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Do you smoke?

If not, have you ever?
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4meAndyou · F
No, but I did at one time. I admired a friend of mine, an au pair girl from France. The family for whom she was an au pair were part of my parents group of wine tasting friends. At any rate, she could smoke and look SO cool and SO graceful. When I was 18 I want to look JUST that cool. It turned out to be a very bad idea.

I became a chain smoker, and when I quit, I was 36 years old, smoking 3 packs a day and practically lighting one off the other. I quit cold turkey when I got an awful case of the stomach flu. I was SO sick I couldn't smoke...and I tried, but it was nauseating...so I decided to use it, and springboarded off of that into quitting. I just popped a sugar free breath saver breath mint into my mouth whenever I wanted to smoke. I substituted that habit for my previous habit.

The worst of it is not the nicotine withdrawal, although people will tell you that's what it is, and sell you patches and so on.

The worst of it is breaking habits that are so ingrained, and so automatic that you really feel lost and upset when you can't eat and then smoke afterward, or smoke while driving, or smoke after and during your cup of coffee. You really do feel deprived and VERY irritable when you can't do the same thing every day that you have always done.

But I knew myself very well. I knew that I desperately wanted to remove my discomfort, but I also knew that if I picked up even one cigarette, and took even one puff, then all that I had suffered would be for nothing. So I built a wall there. I made a promise to myself, and kept it. I would not even TOUCH a cigarette.