Trying to quit the Smokes again

This is just a post where I vent a bit about my first day without nicotine. Nothing to see here.

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I’ve decided to try and quit smoking again. Today marks Day 1, so to speak. It’s going to be rough but I can hopefully find a good way of dealing with all the withdrawal symptoms.

I originally had planned to quit last week, but with the beer tasting event at my job and gamescom around the corner, I didn’t want to deprive myself of the only good vent I had just yet, you know? Not to mention that it’s a great way to network and socialize with at such a big convention, even if it comes at the cost of your life force.

All of that being said, today was rough. I woke up and the first thing I wanted to do was have a smoke. I made some coffee instead… and to go with the coffee comes a smoke… You catch my drift, probably, but my biggest issue besides the inability to focus right now is the fact that smoking has become this deeply ritualistic aspect of my life.

You smoke when you’re waiting. You smoke when you’re walking. You smoke when you take a break. You smoke after a meal. You smoke after a shift. You smoke after sex. You smoke after you get off the bus. You smoke in between meetings.

So, having quit this morning, I started chewing on pens, instead, which was a bad idea since I started tasting the ink – ironically tasting worse than the cigs.

I tried distracting myself in a variety of ways, including chewing gum and random snacks but I genuinely do believe I may be too addicted at this point to do it coldturkey. I somehow made it through the day without it all but I’ll probably try patches starting tomorrow.

Beyond that, I also got a vape. It’s got no nicotine inside of it, and obviously vapes are not only incredibly uncool but also fairly unhealthy… That said, it helps me blow off steam (pun not intended) and my body can at least get tricked into believing that it’s a cigarette.

At least for the time being, this little blue steam-emitting machinery is going to be a little bit of relief for me.

That said, I opted for a one-way vape that gets thrown away once used up. It sucks for the environment and is somewhat wasteful… but it’s also only temporary and much cheaper than smoking, considering that a pack of 20 cigs costs around 10 bucks and given that other ways (stuffing/rolling cigs) aren’t much cheaper either. For all intents and purposes, this is the easiest way of dealing with the ritual side of things while patches will probably help me with the nicotine withdrawal for some time.

On top of that, I’ll use all the extra time I now will have to hopefully work on some more reviews, posts, and other personal projects… I also intend to do some long streams sometime soon to hopefully deal with the withdrawal symptoms further.