Getting Away

For many years, I thought about quitting smoking and thought to myself: But what will I dooooo?

Always the fidgeter, smoking seemed to provide me with some form of out when I was nervous in a social situation. I felt it gave me an opportunity to take a break from working -- it was my reward for finishing my homework all through my last two years in high school. Smoking was a breather, a moment grabbed just for myself in the messy, mundane chaos of my life.

But what will I haaaaave?

I thought there would be no reason to take that time. What I realised, once I became a non-smoker, was that I didn't need that reason. Not that I didn't need breaks; of course not that. But that my desire for a break, the edginess of must-leave-work and my inability to concentrate any further was nothing to do with needing a moment.

It was everything about needing a cigarette.

You see, cigarettes get the credit for a lot of things. You think they calm you down, you think they help you to concentrate again, make it possible for you to return to some tense situation with a clearer head. But if you didn't have that little nicotine addiction poking you hard in the belly, you wouldn't feel so tense to begin with. You wouldn't need to get the fuck out right now.

I know this from experience.

Allen Carr talks about the way that smokers are constantly striving to get back to the "state of peace of being a non-smoker". This is absolutely true, glib as it sounds. We don't enjoy cigarettes; we get relief from them.

But if we were non-smokers, we wouldn't need the relief. That's the crazy thing. There'd be no nicotine levels inside us to drop to a quarter within the hour, or whatever the random fact says.

As a non-smoker, I love my work. Not so much as a smoker. As a smoker, my work detracts from my oh-so-important smoking time, leaving me irritated, unable to fully concentrate, and hanging out for lunchtime. Talk about a drop in productivity. It seriously sucks.

I'm looking forward to experiencing the world as a non-smoker again. It's no fun living with a layer of stress covering so much of your daily world, leaving you sitting around waiting for the moment you can get away and have a cigarette.