Ruminations on Change

Some changes I've noticed already.

My appetite has improved. Nicotine is an appetite suppressant and I'm probably getting more from the gum than I did from cigarettes, so I suspect this is a secondary effect of chewing. Chewing produces saliva, saliva improves digestion, etc...

I imagine I look like I'm chewing my cud all day and I'm pondering things while I do it... I guess that's why they're both called ruminating, the one compliments the other. I have found that when I'm playing at my other favourite addiction the chewing can be a distraction and I spit the gum out, although the nicotine is an aid to concentration. I wonder if this qualifies as 'drug cheating'?

Then there's the dreams... I've always been a natural lucid dreamer, one of my earliest childhood memories is of having an 'out-of-body experience' (I'll discuss what I think this really is elsewhere). Since the change of habit I've had either pre-lucid or full lucid dreams nearly every time I've slept. What's going on there I'll save for posts when I've got nothing better to prattle on about, this is as good a place as any for some off-topic discussion.

My chest is not so tight, and already I can draw a full breath without feeling pain or congestion. I like that.

Psychological Warfare

The morning cigarette with a good strong cup of freshly brewed coffee... this is smoking for the pure indulgent pleasure of it. Arriving at work and sitting down for a few minutes to chat with the guys and have a quick puff before clocking in... this is habit. Reaching for a ciggie after taking a draught of cool refreshing beer... somewhere in-between.

I keep the chewing gum together with a packet of cigarettes. I'm a smoker, I can have a cigarette any time I choose. When the urge strikes, I reach for them both. At the moment, the gum is winning. I've smoked less than a pack and a half in the last week and a half, some improvement on a pack a day.

I make some rules about what I can and can't do, what I must do. Rules for a day, just to try them out and see how they go. I'm a smoker, so I can't 'fail' if I break them. "Today I must smoke 5 cigarettes"... "I must have a smoke when I don't feel like one". A big stumbling-block for quitters is when they're really good and fight the craving for weeks, then in a moment of weakness they have a few cigarettes and believing they've failed give up and go back to their old habits. I'm a smoker. Always will be. So this cannot happen.

Now I can thoroughly enjoy every cigarette I smoke. The way it feels in my fingers, on my lips. The ritual of lighting it. The sensation of drawing on it. The taste, the smell, being surrounded by the plume.

I continue chewing the gum long after it has yielded all of it's nicotine, it's a substitute for the oral gratification a cigarette provides. My jaw ached after the first couple of days, but I think that strengthened the muscles and I don't notice it now.

If I had known before that you get such a good nicotine hit from a piece of gum, I might have started using it years ago. Replacing the 'habit' smokes with gum has turned out to be remarkably easy (at this early stage). In fact, so good is the hit, that when I do smoke one of my strong cigarettes now, it tastes like a much lighter one and I'm left wondering where the kick is. The gum provides a lot more nicotine than a cigarette does, so possibly my tolerance has increased. I read something about how addictions form and stabilise at a certain level somewhere once, I'll have to look it up again.

Addiction and Habituation

I smoke virginia tobacco. Good and strong, full flavour. Marvelous stuff. They stopped printing the nicotine and tar contents on cigarette packets because 'lighter' cigarettes are not 'less bad' for you. "If you're going to do something, do it properly", this is a motto to live by.

Smoldering plant matter is carcinogenic. Nicotine is in some ways quite good for you. It has been linked to birth deformaties when used in pregnancy, and get some on your skin and it can kill you outright. But you can drown in an inch of water too if you try.

Smoking is part habit and part chemical addiction. In the last week and a half I've been addressing the habit side of it, with the idea of tackling the addiction later. Habits are behavioural patterns, one approach to changing them is to interrupt the pattern - when you notice you're doing something from habit, you force yourself to do something else until the pattern is broken. The theory says it takes at least 21 days to make or break a habit.

In the past, if I've planned to stop smoking, the addiction has fought back. So this time I'm not quitting. I was out getting a new power-supply for my computer, and as I passed the chemist I went in on the spur of the moment and got some 4mg nicotine chewing-gum.

I Ain't No Quitter

Last Wednesday, I changed my smoking habit.

I enjoy smoking. Quitting is not an option. The gifts of Mother Nature are here to be appreciated while we have mortal coil to do so.

But...

This is a blog about the 'but'.