Adventures in Living: Trying to treat ADD with meds, while at the same time, quit smoking – Day Twelve ( I think)
Last Monday morning I smoked what I am hoping is my last cigarette for this lifetime. It was around 5:05 a.m. when I took my last puffs. Today I celebrate one week from my addiction to smoking.
The road has definitely not been an easy one. I’ve been able to lower the volume on my cravings for nicotine by using nicotine lozenges. I often pop two in my mouth at a time and the cravings soon disappear.
Another part of the struggle in cessation is that I smoked out of pure habit – it gave me something to do. I have found the usual rituals of having a morning smoke with my coffee, a cigarette after meals, and others had to be changed. It was not unusual for me to during this past week to catch myself looking for a my pack of cigs and lighter with any of these triggers.
I have had some episodes of coughing, especially at night when I am trying to go to sleep. It’s more of a tickling in my throat than it is a deep cough, but it’s nagging and nearly impossible to get to sleep.
One of my coping tools is the QuitNow app that I’ve downloaded on my phone. It keeps track of your time abstaining from smoking, how many cigarettes you haven’t smoked, how much money you have saved by not smoking, and other interesting stats. As a lover of numbers and former math teacher, it’s great motivation.
As a result of my latest attempt to quit smoking, the app reveals I’ve not smoked 146 cigarettes. It’s hard to believe I would have smoked that many in this one-week period of time. I feel that’s one way we ignore our consumption of cigarettes – one pack is “only twenty.” But when you add up a pack a day for a whole week, it’s quite a leap to see your total number smoked.
As I continue to trudge the road of quitting smoking, I haven’t found it necessary to smoke a cigarette in a week’s time. I’m still taking it one day at a time.
David Lee 