A Change Coming and My Last Pack of Cigarettes

Watch for a change coming to my blog this month.  May 12th is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, and I'm going to update my blog accordingly. On that note, check out the following blog.  It is invaluable, inspirational, and informative.  The author is the survivor of multiple chronic illnesses, and people like her make the world go 'round for people like me:

The ICI Experience


And now, onto the blog....

=======================
I posted this over on the Men With Fibro forums, but thought it'd be nice to post it here, too.


My Last Pack of Cigarettes


I've always been a bit of a sensualist.  Not to say I'm a hedonist -- far from it.  I was raised on the straight and narrow, and didn't even have my first drink or cigarette until after I was 21.


But I do enjoy the five senses, and all the pleasure they can bring.  It can be enjoy and viewed as a sacred thing if properly restrained and balanced.  Ah, I must always strive for balance...

Sorry, I'm foggy today, so I'm rambling.

Whether it be cigarettes, beer, wine, liquor -- whatever -- I enjoy it.  I like seeing what kind of tobacco it is, where it was grown, how it was packed, etc.  With beer, what are the ingredients?  Where were they grown, etc etc.  You get the idea.  I never enjoyed the idea of drinking to get drunk -- I've only gotten shit-faced a couple times in my life, and even then it was more of a social experiment than anything (My friends call me Egon) -- but rather, I enjoy eating, smoking, drinking, etc, for the art of it.  For the pleasure of it.  

Smoking, for me, is a moment of intense, sacred pleasure.  I feel it connects me to mother earth in a way that nothing else can.  I feel my native american ancestors surrounding me in the billowing smoke, as we share a sacred moment of knowing and understanding.  I don't know when the first homo sapien stuffed a bunch of leaves in his/her face and lit them on fire, but I'm honestly grateful for it.  I enjoy the burn in my throat, the feeling of the smoke filling my mouth, nasal cavity, and lungs.  I enjoy the taste of various tobaccos (Turkish for cigarettes, please), and now you'll hear the story of my smoking.

Smoking is a problem for me, you see, because I loved to smoke before I ever started.  Whether the scrapings that wind up in our cigarettes, to the finest pipe and hookah tobacco, I'd smoke it.

I've smoked for about six years.  It's always been an on again/off again affair.  It started socially, and cautiously.  I started with crappy little things like Black n Milds and Swisher Sweets.  I graduated up to real cigars, then to cigarettes.  I smoked socially off and on for a couple years before I started to inhale.  I learned about the nicotinic receptors in the brain, and how they could be conditioned to release pleasure hormones when flooded with nicotine, which is why we can become addicted to nicotine. 

My "addiction" started when I started smoking for stress.  I was working the job that I think ended up giving me fibro, and I was incredibly stressed.  I smoked for stress for about a year when I realized what the hell I was doing, and stopped cold turkey. I didn't have withdrawals or anything.  I craved them occasionally for a couple weeks, but I simply didn't smoke them, or buy them.  I was smoke-free for three or four months when I slowly picked it back up socially, but kept an eye on myself to make sure I wasn't smoking too much, or for stress.  At that point, I was probably smoking one pack a month -- roughly a carton a year.  Not too much, really.

This year, my wife and I separated in January.  It was the hardest thing I've ever had to face.  I'm happy to say we reconciled two months ago and things are becoming fantastic again, but during that time, I smoked for stress, and I smoked hard.  I got up to about four packs a week.  When we started working on reconciling, the stress began to abate, and within a week, I dropped down to a pack a week.  Here we are two months later, and I'm at less than a pack a week.

I always wanted to quit smoking by the time I was 30.  I always heard that any damage you to do your body in your 20s will repair itself if you stop doing whatever it is you're doing by the time you're 30.  I think I bought that load of shit as I held onto the last vestiges of adolescent invincibility.  Fibro has been a hard teacher at showing me my limitations and vulnerability.

Cigarettes have occasionally caused pain flares, but not often.  But I can notice a difference in my breathing, and just for the sake of my health, which is already taxed with fibro and a number of other conditions, I need to stop.  I want to stop.  I want to stop for the sake of the children I work and breathe for. 

Working in pediatric oncology is... interesting, to say the least.  You see just how powerful genetics are.  Some people, the best people in the world or the worst people in the world, just get shitty rolls of the dice.  I've had to carry a 19-month old to the morgue.  I've taken care of kids as young as six weeks old who are already stricken with cancer.  So why am I gambling with my life by ingesting some of the most powerful carcinogens known to man?  What a fool I am.