keep trying

I started smoking at age 12. My good friend and I would take 1/2 smoked butts from his moms ash tray and rellish them. When I was an adolecent my friends and I were very resourseful. We smoked most any thing from butts we'd find, to stolen smokes from kmart or seven eleven, to tobacco smooshed out of butts and re-rolled. It was not a pretty thing. By the time I was old enough to buy them on my own, I was a seasoned pro at "burning one".

My poor folks. Pops was very athletic in his younger years, and raised me the same way. What a disapointment it was for him to learn the habits I was picking up. I love sports and did then as well, but it is so easy to remain ingnorant to what is happening to you when you are cought up in being cool and "enjoying your life style". My mothers dad is a smoker, and it was heart breaking for her the learn my chosen path as well.

As time passed I started really feeling the effects that my "life style" was having on my body.

I have quit smoking three times, now. This time, my final triumph, I have been quit since 2-22-07. I did it the same way I did it the first two times, "cold turkey". However, this time I have a very useful crutch, my kids.

I have found that the best way, for me, to quit smoking , is to keep an unopened pack of smokes readily available and at my disposal. My reasoning for this is that if I try to quit when I finish my current pack, then when I really want one, I simply do not have one, and will pitch a fit all the way to the store and chain smoke a few to make up for lost time on the way back home. This aproach puts it back on me, not the rest of the world for letting me run out of smokes. If I really want to stay a smoker, I can light one up at any time. When I feel the burning in the back of my throat in the morning, even before I wake up, it becomes very easy to talk myself out of having that first one, then I have a jump on the day. A lot of my problem was the routine, so the morning bit throws that off axis. Now, I just need to make it through the drive to work, and after I get there it will be a couple hours until my smoke break opportunity presents itself. The drive to work is NOT EASY, it is one of the toughest parts of the day. (Keep thinking how much fun it was to wake up this morning to a burning throat and chest, right before the half hour coughing fit). The busier you can keep yourself partaking in mind stimulating projects and activities, the easier the next several hours will be.

Now that we have made it through the work day, and my  friends at work are all probably taking a pool on how long this will last, I have that commute to make, again. I have to tough it through this one, because at this point, the burning is diluted by the thoughts of the work day, what we're doing tonight, etc.

When I get home I am surounded by my wife, and kids. This is what really helped me this time. A couple days before I decided to quit again, my beautiful daughter, a toddler at the time, had figured out how to walk along the furniture and walls, and had wandered over to the glass door where I was on the other side having a smoke on the back porch. The look she gave me was my motivation. QUIT THIS SH-T. If I cannot be there for her through life, it will be for any other reason than, I died of smoking.