After 50 years of a deep and constant friendship with tobacco, we have to part company. It's a terrifying thought: something that has been a daily and daylong part of my life will disappear. I'm scared. It's an ambivalent state, too, because there is the element of terror at being parted from something that adds completion to every moment of the day, terror of being able to withstand the inevitable withdrawal symptoms, terror of the life-change; but at the same time there is a (slightly apprehensive) excitement at the idea of being a non-smoker. I am fully aware of the health implications of smoking now. Indeed, I am suffering from them in that two thirds of my lung-power has gone and I have the lungs, in the words of the practice-nurse, "of a man of 122". Shit! I have to learn to live with it, though, because if I continue smoking the lungs will deteriorate further, and I desperately don't want that to happen. I would rather live and have something of a future.
I really cannot understand what leads young people today to start smoking. The damage to health is widely known and widely disseminated, yet they still do it. Some of the "lads" smoke to look what they think is "cool" - but why do a greater proportion of girls do it? Do they think it makes them look sophisticated? One of the things that put me off smoking recently was being told that kissing a smoker was like mouthing a dirty ashtray. Now, I know it's many years since I've been kissed properly, but I want to be kissed, I don't want to be an ashtray!
I've already in the past week cut my smoking down from over forty a day to fewer than ten. It has not been easy, but I have done it! I hope that augures well for Friday morning, when I have to wake up with the knowledge that I no longer smoke.
I found an online anti-smoking program (based I think on hypnotism) that I shall download and experience on Thursday evening - let's hope it's effective... and on Thursday too I am intending to acquire a prescription for various NRT drugs from the GP.
Fingers crossed time then! I shall need a lot of luck!
