My dirty little secret

I started smoking when I was 18 years old. Why? I have no idea. I saw other kids at college doing it. It looked mysterious. And of course, it was forbidden. I spent many, many years under the tight reigns of over-protective parents. I looked at smoking as a way to carve out a piece of my adulthood. To be really naughty. But it has been a screeching, chest thumping monkey on my back for years.

I've quit maybe 20 times. I've been able to go months, even years without a smoke. I didn't smoke while I was pregnant or nursing (and if I snuck one while nursing, I'd pump-n-dump milk). I've quit cold turkey, I've quit using the patch.

But something always happens. I always start again. Usually there's some stressor that triggers it. I think, "I need a smoke." It's immediate, it's necessary, it's vital. Either I get one RIGHT NOW or someone's head it going to be bitten clean off. So I get one, in one of two ways. Typically I will bum one. If I bum one, I feel guilty, because I know that smokes are $4 a pack now. But bumming turns me into a junkie. I don't know when I'm going to get my next fix, so I get nervous and paranoid. When will I see another smoker soon? Will I really ask a total stranger for a smoke? Yes. I will beg a total stranger for a cigarette.

So then I graduate to option two: buying a pack. It always starts with the same internal dialogue. "Now look, these are expensive so you can only have one a day." But then it turns into one in the morning and one after lunch and one after dinner ... then more get squeezed in as the days progress.

This is what addicts do. We convince ourselves that we can handle it, that we can regulate our intake. But that's the Catch 22 about addiction -- your membership in the club has benefits, including the ability to bullsh*t yourself into thinking you can handle your drug of choice. There is no room for regulation of an addiction. It is absolute and relentless. You can't just do it a little bit. If you can, it's not an addiction.

Not all my friends know I smoke. Those that find out I do are quite shocked usually, I don't strike them as "the kind of person who smokes." I take that to mean that I don't strike them as a complete moron. I guess I appreciate not that, but typically I just feel more guilty that I am lying to everyone. That being a smoker is yet another part of my personality, but one I feel compelled to hide because I am so embarassed by it.

And I am embarassed. I am not proud in the least to be a smoker. I am one of those self-hating smokers. I'm glad that smoking has been banned in many public places. I know it's stupid, I know that no person of even meager intelligence at this moment in time could be under the impression that every cigarette smoked is just another nail in his of her coffin.

Why am I fessing up? Because I have to quit. I have to stop. I have to get the point in my life where I deal with stress instead of kill it with smoke. I'm doing fairly well, I ran out last week and I have not bought any since. I may have bummed on Monday.

But I've got my heart in the right place; I have no intention to do this anymore. Moral support on this issue is welcome.