Stinking Like an Old Hippie

One tactic I'm using in this quit is the "Stink Like an Old Hippie" strategem.

I liberally apply patchouli or sandalwood to the pulse point on my wrists, and when I get the urge to smoke, I sniff a wrist and get instant summer of '76 flashbacks.

This helps because I didn't smoke in 1976, but I did wear patchouli. It's some kind of psychological thing.

Mind you, I love the smell of patchouli. I used to love it on the eighteen-year old girls I used to hang around with. (Of course, I would probably still love it on eighteen-year old girls. I mean, I might have given up smoking, but I haven't completely taken leave of my senses! But the only place I smell patchouli these days is on my own wrists. Which is a shame.)

I would love the sandalwood just as much, I'm sure, but in the bottle I have, it's so viscous it refuses to come out of the spout. Perhaps I should just take out the spout. We didn't need plastic spouts to control the flow of essential oils when I was a lad. If you got too much on you, well... nobody really noticed in the circles I moved in.

So. Joss-sticks. That's another thing. I've used up all the joss sticks I had. (By now you have this image, undoubtedly, of some guy with long, thinning grey hair, a white beard, a cheesecloth shirt and red loons, with cheap bangles on his wrist and a leather necklace with multi-coloured glass beads on it. If that's what you think, you would be very far from the mark, and you need to adjust your stereotypes accordingly.)

During the last week, when desperate (that is, all the time), I've burnt a joss stick and sucked in a good lungful of some exotic perfume. I can't tell you the flavour I'm afraid, as the joss sticks were given to me, sans packet, by a good friend. They were very nice. But as I say, they've all gone.

Now, where does one get joss sticks? When one is not in Totnes. I mean, if you're in Totnes, obtaining joss sticks is a cinch - and, most likely, de rigeur. I suppose I could drive over to Glastonbury, where there is bound (by civic edict, probably) to be a purveyor of joss sticks. Or Bath! I know precisely where to go to stock up on joss sticks there (unless that shop has closed - the one opposite Tumi, you know it?). But parking is an expensive nightmare just for the sake of a couple of quid's worth of stinky sticks.

I suppose one can resort to the wibblywobblyweb, but there is something... oh, I don't know, not quite right... about buying joss sticks from the web. They should be bought from a dark shop that also sells tie-dyed tee-shirts, indian shawls, books on Reiki, and, like, healing crystals, man.

Nonetheless, I have begun my exploration of net-based purveyors of exotic olfactory stimulants, and discovered that in my current state of quit jitters I probably need sandalwood (for uplifting and lightening my mood), lavender (for calming and stress relief), vanilla (for generally feeling good - and who wouldn't want to, hmm?) and Tibetan healing incense (for healing anxiety).

So perhaps Incense Man will yet get my custom. Because, let's face it, this AmbiPur Aromatic Wood candle just doesn't have the same punch as a good old sandalwood joss stick.

Dolores Has Quit!

I have ALWAYS found you completely adorable fantastic gorgeous smart and kind. I would personally take up smoking 100 a day if I thought it would make me more like you. I don't care whether you smoke or not. You are so cool it doesn't matter.

Nonetheless, it's also kind of cool you gave up.

Slightly Limp Hooray

I'm blind from crying again last night (no wonder I haven't got a boyfriend) but what's this then?

10 hours, 45 minutes and 38 seconds. 17 cigarettes not smoked, saving £4.08. Life saved: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

For 10 hours 30 mins of that I was asleep so that bit wasn't bad. The remaining 15 minutes I have spent coughing and wondering if my eyes will ever function properly again.

I don't feel liberated, euphoric, healthy or smug yet. Actually I'm just saying that to be cool, because I do feel sort of euphoric. I feel like doing one of those mad laughs that goes a bit too high-pitched and makes everyone uncomfortable.

Rule of the day: if Dolores wants it then she can have it. Wish me luck getting "the others" to agree to this.

Successfully Completed a Thing

Okay, if I was still smoking, which I'm not, the completion of an assignment for my Open University course would have been just another milestone in the... OU course. Instead, it's also a milestone in my quit, because although I have brain fog, and am suffering craves all the time, I did manage to successfully complete something without having to run out and buy a packet of fags just because it's very important that I do this thing, and this thing can't be done while I'm quitting, and really, this was a dumb time to quit, I should have waited until completion of the thing before quitting.

Well, I did a thing, and completed a thing, without succumbing to one of my junkie thinking excuses which was a good thing.

And the thing? Well, I think it was quite a good thing, unless brain fog has blinded me.

Displacement Activities 2

Well, this is more the kind of thing you'd expect from a Mystery Dude. Something far more art-rocky.

Yeessssssss - it's Frankie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JNOM7p0Bzw

I am reborn

Look!

I look so much better without a fag in my hand!

Now I look like all you chuffing poncey bastards that never smoked in the first place!

Hey let's do something really fun like.. errr ... errr

..but what can be more fun than taking on vile pollutants?

I gotta do it though cos now I've only gone and promised the kids.

Holy Cow I've only one hour left.

Map of Hell

Just a little reminder of where I am, with 8 hours and ...errr... 12 fags left on the clock.

This Post Isn't Light-Hearted

I've been wondering whether to post this, but I have to.

Spare a thought today for my darling friend and his family. He is in Guy's Hospital having a rib and a chunk of lung removed. He has lung cancer, though he gave up smoking a good few years ago. He is a lovely man and so crucial to his wife and daughters. I've seen them a few times in the last few weeks and watched him sinking into a morphine haze, the thing you don't think about with cancer till you see it close up, is that it hurts. A lot.

I know that any coping I have to do is nothing compared to their coping, but I don't think I've made a great fist of it. Mainly I have just twittered about trying to make him laugh, how crap of me when laughing hurts so much. I've also tried to find ways to help that haven't been covered by anyone else: I'll lend my ipod, I'll drive them to London, I'll give him a sitting-down job when he comes out of hospital.

Quite often in the course of an evening I'll drink too much and sometimes when I do I'll break out into unexplained sobbing before going to bed. Last night I drank too much and did the sobbing but this time it wasn't unexplained.

I know some of you know him, so shall we resort to the superstitious nonsense that is the last resort of the atheist and just wish him well together? Even if you don't know him, you'd be better off if you did, so wish him well too.

Obligatory Meter Flash

It's first thing in the morning (for me), I've just woken up, and it's METER FLASH!

One week, two days, 7 hours, 37 minutes and 21 seconds. 279 cigarettes not smoked, saving £76.87. Life saved: 23 hours, 15 minutes.

Indulgence

MD has reminded me of something with his Torvill & Dean enthusiasm. This is one of the double-plus bonuses of a quit, that is, you must indulge yourself with any little thing that takes your fancy, and nobody is allowed to make fun of you.

So for example if I want to spend 3 hours doing puzzles of kittens on jigzone.com then that's fine. If anyone suggests I would be better doing my accounts I can look at them with big wounded eyes and simply state that I have just given up smoking. Ditto knitting socks, watching Shrek, sitting in sun-lounger eating olives, playing "Club Anthems: 94", buying little bottles of miracle unguents from Superdrug, flirting on MSN....

I am looking forward to this. Any more ideas of comforting brain-dead activities out there?

Only 13.5 smoky hours left.

Displacement Activities 1

So, you feel kind of ill, in a chronic, non-life-threatening, just irritating way. Just a bit shitty, you know? And you think lawdy, a cigarette would cure this. If I just had one of those stinky little shit-sticks between my pouty lips, I would be a GOD!

Still, instead you can go on YouTube and watch those whom the heavens have blessed.

Lord, it can't be!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOD3cm7NHE

Not those two giants of ice-dance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_-Em9wLij4

It is! Torvill and Dean!

Foolproof Idea

Didn't want you to miss this brilliant idea left by an anonymous commenter way down the page:

"I have a flawless suggestion for quitting smoking. As of Sunday, just remain in public places 24/7. Even a bustop is included, just set up camp there and you are nicotine free. You could even make some friends in the process..."

Thanks nonny!

My Eyes Look Much Better

In a comment on one of Dolores's earlier posts, I averred that my eyes look much better since I gave up the weed. She, of course, wanted photographic proof of this.

And, of course, I have photographic proof of this. My renunciation of the weed has also improved my skin and, generally, taken years off me.

Before:

After:

It's even better than plastic surgery and botox!

Permitted Supportive Statements

While I yearn for your unconditional love and support, please be careful what you say.

There may possibly be remarks that I can stomach apart from this one I have developed, but don't try unless you are very sure.

[Standard Acceptable Supportive Remark] "I have ALWAYS found you completely adorable fantastic gorgeous smart and kind. I would personally take up smoking 100 a day if I thought it would make me more like you. I don't care whether you smoke or not. You are so cool it doesn't matter. [OPTIONAL] Please accept this large wad of money as proof of my love"

This rules out the following (just 10 examples from a database of 1000s):

1. You look so much better since you gave up smoking.
2. I don't know why but I never had the urge to smoke
3. I heard that stopping smoking can be quite hard.
4. Just don't smoke any more! Simple as that!
5. I gave up smoking in 1946 and never looked back
6. I bet you're pleased you gave up smoking
7. What's a few pounds compared to the health risks of smoking?
8. Have you tried hypnosis?
9. My dad smoked 10000 fags a day and lived till he was 120
10. I gave up smoking in 1946 and every day is still a struggle.

Ok. You have been warned.

The Bet

I gave up smoking, as I usually do, at my friend's house. None of his family smoke, so it's a smoke free house, and they would nag me if I failed to give up.

This time I thought I'd spice things up with a bet. So eventually, after negotations, it was decided I would bet my friend's delightful daughter. We shook hands and everything. I didn't even cross my fingers behind my back. We bet a pound to a hundred pounds that I won't smoke before Xmas. So if I win, I get a shiny coin, if I lose I hand over a ton.


There is one small problem with this bet however.


As you will note from my metero intacto (that I shall again display, in case you missed it: One week, one day, 10 hours, 7 minutes and 43 seconds. 252 cigarettes not smoked, saving £69.48. Life saved: 21 hours, 0 minutes) I have already, in one week and half a day, saved nearly 70 quid. Therefore, by my calculations - and yes, I am calculating this - I could afford to pay the bet with no loss to myself by about Friday.

In fact, as I sit here thinking about this now, I realise I could:

a) Smoke on Friday evening

b) Go to Devon on Saturday and pay up the lost bet

c) Give up again on Saturday night at my friend's house

d) Start the whole cycle again

Which would, in itself, be healthier than smoking every day.

It's the kind of scheme that makes perfect sense a week into a quit.

Now, I must away and buy biscuits, or cake, or something.

Heart attack

Unlike the delightful Dolores, I have already quit. Do you want to see my meter?

One week, one day, 9 hours, 33 minutes and 8 seconds. 251 cigarettes not smoked, saving £69.28. Life saved: 20 hours, 55 minutes.

The money is amazing. Nearly seventy quid. Not that this is an amazing revelation that will forever keep me away from the fags. The money is also nothing. Think how much I've spent on fags over the last 25 years, and the 70 quid I've already saved is a puddle of piss in a thunderstorm. Still, it is amazing in and of itself, and will enable me to feel okay about buying books and CDs and DVDs and stuff. Not that I ever felt bad about those things. All right, let's just face it - the money I'm saving is absolutely no incentive at all.

Yesterday, I got on Brenda. (Brenda is my unimaginative name for Brenda DyGraf's Lateral Thigh Trainer. Yes, yes I bought one. I used to fall asleep to Brenda's Infomercials, and eventually came to believe that, yes, there is something unique in its skating-like motion.) I did a hundred steps - a hundred at a time is a sensible strategy for somebody who smoked thirty a day and has done little exercise - and then sat down to continue what I was doing. But then, my arm hurt. Not a lot. Just a bit. Lord, I thought, here comes the heart attack. And then I did feel short of breath, and a bit dizzy. Forty minutes later, I was still having a heart attack. My chest even hurt a bit. An hour and a half later, I was still having a heart attack.

I had decided, somewhere around the thirty minute mark, that I wasn't actually having a heart attack, but a mild panic attack, and didn't phone for the paramedics. Even writing this appears to be causing a mild heart attack again. Well, typing is exhausting.

Anyway, here's the point. Somewhere during the internal dialogue over whether I was actually having a heart attack or just being as neurotic as I normally am I decided to open another line of enquiry that went along the lines of wouldn't I actually feel better about all this if I had a fag?

Good news. I didn't. Hence the metero intacto.

You need to look here.

Have loved this Truth in Advertising presentation from Chickenhead in many years of failed quits.

I'm posting the link now because once I give up the fags my IQ will fall to about 60 and I won't be able to find it.

Useless Quit Buddy

That's me. But I'm quitting again on Saturday.

But how will I look cool when I'm not covered in a layer of fag-ash?

Sex addiction? Nah, been there, done that, stained the t-shirt.

Alcoholism? Well I'm showing some talent in that direction, but how convincing is a drunk without nicotine stained fingers?

Fat bastard? That's probably going to happen anyway. Some may argue that fatness is not in itself cool. I think a snarling fatty could have a sort of retro charm in these poncey look after yourself 5-a-day days.

That's it then. I'm gonna get chubby and if anyone makes a comment I will kill them.