I can't tell you how many alcoholics and junkies have told me quitting cigarettes was harder than kicking heroin or booze. But it's no harder than quitting a dangerous eating disorder.
I actually started smoking about a month ago, for the 500th time in my life. I smoke and quit and smoke and quit. Doesn't matter if I go 10 years without a cigarette (as I have). I still love smoking and love the effect it has on calming me down.
I hate what it makes my body feel, though, even if I only smoke 1 or 2 a day. It's a powerful drug, that nicotine, but I think what we really love is the tar that coats our delicate lungs and makes breathing a depressed function.
I remember the first time I quit, though. I spent the weekend in bed, in a little cottage way out in the country in Texas, of all places, with no car and no 7-11 stores for 20 miles. I writhed under the sheets for days, wanting a smoke every second of that time, crying, screaming, scheming and really hurting. But by Monday, when my mate & I went to the diner to get breakfast before work, I was choking on the sidestream smoke of everyone around me. And if I'd smoked a cigarette, I would have barfed, for sure.
Talia, my dear, just do it. Eventually you won't even want to smoke, though you can certainly talk yourself back into it. The only thing that really works (unlike crocheting or drinking water or hypnosis or whatever) is cold turkey and committing to breathing air instead of smoke, though you want a cigarette like a junkie wants a fix. The pain doesn't last that long and the reward of breathing effortlessly is like heaven.
I'm pulling for you and everyone else facing this necessary requirement. It's not a moral imperative. It's a way of preventing death in case you can't breathe well enough to have general anesthesia. My favorite uncle always had a cigar in his mouth, every second of the day. When he went in for back surgery, he had a massive stroke under anesthesia and died. He was a skinny, healthy, successful, confident man but his lungs were crap. I'm pretty sure he would not have quit cigars even if his surgeon had told him he might die under anesthesia if he didn't.
You have the power to quit cigarettes. Set a date and time and begin. Then keep going until you can walk into a smoky place and find cigarettes disgusting. You can always fall in love with them again later. For now, you need to break up with them.
But don't forget this struggle you're having. Maybe the experience will convince you you never want to go through it again, and you'll not only have healthy lungs, but a new stomach and you'll be out there doing instead of being inside smoking and eating.
