Day 2 - I Hate Nicorette

When I was a child, we had these DOS computers. They looked kinda like this:

No mouse. Could run simple games and programs that would fit on floppy discs. I used to play Spy vs Spy and Police Quest and, when I got a little older, Elder Scrolls: Arena. It's bizarre to think of the monster I'm going to have soon, with Elder Scrolls: Skyrim on it. 

 Arena

Skyrim 

If you look closely you'll notice a slight upgrade in graphics

One of my brothers must have thought it would be nice to read something funny as you're waiting for your PC to boot up, so they ran some sort of program that caused one of the many Murphy's laws to pop up while the PC was loading. In other words, every day of my young life, I'd read something to the effect of "The other queue always goes faster", or "The repair man will never have seen a model quite like yours before."

To this day, I insist that's why Murphy rules my life.

So of course, the very moment I decide to quit smoking with the aid of nicotine patches, the only company in South Africa that produces nicotine patches has discontinued them. Not for health reasons, but because they're having some sort of import issues. The gum is available. I hate the gum. No one has the patches. I phoned everywhere. "We have the gum", they all said. "Oh and there's this wonderful new pill called..." Yeah. The moody - then - suicide pill. I know all about it.

I finally found one chemist that said they could get two boxes of the very lowest strength patches for me to pick up the next day, and who sold me the gum. For about R40 more than anyone else would have. Murphy again.

The gum itself tastes like old tyres. You're supposed to have one every time you crave a cigarette and at least 8 a day. Seems pretty excessive to me, and it encourages you to replace one action with another. I don't see how this can possibly not lead to a new addiction. So far I've had one piece and a lot of regular chewing gum.

Yesterday also was the day people chose me to listen to them blab about relationships. Oh so much joy. So loving of you to hang out, Murphy.

Despite all of the above, I'm still doing fine. People remain encouraging, though if I were them I'd be cynical and making bets on how soon this person who's making their quitting attempt public will give in. But my new PC is on its way,my hair smells of shampoo instead of smoke, and I can still have as much coffee as I want. In fact, there's a thousand things I enjoy that I can still do that are not smoking. For some reason I almost subconsciously thought all those things would disappear too.

Day 1

Yesterday saw this post on my main blog. Today is Wednesday 30th of May so here we go. No more smoking: Day 1.

I haven't tried out a nicotine patch yet, but I do have bubblegum. So far, my cravings are only ritualistic. It's strange to skip the cigarette I usually have on the way home from dropping my daughter off at playschool. I'm not entirely sure what non-smokers do during morning break time either. I have gone many a morning without smoking though so it's nothing new to me.

Most people are encouraging, which is nice, but one stupid git whined that I'm "making excuses" instead of "just quitting". I love how people are. The moment someone wants to quit smoking there's always one person who'll tell them they're quitting smoking wrong and should do it this way instead. In fact, there's usually more than one person doing that. There's also generally a good deal of non-smokers who can't understand why quitting "that disgusting habit" is so hard for smokers. I've also noted many times that quitting time tends to be when people decide to pick fights with you. There's no medicine out there that really helps either. And then everyone sits around wondering why you started again when something snaps and you have that damn smoke.

I have gum as a substitute for when I'm driving, (I've been smoking while driving since before I got my license - driving without smoking is going to be an adjustment of note) but I'm going to have to work on a good substitute for when people irritate/upset/annoy me. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.

Or I could just give everyone around me permission to do this:

A good plan. I'm going with it.