my last cigarette

I’ve smoked at least ten “last” cigarettes in the last six months.

Today is my last attempt to beat that sneaky bastard – the nicotine addiction. Not last attempt in the sense of if I don’t succeed, I will be a smoker for life. But last attempt in the sense of – after today, I will never smoke a cigarette again.

So why, you may well ask, (I am assuming I will have at least one reader) am I documenting this seminal moment? Is it just a self-indulgent exercise? Am I crowing over other smokers? What is it about this subject that makes me reignite (pun unintended) this blog after years?

I have been through so many highs and lows since I first made my decision to quit, and I feel so rotten that I picked up that disgusting stick again after months of blissful freedom, that I feel the need to express myself in some way – and I will also list some of the crazy, mad, downright ridiculous excuses I came up with after quitting to get back on the troublesome weed. Why? Well, they’re pretty funny.

To begin at the beginning. I first made the decision to quit over the summer in 2010 when I realised I have spent more than ten years of my life as a smoker, and fine, I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve had my fun, but now it’s time to stop. Until then it was always a distant oh, I would like to quit soon. But in July last year I meant business. Why? I don’t think there are any smokers who don’t want to quit... but in case that’s wrong, there might be several reasons unique to me.

Maybe it was because my 27^th year was my most dark and depressing, as I stumbled from one existential crisis to another, and I needed something to feel good about; or maybe it was because I finally started to feel the effects of smoking, gasping for breath after climbing just one flight of stairs.

Probably I was just sick of my dad asking me if I have quit yet, and mumbling something in response. This is a stressful time, my job is demanding, I have a toothache (yes, I kid you not, that was one of my reasons for not quitting).

I made a serious attempt last year with NHS’s programme. This includes a diet of nicotine patches and nicorette gum. This is a ridiculous programme, unfortunately – because the thing you are fighting is the nicotine addiction. So to fight it by stuffing yourself with nicotine instead of smoking is like eating coke instead of snorting it. The gum is healthier, but it doesn’t rid you of the addiction.

I got to the pathetic point where I was chewing gum and then smoking a cigarette five minutes after. Once I realised this wasn’t working, I went cold turkey. My first attempt was as winter approached last year. And I lasted... a couple of days on one occasion, a few hours another, three days on one other occasion, and most pathetically, a few minutes – i smoke a “last” cigarette and then thought to myself, oh hang on, I’ll just have one more.

The top five excuses I came up with were:

5) I am stressed out because of my job so I need a cigarette now. Never mind the fact that I’ll probably work until I’m sixty at the very least (not so sure about even that, if I carry on smoking).

4) I will wait for a special occasion. Like new years’ day. Or my birthday (which is a couple of weeks after). Or til my girlfriend moves to town (this was one of my excuses and it makes no sense given that she smokes more than I do – if anything I should have quit well before to avoid temptation). Or when I holiday in India so my parents wont have to see me smoke – again, the illogic of this doesn’t strike you, because you’re making excuses to smoke.

3) I will put on weight when I quit, so let’s lose five kilos in anticipation before I stop. This would have made some sense if I had actually done anything to lose weight. I didn’t go to the gym, sports are out in winter, I didn’t even do two push ups every morning (I can actually manage two-and-a-half on a good day, but anyway).

2) Nostalgia. I kid you not. I kept remembering sunny days of lying about in the grass with friends during uni in Sheffield and smoking the day away. Or days of thirittu smoking in the bus stop outside Loyola college with Craig, Marky and all my other fellow smokers.

1) This is my favourite, and it got me smoking after two months without. I went to Sheffield on a nostalgia trip, and I remembered the days when I was there I used to smoke – and I told myself Sheffield wouldn’t be the same without a few cigarettes.

The most common one, the one to watch out for most was the “social” cigarette when out drinking with friends. This is the real trap that gets a lot of people smoking properly.

Anyway, having succumbed to all of these pitfalls, I decided I needed help. My editor Matthew at some point saw the nicorette on my desk, and recommended Allen Carr’s How To Quit Smoking. I will in turn recommend it. It removed every illusion about smoking, and in the end, I saw, as Allen intended, what a pleasure life was without smoking.

The days after I quit, I came home from work and felt full of energy, I felt like, ok, what shall we do NOW. When I was a smoker, I used to just be completely exhausted in the evenings. Dinner, TV and bed was the sum of my ambitions.

And after the first few days you suddenly have this moment when the sky seems bluer, and everything seems just sharper, clearer, more in focus. It’s a great feeling. As Allen says, nicotine withdrawal symptoms are actually very mild. You don’t experience headaches or nausea or any other medical side effect from quitting.

The much harder thing is the mental side. Your mind keeps making excuses to start again, many as ridiculous as the ones I listed above, when what you are truly feeling is the nicotine craving.

In fact, I actually respect myself for the reason I started smoking again last Wednesday.

I saw one of my girlfriend’s cigarettes lying around, I wanted it so I smoked it. At least it was straightforward. Unfortunately that one cigarette is disastrous, and I finally succumbed and bought a pack yesterday. And today.

I may joke about it, but this was really quite demoralising. In fact, as I started writing this blog, I suddenly felt a wave of self loathing, depression and anger. Not least because I’ve put on 10 kilos since I started the attempt, and I don’t want it to be in vain... What’s the point of being fat and back to square one?

And I don’t want to feel it again if possible. So... here’s what I thought I would do. Write a blog, and then post every single silly excuse I make in the future as and when they occur to me. And there it will be, in black and white, and in its vast ludicrousness, and I’ll see it for what it is, and I won’t smoke that horrible bloody thing ever.

This cigarette, the one I am holding now, is my last one. One last drag.

And now I am a non-smoker.

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I wrote the above on 6 March 2011, a Sunday. It is now Thursday, 10 March, and I haven't smoked a cigarette yet. However today is being a bit of a bitch. I'm trying to justify having a cigarette because i'm really stressed out about my money situation.

this is crazy, because if i hadn't smoked, just in the last three years i would have saved about £1,020 at the very least, and wouldn't be in this situation!

A.