What is worse than a non-smoker?
An ex-smoker.
I am one, 17 years now!
Ex-smokers are those who have no tolerance for smokers, including e-smokers (the worst kind yet!). I can’t stand the sight of butts strewn across the landscape (by the way – a source of extremely toxic chemicals into our environment), nor someone lighting up (especially in defiance of smoke free zones), or a person sitting next to me on the bus reeking of smoke, or the oblivious smoker walking ahead of me, I following into their second hand fumes. UGH. I hate everything about smoking, diametrically opposed to how much I once loved smoking.
Smoking is a wasteland in which you can be lost a very long time. It messes with your mind, plays with your emotions. Till death do us part.
Two thing happened to save me from myself.
One day, my smoking buddy, a fellow employee, came into my office and said she wasn’t feeling very well, and was off to the Doctor that afternoon.
She never came back.
She had throat cancer and died 6 months later.
When she told me her plight I immediately threw out my package of cigarettes.
The second thing that saved me, was I had just started dating a runner. He seized the opportunity and set me on a training program to run a 10K. It was not an instant cure, but I found out very quickly you cannot run and smoke without catching a glimpse of the grim reaper while you hack out your lungs. Since this is how he quit smoking, he knew how to keep me motivated, including some trickery. I was after all, in my 40’s and stubborn and not easy to teach new things to.
My beginnings on the treadmill were pathetic; I couldn’t even run 5 seconds at less than 4 mph and then I’d have to walk 20 minutes to catch my breath.
Day after day I kept at, until one day I was keeping pace with a man on the treadmill beside me and ran 30 minutes non stop. Not convinced I could run a 10K however, my friend (clever man) joined me for an outdoor run in which he had carefully mapped out a 10K length and I ran in my ignorance (hence the trickery part).
I learned so many valuable lessons from this experience, but the main one was action. Roll up your sleeves and do it action.
I wish I could say end of story, from that point on I took action on everything. No, sadly that came much later. Later when there was no one to help me. I never went back to smoking, but I failed myself in other ways.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to change things, I just forgot how. I got lost in New Age crap that serves to make you comatose, stops you from taking any action other that wishing, hoping and lighting candles instead of cigarettes.
So now you will come to my next blog; what is worse than an non New Ager? An ex-New Ager – and how I am being continually reformed from that wasteland.