether or not smoking will be an option that I can follow; I could choose not smoking as the only alternative.

My advice is don’t give yourself a bloody aneurysm over whether or not you have a cigarette. Your mind and your body are quite fragile, and stressing them over smoking while coping with what is know as “life” is a futile exercise. Stress is one of the biggest killers in the UK, although not as high as smoking and obesity, with the former being a contributing factor to stress, it’s still a bitch.

If I lived in a place where I liked people, where I wanted to communiate with people, then I would never touch another smoke again. Smoking is my shield against talking to people I don’t want to or need to, and a way to announce my “isolation” from everyone else. At least that’s one thought I have.

With my hearty cough and bleeding throat, I wonder if smoking will actually help…