How many last cigarettes?

I don’t remember just how many last cigarettes it took for me to quit smoking, I do remember it was “a lot”.

It was hard! because I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to quit. I enjoyed smoking, I loved everything about the ritual of it, I liked the “fuck you” vibe it gave off to the world. Especially after it became really socially unacceptable, where smokers were the minority. God damn it, we were the cool minority.

Like most smokers, I knew all the risks, had seen all the pictures, and absorbed all the messaging and like most people blindly assumed I was immortal and that would all happen to someone else and heck, that’s a tomorrow problem.

So why did I quit? Well, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture some life things came along in my early 30s that really threw me for a loop. Turned out smoking was somewhat orthogonal to succeeding at them, at least giving it the best chance of succeeding, so I decided I had to stop.

Of course, I didn’t stop straight away, despite knowing I “had to”, those cheeky little cancer sticks kept right on being a part of my life because, shock horror, I was an addict and wanted the nicotine. So I had a thousand last cigarettes. I’d quit for a day, for two, and go back because the craving was strong. Not the physical craving I thought would have swept over me like a river in flood but the mental anguish of need. Of a voice that suddenly isn’t getting what it wants and won’t shut up like a toddler begging for attention.

Before, “want cigarette” was gratified as soon as it could be. Now that voice would pop off and be met with “no”…

It didn’t like that

And like a toddler denied it only got louder. Sitting there with it screaming in your mind whilst you attempt to live a life, make food, shop, watch a film is impossible. Driving was torture as that voice is all you have to listen to.

So I’d cave and buy a pack and shut it up, and then regret that so into the bin the remainder would go and the battle of wills with that screaming child would begin again.

Until the morning, when it could be loudest and pride takes a backseat to need and you find yourself rooting through the bin for that packet. Wiping off last night’s dinner to salvage at least one.

I would start purposefully spoiling the packets to render these morning activities harder, more disgusting, as if to shame future me into not doing what would be inevitable. Turns out future me was so much less full of pride than I thought, would stoop much lower than one figured time after time to satisfy a need.

So I did stop

Eventually, a nadir was reached ware my own disgust at what I had become, a feral creature shaming themselves each morning with new lows wared too greatly with what I wanted. I did want to quit! I really did, so I did.

And ten years later I don’t really remember how. I do remember that last cigarette, that disgusting bin reclaimed microwaved ciggie that tasted revolting and really made me realize how low I’d gotten. So I quit, that was the last, yet I don’t remember what came next. I don’t remember the struggles with the denied toddler, how its wails went from ear bursting to shouts to whimpers to nothing.

I don’t remember the journey, I just know now, after 10 plus years, I never hear it. Heck, I actively don’t want to go back to it.

The real question is…

What’s this all got to do with the price of fish?

Well, many years later here we are again, this time with booze. This time with something worse, something more all-encompassing… something not frowned upon by most and actively encouraged by everything we do.

I don’t think people without this struggle understand the toddler. They can have a drink and then stop. They don’t think about having the next drink and certainly don’t have it screaming its head off at the suggestion one isn’t coming.

Every time I’ve tried to stop has been this repeating pattern. Dry January this year lasted two days, one of those not really counting because I was so viciously hungover new years day nothing was going down my throat that wasn’t water. Come day three its shouts and screams were impossible to silence, so out came that Gin and Tonic, that nectar of the gods that quietens it down.

It’s so much louder this time, the stresses of the world seem so much harder to deal with without adding that brat into the mix of things that is my life. The literature tells me, tells us all, that the screaming is caused by the booze as much as it’s silenced, that it’s a whirlpool we are trapped in going down and down making things worse.

I am scared to live listening to the Toddler, I wish I knew how I did it before.

One would expect I could find some strength knowing it’s possible, but it seems an age ago in another life.