I Quit Smoking For Six Days, And I Start Spouting Off About Love And Generosity Of The Spirit. Sheesh.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 I have quit smoking many, many times. Obviously, none of those times stuck. I have quit for periods stretching from one day to thirty, and each time I asked myself why I was bothering to go through all the physical and emotional stress.
You would think that all the nasty and occasionally deadly side effects of smoking would offer up enough reasons to quit, but that is not enough for an addict's brain. An addict's brain takes a look at the prospect of various types of cancer in the distant future, weighs it against feeling better right now, and convinces that addict to mock death and light up.
Over the last several weeks, I have tried to quit a handful of times, each time lasting less than three full days, and it was disheartening. I tried to scare myself away from smoking by picturing my own slow death due to emphysema. I chastised myself for my lack of self-discipline. I lay awake nights terrified at what I was doing to my body and yet lit up a cigarette the next afternoon. I was beginning to lose confidence in my ability to change my life until it occurred to me that I needed something more than the spectre of ill health to break through that wall, because fear of death just wasn't cutting it.
It was then, for the first time and quite out of the blue, that I realized that smoking was larger than just a physical addiction and social habit. It was a giant, obnoxious sign of my refusal to allow the fullness of love to move through my life.
I want to write about this and not sound like a big freaking hippie, but it's hard not to, because I'm talking about this life force that runs through everything, and even I am beginning to think I can smell the patchouli wafting off the screen. This is what occurred to me, though, in a flash of insight, and I couldn't just ignore it, because it struck me that it was an idea that had the potential to save my life. Seriously. I wasn't even smoking any ganja at the time.
When I looked at my addiction in this light, I saw how I used smoking to build little walls around my heart. I smoked to busy my hands when I was nervous, to distract myself when I was heavy with negative emotions, and both to excuse myself from social situations that made me anxious and to include myself in social situations that made me anxious, depending on what the conditions required. I smoked as a distraction from honest communication with myself and others. It became glaringly clear that I used smoking to close myself off, and suddenly I had more than the spectre of ill health to push me to quit.
I had love.
Again, seriously, I'm not on the ganja.
This love I am referring to is not romantic love. I have that with the Palinode. I am referring to that force of love, that vein of energy, that runs through life and can be discovered if we are open to experience it. Every time I lit up a cigarette and further poisoned myself, I was denying the fullness of that love's reach. Every time I inhaled, I shut that part of myself down to those around me. I denied that fullness to my creativity, which has a life in its own right.
I cannot know myself and create to my potential if I constantly distract myself away from deeper emotions. I cannot give freely to others when I make a habit of closing off my heart. I cannot give freely to myself.
This decision to quit smoking cigarettes means that I am allowing myself to feel anxious and weird, because there is more for me in anxiety and weirdness than there is in busy hands and a veil of smoke. This whole business makes me feel like I've just put my heart right out there on my sleeve. It is terrifying, but it is that good kind of fear, the kind that you feel just before new things start to happen, NEW THINGS LIKE SOUNDING LIKE A RAVING HIPPIE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.
Maybe I have every right to be afraid. Jay-sus.
But it's true. I do not want to reach the end of my life having corralled every uncomfortable emotion behind a cigarette to keep the world at bay. Arm's reach is not close enough for love to find it's way in with all the joy and creativity it can bring with it. Arm's reach is no longer close enough for me.
Reader Comments (31)
Oh, woman. Why are you so brilliant?
Weird because I'm trying to quit right now. In fact, I want to quit all the substances and the accompanying self-destruction.
I have nicotine gum rather than love. Hah. I have to give that up, though.
But why do I want to do this? Sort of because of love, not through love. I'm not using love to help me. Maybe I should. What you are experiencing though, I can't quite relate to but I see little flashes of, I think.
There's something else that I can't articulate without sounding like an idiot. It's starting to seem to me that can't be a fully realized person with all this...using. All the chemical junk I use in one way or another. I wish I could say whatever this is as well as you say the thing that makes you able to quit. (For me love is more about why, not about how. I don't know how, yet. But your post makes me realize I'm constructing this as if I'm trying to avoid something, rather than go toward something--or I'm thinking about it that way. But I want to go toward something.)
It's not about physical health. You are correct that physical health is not a good motivator. It is partly because of the way that the addict thinks and partly because I am (as a lot of people are) detached from my body, from health. I exercise plenty and eat well but this is only because of the mental suffering that results if I don't. Only mental effects or benefits seem to motivate me. Physical ones don't work.
Also, fear of illness doesn't motivate because I am not able to conceptualize the future that well. And wasn't, until recently, a huge fan of staying alive in the first place.
It feels like a way to be stuck, to keep on the nicotine. Also, I think this now about alcohol. (Less about caffeine itself and more about the habits of extreme sleep deprivation that caffeine permits.)
I am curious how you got to this place. Did it just hit you one day? Are you doing yoga? Meditating? It's such a deep insight, this thing. I see little glimmers of it but it takes so much effort for me to keep a grasp on the idea you seem to have here.
This is exactly it. Exactly.
I'm not a smoker, I never have been, but I can tell you that I have sometimes wished I was a smoker (despite the fact that I am so thoroughly opposed to it) so that I could disengage from the world. A world I couldn't handle at that particular time.
I think I bought ice cream instead.
Good for you girl. And once you have that concrete reason to quit and the proof, at least mentally, that you no longer need to smoke, you can conjure up those feelings (or read this post) when you become tempted.
For me, it was losing my dog to lymphoma that made me stick to quitting. I quit on election day 2008 in her honor along with the sentiment "Yes, I can." It may sound corny but, for me, it worked. Whenever I'm tempted I think of how much pain I was in over losing my best animal friend ever, how much it hurt to put her down, how I would have dome anything to save her...but in the end the cancer was too strong. And that woke me up. Cancer is a scary bitch.
You're fantastic. Even for a scary hippie chick.
Oh, lovey. So true.
I think that is the best post from you I've ever seen! But I am a kind of big fat hippie chick I guess....
I think that is the best post from you I've ever seen! But I am a kind of big fat hippie chick I guess....
This is one of the most powerful things I've ever read.
I have had a lifelong terror of wafting patchouli. I have nightmares of it. They did surgical brain testing on me and when they cut open my skull and pressed a metal instrument to the seizure-causing portion of my brain, I screeched WAFTING PATCHOULI! I SMELL WAFTING PATCHOULI!
So I am high qualified to say no, sweet Schmutzie, there is no wafting here. This post made me want to jump up and cheer. Keep going. Just keep immersing yourself in all that's anxious and weird.
Big smiles from your eventual far east.
(Ever your optimist.)
This brought tears to my eyes. My addiction is food, and you wouldn't even know it to look at me, but I spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about food and either eating it or wishing I could eat it. Because I can't possibly be happy and have all the things I have going for me AND be thin. Because I can't love myself. (Ack, patchouli alert!) Anyway, thank you for this post.
Love this post. But hey - what's wrong with sounding like a big freaking hippie? That's my lifelong aspiration!
that made SO MUCH SENSE to me. SO MUCH. Although I do not hide behind cigarettes specifically, I hide behind other things. I have this self-hatred that leads to self-destructive behavior - and this post is just ... brilliant.
Thank you!
Ozma, this is absolutely about my ability to realize myself, self-actualize. You nailed it. I was searching for those very words last night when I wrote this.
How did I come to this? I don't know. My mind would not leave my needing to quit alone, and it became an obsession over the last few weeks until something just clicked into place and made it plain for me.
Oh wow... that's neat.
Hubs quit smoking 22 years ago after smoking for only 9 years - He said it was the hardest thing he's ever done.
Hang in there. You're doing great!
amen.
and good love!
I needed to hear this. I need to be open to love too.
Thank you:)
I am loving this in all it's patchouli hippie grandeur! Very, very wonderful!
I quite smoking in March. I have to say the first two weeks were almost unbearable and then one day I didn't even think about reaching for a cigarette. I mean, who knew you could enjoy a nice breeze without having to light a cigarette. Or just taking a minute to yourself to think about your day. You don't need a cigarette. Stay strong!
I love it. And way to go!
I'm on day 4. And I'm OK---thanks to you, and this. Really---you said everything that has been running through my mind, only much more coherently since I am just kicking myself one minute---and cheering myself the next.
Thank you. So very much.
this seriously made me all quivery lipped. You are pretty brilliant.
go 6 days! i just posted on ur old post of three days and then realized that ur way past that and might not even read it so i had to post here on your more up-to-date no smoking post! keep going no smoking ;-)
Grace in Small Things
1) I put ice cream in my diet coke and it was tasty.
2) I watched this documentary on Istanbul and I have decided to visit it someday.
3) I bought a book online.
4) I did ten pushups today.
5) Schmutzie quit smoking.
What ozma said.
And *whew* it is hard to quit smoking and persevere, and it's hard to admit to universal feelings of interconnected spirit and overflowing love. No patchouli or ganja required. It is amazing, but why is it so hard to admit to that? Rather than have to make excuses (or make fun of it) to my friends and family, I just don't talk much about my experiences. But wow, is it powerful regardless. I'm so glad that you are loving yourself more, and I hope the rest of us can be inspired to follow! *Quashing desire to make fun of my own sincerity.*
Bravo! I'm glad you found the way for you! Wish my mom had......
I am so fighting the urge to send you a tie dye shirt right now...
Good for you. Great post.
I have one of those little inner hippie people too, and most of the time, I think he/she's full of crap. But then sometimes, he/she offers up some real insight. But as you say, there's no way to express said insight without sounding like a hippie, so you just have to accept that you sound like a hippie. I really liked this post. You definitely grabbed me at the bit about losing confidence in your ability to change your life. That's one of my biggest fears. Strike that. It IS my biggest fear.
oh dear, i think you just "put a bugger on me".
i smoke, i love to smoke and i think in some way i enjoy the distance it gives me to the love you speak of. spending three months taking my dad to chemo (lung cancer) before he passed wasn't enough to convince me either.
i quit once, when i found out i was pregnant and started right back up after i was done breastfeeding.
thanks for putting this out there and opening my mind to the idea that i am missing out on some lovin'.
I want to go COLD TURKEY! Tomorrow, I am also doing something called "The Master Cleanse". Going to clean out my body, my lungs, and digestive track all at the same time! Anyone reading this, send me good thoughts, good energy and lots of luck!!! lol! If that doesnt work well my back up is trying the nicorette inhaler I heard great things about. Heard about it reading a news article on 'kiwi drug." Always have a back up!!
I was about to quit, in fact as of today I've gone 7 days without a smoke. Then I read you above who went 30 days and still struggled to quit.
I then asked myself is the pizza every week and the trans-fats from it not also killing me slowly? Is my neighbourhood filled with over 300,000 cars emitting cancerous smoke from it's exhaust not killing me?
Then I asked myself, "tell me one thing on this planet that isn't killing me?"
And so I started back up again....I wish to rid myself of this evil, but right now im weak. I will try again.