Wednesday Cat Blogging

Hell Yes It's an Addiction!

I get into arguments with other people sometimes about whether or not smoking tobacco is an addiction or just a bad habit. Strangely enough, those that object to labeling smoking as an addiction seem to be those who have recovered from addictions themselves...such as alcohol, meth, crack, etc. It's almost as if they don't want to let any others in the so called recovery club if their drug of choice is nicotine. Almost snobbish.

Well...let's look at the definition of addiction; engaging in a behavior (such as ingesting a chemical) that consumes a large portion of your consciousness, and that behavior is continued in spite of the knowledge that it is extremely harmful or personal wishes to stop.

Gee, that certainly describes my smoking habit. My days pretty much revolve around cigarettes to some degree or another At least twenty times every day I suspend whatever I'm doing to dose myself with a few shots of nicotine. I know tobacco is bad for me. Beyond making me stink the tobacco will eventually kill me in what will likely be a painful and nasty death. I want to stop. In fact, I don't know of anybody over the age of 30 who likes smoking. I want to stop, I want to stop, gawd I want to stop....but I keep buying them, paying any price asked. I calculate that, since I started seriously smoking, I have given myself over one million doses of nicotine. Come across any addict that tells you they have given themselves a million injections or had drunk a million shots, and you would probably describe them as pretty hard core.

And like most addicts of any type...I relapse. There are no support groups for smokers. No anonymous 12-step meetings. No coins. No detox centers. No treatment centers. A smoker is on their own.

Which makes me more determined than ever to kick this addiction, habit, or whatever the hell you want to call it. I AM A NON-SMOKER!

damn...that sounds good

I AM A NON-SMOKER!

Wednesday Cat Blogging

This or That

I had a comment a while back from Don who noted my difficulty with both trying to avoid junk foods and attempting to quit smoking. Don made the suggestion that I concentrate on giving up the cigs and worry about the diet later. The reasoning is logical....both are attempts to modify deeply ingrained behaviors and maybe doing both at once just makes everything twice as hard; hence twice as likely to fail.

This is where I do battle with one of my big character flaws; the idea of doing something all out or not at all. In my goal to get healthy I tend to want to do it all at the same time...diet, exercise, and getting rid of the damn smoking habit. Of them all, smoking is the one that gives me fits. I quit smoking and all I want to do is eat. I eat properly I want to smoke. I exercise but I can't do it with the intensity needed to do any good, so in frustration I want to smoke.

Bloody hell!

So what I'm going to do is focus entirely to quit smoking. Oh...I'll still watch what I eat and how much. I'll still exercise. I'll do those things but without a driving goal. I'll just do them so I can develop good habits for when I do get down and dirty with my weight. Until then...for a couple of weeks anyway...I'm concentrating on giving up cigarettes. The little counter in the upper left corner will be updated when I have smoked my last. Most blog entries here are going to be about quitting this filthy habit, my progress, my struggles, my (hopefully) success.

Because, let's face it, without doing that, I may as well just resign myself to dying in a very few years.