Grrrrr....I QUIT!!!

Well I just quit smoking (again ::) ) so I'm gonna be a little...ummmm...harder to live with than normal. I decided that at age 53 I'd been smoking long enough and convinced myself that I wasn't enjoying it anymore.. After 38 years. Yeah...right.

I did it as a birthday present to myself. Whoo-frikkin-Hoo.

I am about the most serious variety of nicotine addict you will find. When I figured out that $3.25 worth of cheap cigars had twice the nicotine of a $5 pack of Camels, it was sayonara Camels. As soon as consciousness hits me in the morning, I smoke. Before I hit the sack, ditto. If I get in bed and figure I haven't smoked enough, I get up and do it some more.

I've only been 33 hours without a smoke, and so the full effects haven't hit yet. There's still lots of nicotine floating around in my system. But the people around me can tell something's up. You wouldn't believe what I said to my boss yesterday while trying desperately to concentrate on my work as every noise in the universe conspired to annoy me and distract me from it. I can't repeat it here, but it contained at least 3 of the 7 words you can't say on TV. After working practically arm-in-arm for 14 years he recognised the out-of-character outburst even before I did.

So perhaps I'll live longer and enjoy it less. Or perhaps I'll eventually enjoy it more. Hard to say at this point. Cold turkey is a state of mind where even ordinary thoughts refuse to resolve themselves into coherancy without a brute force attack from the will. That part will soon improve (I know. I've done this before.) but the other part--the part where I start seriously aching to go smoke--the part where my body has leached out all its stored nicotine and has none left to ease the need--that part hasn't started yet.

I you sense it before I do, you might want to step back out of the line of direct fire.