Any time in the past when I needed to hunker down and write anything, I had my best friend Peter Jackson Black with me. Charcoal filtered fags that were so smooth it felt like breathing in angel farts. But me and Peter Jackson Black needed a break, a permanent one. So I've found myself unable to continue writing my little practice short stories without turning into a raging animal as of late, it's been over a month...I think. To be honest I stopped counting after day two, but I know it was sometime last month. ANYWAYS....how can I ever enjoy writing again without my companion burning slowly beside me, awaiting my return and providing comfort and solace whenever I needed...I feel empty. My breaks at work feel like torture, my daily dog walk even more so...and finally my writing time...my gaming time! Everythings ruined! I'm broken! I can't be fixed! Or can I? I beseech you, free me from this chaos! Rid me of the memory of Peters smooth filter against my lips...his essence floating down my throat and into my lungs...give me the solace only Peter Jackson charcoal filtered smokes could bring me..... Amen.
I can't tell if Peter Jackson Black is a brand of cigarettes or if you're talking about rolling up DVD cover flaps of LotR and smoking it.
That's one of the reason I picked PJ blacks, loved the films and the man. The smokes were just as good.
I buy a 6oz. bag of Gambler and tubes, and make my own. I miss the days when I could afford to smoke Camel 99's.
When my father quit smoking, he constantly drank hot water (something hot in his mouth—he couldn’t drink coffee while quitting because it was tied to cigarettes in his mind), ate individually wrapped licorice candies (instead of leaning back to think and light a cigarette, he leaned back and unwrapped a candy, plus the bitterness of licorice worked for the purpose) and he stopped making decisions (beyond things like what shirt to wear and what sandwich to order) for a year, because he always smoked while making decisions. He was able to come back to coffee, decisions, etc. You may just have to wait.
Luckily I can have coffee without craving a smoke. It's really just my breaks at work that are killing me the most. I used to find a nice spot outside out of sight from the rest of the herd and would just think. I thought about anything and everything, it was meditative. Now I feel I'm unable to do so because I have no justification to just sit somewhere doing nothing. Occasionally I would join the other smokers and have a good chat, but that's gone now too. I'm thinking about getting an e-cigarette, but I really don't want to replace one habit with another equally useless one. I'm rambling, thanks for the suggestions!
I wish I could help my dude, but I've tried quitting once and decided not to. Didn't get past two weeks. It's hard and imo, the benefits outweigh the downside.
After 14yrs of smoking, I have decided life needs something that is equally terminal. (And it makes time pass on the slow bits. On the up side, I plan on becoming immortal.)
I'm a binge smoker. The first few days without one are the absolute worst, and it gradually gets easier after that until a month or so later you buy another pack. I go through a pack per just shy of two weeks, typically. 2-3 cigarettes a day. I used to vape but I threw it all away. Felt like throwing a $100 bill in the fire but I had to because it was *way* too convenient. You can do that shit anywhere man. Bathrooms, sneak a tiny few invisible puffs in a restaurant, your house. The list goes on. With smoking I am inconvenienced by the fact that I often don't want to smell like it, nor do I want my car or house to smell like it (and neither do other people), and practically all businesses nowadays make you go outside. Here in Michigan it's cold for basically a third of the year, which also makes it tough. I'm a stimulant fiend. Many days I just feel less than normal. Numb, tired, jaded, whatever you want to call it. I have clinical depression so that largely explains it, but I absolutely hate making excuses. I've learned to accept it, and try to deal with it. Meditating helps a little bit. Exercise and maintaining a fairly decent diet. Getting sufficient sleep, sometimes with the help of CBD oil. Staying busy, switching to a different stimulant like coffee or, on the extremely rare occasion prescribed Adderall, helps me get off smokes until the next random binge. Now I'm rambling. Sorry. I've tried smoking and writing before and I usually can't make the combination work for some reason. Has to be caffeine or something else; even nothing. My advice? Don't get a vape or e-cig. If I'm not mistaken, those aren't regulated by the FDA or anybody else unlike cigarettes. At least we know what's in cigarettes and know the risks. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next ten or twenty years a lot of people will be experiencing some nasty complications from years of daily vaping as a young adult. Popcorn lung. Knowing my luck I'm already in that category and it's just a matter of time.
Yes they are regulated by the FDA. https://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/ProductsIngredientsComponents/ucm456610.htm
Find something else to do. My mom went back to crocheting when she stopped smoking and it gave her something to do with her hands other than reach for a cigarette. My friends all used chewing gum as well.
Oh I just thought of something. This might help. My Dad smoked for 40 years. He tried quitting several times, but failed every time. One day he starts feeling a little sick and weak. He goes through it and then a few days later, he has a coughing fit which turns into some kind of prolonged asthmatic struggle to breath. My Mom rushes him to the hospital and he nearly dies. The doctor tells him he needs to stop smoking, or next time he goes to the morgue. So he stopped. Immediately. Just like that. Never looked back.
Something similar is why my father quit. It turned out that the incident of can't-breathe was caused by something other than cigarettes, but the understanding of what being unable to breathe was like, was what motivated my father to quit.
Cold turkey, still haven't touched a smoke. Gained 10, and a sober realization came upon me. I don't feel any better or worse, well I feel more worse because im a fatass again but whatever. In my mind I built up being a non smoker as some divine status that would rid me of all my woes. I guess I needed something to look towards for hope, but now I feel as empty as I did at the end of each cigarette. Why did I quit? Now I don't even want to smoke anyways, the illusion of relief is gone. I need a new vice. Alcohol makes me sad, weed makes me crazy....exercise makes me depressed and sore...gaming makes me feel guilty and slothful and writing makes me feel pretentious and pitiful! LORD ALMIGHTY SHOW ME A SIGN!
My friend quit smoking with peanuts. He'd carry around with him bags of peanuts stuffed in his pockets and take a peanut every time he would want a smoke (it was rather funny watching him spill peanuts over the floor whenever he'd forget about them and sit down carelessly). Once he broke the habbit of smoking, he stopped the peanuts. Just a thought. I regards to your last post Magus, why do you feel those things. I always found that asking "why" to a number of questions or problems is rather good for solving it (or at least understanding it). Why does writing make you pitiful and pretentious? Why do you feel 'empty'? Answer these questions, and you may come upon the answer or solution you seek.
Whenever people say "quitting smoking is the hardest thing I've ever done" I almost instinctively want to say "Oh man you should try quitting heroin". I guess I have kinda rarified sensibilities on the subject of quitting stuff that makes smoking feel less of a big deal *shrug*. My strategy for quitting smoking was, broadly speaking, to not quit. I'll always think of myself as a smoker and I do still occasionally smoke, I even buy my own sometimes. I'm still passionate that smoking is awesome and more people should do it. I just make a conscious effort most of the time not to own tobacco, and consider a day where I didn't have a ciggie to be a success. For those really struggling; just don't buy cigarettes. Make yourself bum them off others, which helps you to feel more awkward and uncomfortable at the prospect. You will pretty much have to accept that you'll put on weight, but if you aim for protein over carb you'll do better both with weight and anxiety (it's about blood sugar). And depending on your priorities you could consider more drastic measures, like acquiring a taste of valium or morphine. It's not strictly healthier, but it will help you stop coughing horribly. Sometimes you got to take success where you can find it, you know? Plus if you're high you won't care so much, and that's win win.
It honestly wasn't that hard to quit, sure I felt depressed and down but I still feel that, the only difference is I'm not led astray into believing that the cigarette will rid me of my feelings of inadequacy or my stress. Part of my sadness and lack of congratulations for myself stems from the fact that it was so easy to quit. I have nothing to be proud of, I didn't really work for anything. All I did was stop doing something I didn't need to do. It was a step in the right direction and now I can say I really don't regret it but at the same time I don't really care that I did it. Just nothing. Part of what made it easy for me to quit smoking was that I was avoiding another problem I had that smoking led me right into. I had to go outside to smoke, but was always self conscious of my neighbors seeing me. Often times they would have their windows open and I would hear a loud bang as they closed it, I never intentionally lit up when their windows were open but it didn't feel nice knowing that I did. Anyways, whenever I wanted a smoke I would stand by the door dreading going outside...so...what did I do? I stopped smoking so I didn't have to go outside and face my fear of people. Pretty pathetic. A negative of me quitting smoking is that I haven't faced that fear in a long time, I've regressed in my progress against social anxiety. Smoking helped me meet people and socialize. I had a commonality with the people I was with that made sparking up conversations easy, and if the conversation went stale I had my smoke to comfort me. I don't miss it but analyzing why I did it and why I stopped is just interesting to me right now. >First cigarette out of curiosity (Lightheaded seemed to rid me of anxiety) >Didn't smoke for ages, got a job that made me REALLY anxious and I remembered a cure! >Started smoking more often to rid myself of that anxiety every time I had to go in >Started meeting people who smoked, became routine and tradition in social scenarios (Basically just breaks) > Didn't enjoy it anymore, but rather needed it to feel normal >6 years of smoking and the fear of people was more powerful than the need to smoke >Quit smoking I started smoking because I was afraid of people...and I quit smoking because I was afraid of people...That's weird, I never thought of it like that before. That's pretty funny. Rant over, started as a reply but my mind went astray. Sorry!
I feel kinda the same to be honest; both about smoking and about quitting other stuff. Smoking specifically I never felt anything about. It's never made me feel tense or anxious or anything really to not be smoking. I still like how smoking feels, and I definitely like having something to fidget with when I'm tense (I have ADHD) but it really doesn't feel like a big deal to me to not be smoking. Like you I just felt... Not a lot. I do understand what you mean about smoking being connected to social stuff, and to psychological stuff. When I'm out with other people I have a hard time just letting a conversation bounce around the table and waiting to talk. It's just not a thing I'm good at, I tend to talk over people and talk a lot. So cigarettes kinda were a match made in heaven for me. A thing that I can always be fiddling with that's very unobtrusive and that helps me to concentrate on other people. That's one reason why I was sad when the indoor smoking ban arrived in the UK, because it was such a big part of my social coping mechanism. When I'm with people is always when I smoke, not just when I'm drinking but in general.
I second that. I don't think of myself as a smoker anymore, but I'm not someone who smokes except when I do. That's honestly a couple times a year, usually at company parties. However, when I was a smoker and decided to quit, I used toothpicks. I had one of those classic four-pocket biker jackets that I wore pretty much everywhere and I'd always used the cigarette pocket to, well, hold my cigarettes. So I chucked the smokes and put a box of toothpicks in there instead. The muscle memory was almost the same, hand sweeps up, lifts the flat, fingers pull the box from the pocket and fish out a stick, which goes to the lips and... There were times I caught myself tapping the ash off of my toothpick, but it worked. I was cold turkey for about four years before I trusted myself to have a hookah in Istanbul, and it was a couple more years after that before I had a cigarette again. When I do get drunk and smoke, it's just something that happens, it's not some huge failing on my part and fuckit I'm a smoker again Ima go buy a carton of Reds and dig my Zippo outta the junk drawer...
