The last few days, I have been suffering major withdrawal. I don’t know why. It seems that everywhere I go, I see people smoking, AND ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!! I’m currently on my longest streak of 7 or 8 days. I seem to go one week, then break when I go out and party, then quit for a week, crack on party night. This weekend, however, I didn’t crack, and the week looks like I can make it until Tink gets back. She seems to bring me a surplus of strength. While this is all good that I’m on the road to salvation......it’s making me very.....very...irritable. Everything is driving me mental. The ticking in my watch was so loud, that I found it impossible to study for my bar exam. It’s making me feel like everyone’s purposely trying to annoy me. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. “Every man has his breaking point.” How true.....how true.

At least I’ve found a method of quitting that I like, and is also very effective. For everyone else out there trying to quit, I’ve found that this simple rule works like a charm:

STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM CIGARETTES!!!! If someone smoking is walking toward you on the street...cross the street, or take a deep breath and exhale as you walk by them. I personally prefer the exhale. Try to avoid the smell of smoke as much as possible. For at least 2 weeks, avoid pubs, bars, smoking rooms, smoking friends, stores that you normally buy cigarettes from, and most importantly....Avoid the places you normally smoke. For me, I used to smoke at school, at work, and sometimes in the car. I’ve gotten over the habit of smoking in the car, because my new fixation is music on the radio. As long as I have a good song, I’m fine. I’m okay at work, unless I’m there for more than 8 hours. Then boredom sits in, and my mind begins to wander. Since school’s over, that problem’s solved. I just need to get rid of my desire to smoke when I walk around downtown. It was a beautiful feeling, and kind of gave me a sense of supremacy, but soon, like the rest, it will die away. I've also decided to shift my smoking tendencies to pot. I've found that the nicotine was never my main desire. It was the fact that I was breathing smoke. As a pyro, the ability to control and manipulate smoke, is mesmerizing. The feeling of the smoke going into my lungs is, to say the least, entertaining. I realized that I can duplicate this feeling with pot, and the end result tends to be a little better. The only ties that I still have with smoking, is that I sometimes carry a lighter around. This can be either good or bad. It's bad because you think "All I need is a smoke. I've got the light." The good part, however, is that it is something to fiddle with, which takes your mind of the smoke. The trick is to keep your mind occupied.

The only other tips I can give from my limited experience are: if you listened to a certain cd when you started smoking, or started smoking heavily, listen to it. For me, every time I listened to Toxicity by System of a Down, I wanted to smoke. By listening to it, and not smoking, I undid the pavlovian curse, and made a new mindframe of my own. Also, if you have a valid reason to quit, i.e. health risk, children, lover, family member diagnosed with disease cause by smoking, take it. It will make the process so much easier. Don’t wait to quit at a later time. I didn’t have one of those reasons, and actually enjoyed smoking at the time. The reason that I stick by, is that I really like it now, and in the future, I’m sure I’m going to love it. How much harder will it be then? Probably a lot harder, and knowing my impulsive nature, it would be damn hard to stop.

I know that most of this information is given to us numerous times, from every kind of source. The methods are all the same, the steps are all the same. But you know what, they’re all right. I haven’t been smoking for 25 years, and I have never considered myself a “heavy smoker,” but I hope that my view on the situation, from my age perspective will help. If any of this seemed to be a little confusing, or didn't flow, it might be because of my environment. As I write this, my thoughts are drowned out by my mother's deafening snoring. She is only 10 feet away, it is making me very....very.....irritable.