cliodhna’s wave

Paul has just quit smoking after 36 years. his body has gone into shock, I think, as everything the cigarettes were holding down is free and back with a vengeance. He can’t breathe properly and his throat hurts. He says its more than just quitting, he has quit before and this hasn’t happened but I think that maybe he only quit before because he had to and not out of choice and this time his whole mind/spirit/body is involved because it is from a choice to make his life better and more healthy. it is time to purge, the body cries with relief, lets get rid of all of it! i feel for him and I sent him some reiki to loosen some of the stuff.

I remember trying to quit for years, having just the ‘one’ and making myself feel bad about it and then starting again and saying ’some other time’ until I woke up one morning about two years ago and said ‘I’m not going to smoke today’ and I didn’t and haven’t since. A few pangs and my digestive system didn’t work right for a few days but that was that.

The thing is though, I had dealt with the reasons why I was smoking in the first place, my underlying emotional need for a crutch and the fear of facing a future without that crutch. I was staring into an abyss of nothing, an empty landscape where I was lost and forlorn and had no-one to help me. Cigarettes, I reckon, are the sneakiest of the addictive substances, they whisper in your ear and cajole you with thoughts of ‘just the one’ or ‘just a drag’ or they are like the vampire energy sucking ‘friend’ who always wants from you but never gives and uses emotional blackmail and guilt to keep you there.

Paul is also now starting to understand what I was talking about with the smell. Even when I smoked, (and I smoked roll your owns, which didn’t smell the same as ready mades,) I hated the smell of a used ashtray, or the acrid smell of a cigarette burning down on its own. Now that I have quit, I can smell cigarettes off people when they step onto a bus I am sitting in already, or when they smoked, recently or a while ago. I had to get used to it and accept it when I quit. careful not to go the route of the reformed evangelist espousing the cause of the newly converted. Paul has to travel today 8 hours to the mine with his son, who smokes like a chimney, so he will find out exactly what its like!

I still have the occaisional ‘just one’ thoughts, like the other night a friend was smoking the brand of rollies I used to like and I had a moment of wanting and thinking I could just have one, but it passed. I am so glad I don’t anymore, I hated being addicted and depending on them, now I feel so much freer and stronger.