Quitting smoking blog

Quitting smoking blog - WEEK 10

Monday, 13 Feb 06

Very stressful day. Tying up this database project has been a nightmare. Heaps of things have gone wrong and IT and the developer are making sure that everything that’s gone wrong is supposedly my fault. I have been pining for cigs all day. Meanwhile the trade show and other projects have gone by the wayside.

Then I get a call to say that Dad’s had (more) day surgery today and I will need to look after him tomorrow. I have some major work commitments on Wed and Fri, and the next phase of the database project is due to be finalised on Wed.

Apart from that, the course I’m doing, Mr Groin being unable to come over as a support, creeping RSI pain, an overwhelming desire to buy a packet of cigs and a giant pimple that’s come up on the side of my mouth, everything is entirely wonderful.

As they say, heaven isn’t a place but a state of mind. All I have to do is look at my life and say, “This is heaven”.

Still, I shouldn’t complain because my family and I aren’t starving or living under a cloth on a stick.

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Tuesday, 14 Feb 06

I am seriously worried about Dad.

I had the day off work today to look after Dad and I am 99% sure Dad has dementia. He’s forgetting everything. He was barely recognisable as the the rock of the family, the man who has always been so strong, so fit, so canny and together. He coudln't even work out how to lock and unlock his filing cabinet (or work out which key to use or which way to put it in).

It’s all been so sudden. Sure, over the past year he’s become more vague, but we all just figured it was age. After each recent medical event he’s had a sharp decline—the mini-strokes after his angiogram, his gruelling heart operation where he was “out” for six hours, the subsequent bowel problems. However, yesterday’s bowel treatment could be the straw that’s broken the camel’s back. I can only hope I'm mistaken.

Last night I found one of Mr Groin’s butts outside my window and I smoked it because I was feeling a bit fragile and weak. I guess it’s technically a crack but it seems a very small deal now.

Not that I was tempted to buy a pack today. With unavoidable work commitments and all this going on, there doesn’t seem to be any point in smoking. It’s not to make things any better.

Poor old Dad.

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Wednesday, 15 Feb 06

Still singing the same tune. Couldn’t get to sleep last night and had about 4½ hours sleep then worked till 8pm. Have to take Dad to an appointment tomorrow morning. Have to see his doctor on Fri afternoon, have to help look after him on the weekend ...

As for smoking, tonight’s email to my Yank pal, Paddles, probably says it all, “... still not smoking ... not sure how or why”.

As a long-term smoker I’d never had any reason to expect longevity and have long recited the bohemian mantra, “live fast, die pretty” (based on the presumption that some dramatic improvement will happen to my appearance between now and then).

So since quitting the lung lollies I’ve been wondering if I can squeeze another 30 years of meaningful existence out of this innings. Yet Mum was suffering from demeture by the time she died 10 years ago at age 72. Now Dad’s gone off at age 82. While I have always been demented, I don’t want to suffer from dementure.

Dementure is hereditary. I’d be an ideal candidate.

So I have to keep reminding myself that staying off the cigs will improve the way I look, feel, and smell. Squeezing out a few extra years of hopelessly vague existence is no motivation. I can only hope that the current wowsers and born-agains who are currently in control will come to their senses by the time I’m going to seed.

Surely governments will one day realise that Dr Euthanasia, Philip Nitschke, has always been right. Old people who don’t want finish their lives in a traumatic, undignified, burdensome manner deserve the right to check out at the time and manner of their choosing.

They should be able to put their affairs in order and say goodbye to their loved ones while they still have the awareness to do so.

We seem to forget that our lifespans are just a mere sneeze in eternity. Does it really make that much difference if a sneeze is slightly longer or shorter?

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Thursday, 16 Feb 06

Looked after Dad today. Thankfully he was far better than on Tuesday. I don't mind so much if he's vague and somewhat incapacitated, ust as long as he is still "home". The person I saw on Tuesday wasn't my Dad, just his body wandering around dazedly, occasionally producing faint echoes of his personality.

His blood tests had shown that he was badly lacking in salt so now he's on salt tablets and has been instructed to eat as much as possible (bitch!). It seems that a lack of sodium in the blood can cause dementia—confusion and weakness. I probably should have given him a Maccas burger for lunch instead of a salad sandwich. I'm hoping that my previous belief that Dad was Alzhiemer's was just bull-sugar.

In a moment of whimsy I thought I'd do a bit of research on nicotine and salt. I came across some articles that claimed that the nicotine in cigrettes comes in stable compound form, like salt, and that it is not addictive in the least. They say that pure nicotine is addictive, but it is too unstable to exist in cigarettes. The general thrust is that nicotine addiction is fallacy—a furphy and a lie, perpetrated by those who would control us. It's just a conspiracy!!

If this is true then I have effectively been pissing in the wind for the past ten weeks, fooling myself that the "placebo" of gums and lozenges is fulfilling some psychosomatic need. Sorry, but I think that's just more bull-sugar.

Of more relevance was the website I found that said that acidic fruit juices help to remove nicotine from your bloodstream, which would explain Mr Groin's sister's quit smoking theory (mentioned in 14 Jan 06 entry). I also found the reason for the 72-hour problems with nicotine withdrawals; that's how long for all nicotine to be removed from your body. It seems that fruit juice speeds up the process of getting rid of nicotine so it reduces the quitter's period of suffering.

Having said that, the website also makes the claim that, "The 'average' number of crave episodes (each less than three minutes) experienced by the "average" quitter on their most challenging day of recovery is six episodes on day three. That's a total of 18 minutes of challenge on your most challenging day".

This is an appalling over-simplification and completely ignores the depression, lack of concentration, bad temper, loss of confidence etc that I have described in gory detail in past entries. In short, it's just more bull-sugar.

The moral of the story is, don't believe everything you read (unless it's the Murdoch press, in which case it's The Gospel Truth).

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Friday, 17 Feb 06

I spent Friday morning desperately trying to see if the data that was migrated (sans citizenship papers) into work's new database was ok. I only had the morning to do it due to an appointment I had to see Dad's doctor in the afternoon. One word: shitfight. Later I saw Dr Doomsday with Danley and we all generally exchanged info about The Patriarch. Compared with dealing with IT sections the appointment was one of life's simple pleasures.

I just read a news item about an insurance guy who was saying they charged smokers twice as much for life assurance as non smokers. Does this mean that smokers live half as much adult life as non-smokers? Bear with me while I check them by doing a little boring maths:

If each cigarette reduces your life by 11 minutes, then if you smoke 20 per day (very common), then each year of smoking will reduce your life by 56 days. That means that, in order for the double premium to be fair for smokers, then the smoker would need to smoke enough to reduce their lives by 6 months for every year they smoked. That's 65 cigarettes per day even though smokers average around 20 per day. A nice little earner, eh? And who's to argue since they are punishing those nasty, smelly smokers?

This insurance gumbo also said that if you deny that you smoke to avoid their premium ripoff and then die from "a smoking-related condition" then the company wouldn't pay out.

A "smoking-related condition"? So far I have read that smoking contributes to the following conditions:

1. heart disease
2. stroke
3. cancer
4. respiratory illnesses
5. circulatory illness
6. digestive illnesses
7. Crohn's disease
8. diabetes
9. depression
10. spontaneous combustion and alien abduction (complete with anal probes).

Ok, #10 is unproven, but given how much they blame on smoking, you might as well toss everything else in as well.

So you'd expect that the insurer would make a smoking link if a covert smoker died of any of the above conditions, which of course account for the vast majority of deaths.

Never mind that non-smokers in the city get more lung cancer than smokers in rural areas. Never mind other factors like diet, exercise, supplements, stress and seeking early interventions when you're sick can (and often do) play a major role in the above illnesses.

Another nice little win for our insurance man. Hands up those who are surprised.

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Saturday, 18 Feb 06

Booked Dad into hospital for a week for monitoring. Ironically, he now seems to be getting better every day and we went out for a pleasant morning tea beforehand. The hospital is in the quietest street I've ever known. Most would describe it as "leafy and pleasant" (ie. interminably boring). It was full of old people in various states of disrepair. As I said earlier, I'd rather be dead than fade gradually into the sunset of consciousness.

Very hot and humid today. Late in the afternoon Maximus and I played some tennis and, even under the cloud cover, I ended up with a face like a contoured beetroot. It could have been worse. At least my face remained contoured.

But the heat was nothing compared with the chicken shop I went into to buy dinner. It was as though the entire shop was an oven. While I was there I spent the whole time furiously fanning myself. Here;s a tip: the hand fans I bought early this summer are among the best investments I've made.

I wondered how the poor guys in the shop coped with running around in that heat all day serving we harried shoppers. So when they came to the till I just had to fan them a bit and they smiled wearily, either from politeness or relief. That puts a whole different spin on the idea of "customer service".

Maximus and I sipped beers and watched one movie after another in the evening—MIB2, The Hulk and then later on saw some series about genetic mutations. I felt very comfortable amongst that degree of normality.

You've got to hand it to Hollywood; what they lack in depth they make up for in fecundity.

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Sunday, 18 Feb 06

Ta da! The final day of the final week of this journal. Mission accomplished. I started as a struggling smoker and finished as a contented non-smoker who takes regular nicotine medication (with this spin I think I should be going into politics).

It was another very hot day. Saw Dad In hospital and he was better than I'd seen him in a long time. He said he was bored which of course told me that he was in pretty good physical and mental shape. It seems that this salt deficiency was the culprit. It's possible that the anti-anxiety stuff they gave him earlier on had been leaching salt from him, and then when the last bowel treatment flushed the remaining salts from him he went totally ga-ga.

Salt, being an electrolyte, carries electrical charges. So when you don't have enough salt there's nothing to carry your brain activity across the synapses. Then you end up completely messed up.

Everything in moderation. Too much or too little of just about anything does you damage—even smoking, mmm?

Maximus tells me that quite a few of the kids around his age have taken up smoking. It's happening all over the world too. In the UK they are looking to change licensing on nicotine replacement products so that schools can prescribe them to students who have become addicted.

So what of all these "quit campaigns"? Throughout this journal it's become increasingly obvious how ridiculous this demonisation of smoking and smokers is (and of drug-taking in general for that matter). There is a nanny mentality in many governments, businesses, schools, health professionals, health amateurs, the media and general public and they are all feeding off each others' hysteria.

Naturally, the more hysteria they generate, the more attractive it becomes to questioning youths who are complacent in their immortality, cynical in their views of the future, eager to establish their independence and contemptuous of authority figures' dictums that don't allow for understanding or discussion.

This is not a new phenomenon, but for some reason we can't muster the same moral indignation about the manipulation, hubris, cynicism and hypocrisy of those who are supposed to lead us. Funny old world.

They tell us that:

nicotine (which research suggests may have a number of medicinal uses) is 166 times more dangerous than:

caffeine (which is sometimes used to treat migraines), which is 20% more toxic than:

strychnine (which can be used as a stimulant for the central nervous system).

Nicotine is also over 60% more potent than rattlesnake venom (which is of course handy as rattlesnake anti-venom).

Agatha Christie's preferred poison, arsenic (formerly used to treat syphilis), is only half as dangerous as a rattlesnake spit and poor old cyanide (found in almond oil) is a complete wimp compared with all of these fine substances.

Of course all medicines are deadly poisons if you take enough of them, even paracaetamol. Even water can be fatal.

Based on this toxicity research, a couple of stooges employed by the UK government claimed that nicotine, even in the form of NRT increases problems related to cancer, hardening of the arteries, heart disease, memory loss, dementia and depression.

Yes, when looked at like that, did you know that caffeine has been linked with fibrocystic breast disease, ulcers and heart disease?

Or that too much vitamin A can give you headaches, hair loss, fatigue, bone problems, and liver damage?

There's a simple dictum that sorts all of this out: everything in moderation.

Our goodly UK quacks also suggested that my nicotine intake will cause my developing foetus to have reduced brain size, which is obviously a terrible worry for me no matter how long I've been 39 years old and no matter how much I'm not going to have a baby in a pink fit. Of course, too much vitamin A and, well, too much of anything is bad for your foetus.

On the other hand, since my mother smoked while she was pregnant with me, I can blame her for my desultory apportionment of intellectual capacity. Actually, I can blame her for a lot of things, not least all this smoking I've grappled with. That's Mums for you.

The point I am labouring over here is that I have every intention of metaphorically telling all of these killjoy wowsers to go jump and I will do whatever I feel like doing. Even Michael Jackson seems to have given up on living in that oxygen tent thingy to which was supposed to improve his longevity, so why should any of us "normal people" create metaphorical versions of his oxygen tent?

Is it better to be an anally retentive dipstick who's done nothing and who lives to be 100 or a happy, productive dipstick to drops off the perch too young to receive a telegram from the queen?

So, if I am such a keen advocate for free and easy living, why should I bother to keep off the cigs, you may ask? Why not get out there and have fun instead of denying myself those little mouth orgasms that ciggies occasionally provide, eh?

Smoking makes you stink, age prematurely and snore. Who said vanity is a bad thing?

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