One-Year Anniversary

November is actually national quit smoking month, but I'm here to announce that as of right now, I've been denying myself cigarettes for just over one year. The anniversary came on October 12th. I don't know how silly a motivator this is, but I decided to quit just before I turned 31. That way I could compartmentalize the filthy habit as something that I stopped doing at 30. We'll see how that works out. I've quit for about a year previously, but I think this is the longest I've gone without a single "slip".

Another big motivator was Soapy telling me that I couldn't. Big props to Soapster for making this whole thing competitive.

And even bigger props to my basketball crew... especially Kelly, Karl and John B., who consistently checked on my progress (even through a couple of earlier aborted attempts) and were encouraging without ever being intolerant. The same could be said for both my parents, but of course, they weren't down at the bar every Thursday night when temptation was rearing its ugly head.

Also worth noting: The hardest parts are 1) Watching movies like 2046 which make you want to smoke every 5 minutes and 2) Waking up from a dream in which you've just smoked a cigarette. It's an overwhelming feeling of guilt and failure until you realize it didn't really happen. The easiest part is the actual nicotine addiction. This probably just fuels my anger toward the drug companies, but I don't think the patch would have been any help to me at all. My strongest cravings lasted months (and still occur now and then) and weren't triggered by physical withdrawls. They were entirely about the psychological addiction aspect. _Rants