Goodbye to All That: Day 1

Get ready for some live blogging of my exciting and somewhat terrifying journey into the world of becoming a non-smoker.

DAY ONE
Today is the first day of the rest of my life, or more precisely, the rest of my life without cigarettes. Please forgive my worse-than-usual grammar and comma placement – this is the first time I haven't smoked a cigarette within 2 hours of waking up for the last 700 days or so. This morning around 10:30 or so I strapped on my very first nicotine patch courtesy of the state of New York and have been spending the past 4 hours or so in a state of semi-panic.



In order to understand how major this is, I will share my extensive and uncomplicated history of smoking.

I am probably one of the more hardcore smokers you know. I am the person that "social" smokers bum cigarettes off because I always have them. I'm the kind of smoker who buys an extra pack when they're down to like 2 cigarettes because you don't want to ever run out and suffer the mild discomfort of an hour or so without cigarettes in easy reach.

Around the age of 14 or so I think I decided that I would become a smoker. My parents don't smoke — my dad smokes cigars and pipes but not cigarettes — so I can't blame them. Early on in my irrational teenage logic, I thought perhaps cigarettes would better prepare my virginal lungs for the marijuana smoke that would be entering them soon and that I would definitely cough less. I had to toughen up my lungs like I used to toughen up the soles of my feet in the summer, when I would walk barefoot for a quarter mile or so on my dirt and gravel driveway in order to develop extensive calluses.

I think I smoked my first cigarette when I was 15, with my best friends Kate and Sam. We were in Sam's basement, and her aunt had left a Kool 100 lying around. We went into a basement annex and smoked the cigarette. I'd have to say I didn't dislike it at all, it was minty and delicious. Kate and I went on to be full-fledged smokers, stealing Viceroys and Kents from her Grandma's carton until we had driver's licenses and could buy them at the stores that didn't card. I would smoke a cigarette a day in the woods and sometimes in my dirt basement after school. Eventually after I got a car I started smoking more - it became a primary form of entertainment at the diners (with cigarette machines!) I hung out in every day with my friends. In 12th grade I used to drive around during lunch with one of the hot, younger football players who was on newspaper staff with me to smoke cigarettes. Those were the best days, the high school days, when I pledged I would stop smoking after cigarettes cost more than $3 a pack.

By my freshman year of college I smoked a pack a day. All those cigarettes gave me something to do when I stayed up all night working. They were also cheaper than (and almost as satisfying as) eating, which came in handy since I couldn't afford to eat very much that year. Now that I had my own dorm room, and eventually my own apartment, I could smoke as much as I wanted. I kept this up for several years.

The first time I started thinking about quitting was when returning from studying abroad in Paris. Smoking in Paris was fantastic — you could do it everywhere and it was cheap. They even sold cigarettes in helpful half-pack increments when I was extra broke (only 10 francs!). Sitting in the disgusting smoking lounge in Heathrow on my way home, I realized that in America smoking couldn't possibly be as fun. When I returned I quit for 3 days, then went back to it.

The smoking ban and subsequent extreme taxation of cigarettes started during my last year of college. I joined many others who started rolling their own cigarettes to save money. This was perhaps when I became a much more hardcore smoker. Everyone was quitting. I just replaced Camel Lights with unfiltered cigarettes but smoked just as much. I could roll a cigarette in 10 seconds. I developed a really bad hacking cough, but kept smoking. Eventually after months of unemployment, I was so broke I had to steal my live-in boyfriend's change for potatoes and Bisquick. Some days I didn't have cigarettes or even rolling tobacco. Those were the really really tough days.

Since then I've smoked pretty consistently. There was one other time in the last 11 years I seriously tried to quit smoking. After weeks of hard work, I had reduced my cigarette intake to one or two cigarettes a day. Then I moved to Philadelphia, where the illicit pleasure of indoor smoking was still legal, and I lasted about four or five days before this initiative ended. I told myself I needed to stop smoking by the age of 26 (my ten year anniversary), but it never happened. At some point I realized that cigarettes were possibly the only constant in my life, that maybe smoking was the only thing that consistently brought me joy and peace of mind. Cigarettes were the ultimate frenemy.

Three weeks ago I developed a bad cough. I had trouble sleeping. I thought it was the result of allergies, but realized that I had been smoking about 20 cigarettes a day again. I also learned of the new cigarette tax that would raise prices to approximately $9 a pack. I decided that now was the time, that I couldn't keep trying to cut back anymore. My free patches arrived two Fridays ago.

I've been making mental notes of all the things that can potentially distract me from the physical urge to smoke. So far these things include: drinking coffee, talking on the phone, fixing things, cleaning. This list is small but will hopefully grow longer. So far, I've learned that when you're accustomed to smoking outside – in my case EVERY time I'm outside – it's hard to walk around without smoking. I've always preferred walking to biking since you can smoke much easier while walking, so perhaps this is a good time to switch primary modes of transit? Stay tuned for Day 2, in which I will report on the effectiveness of the nicotine patch, and surviving a poker night without even one cigarette break.