i smoke 30-40 a day and decided to quit. bought my (hopefully) last pack of cigs today and some pills that promise to help suppress nicotine withdrawal effects over 25 days... after that i'm supposed to be free, at least the little pamphlet that came with the pills promises that. my plan is to take both the pack and the pills to work with me tomorrow and try to live off the pills and only reaching for a cig if it gets unbearable... i'm fairly weak-willed when it comes to smoking, last time i tried to quit (without any medication) i lasted maybe 10 hours before feeling like shit.
there are loads of random sites dabbling into this. usually just in form of general pointers (some pretty dumb ones like "not smoking might help you die later!") or it's just an advertisement for some "100%, foolproof, it'd be like you never smoked!" crap that usually costs a ton as well. what i'm looking for is some advice from someone who went through this too and ended up really free of the shit. did you just stop and endured the withdrawal without help? or you found something that actually works?
I did!
First, I just acknowledged that I liked cigarettes, and no matter how long I had spent off of the cigarettes, all that smoking "one little cigarette" was going to do was remind me of how much I liked cigarettes. I don't really need to explain that to a smoker. The very withdrawals were what made them satisfying. The withdrawals constituted a petty little problem that I could fix by lighting up a cigarette. It made all the other problems in my life seem a little bit smaller. People that have never smoked before or neurotic former smokers can make all of the rhetoric they want to, but the little cancer-sticks are actually delightful. Lying to myself about that was just not working.
Second, I took up jogging. I found out that I could get a little runner's high off of jogging, and I got kind of addicted to that. It was simple replacement. I am still in a place where if I take it easy and don't rush, I can sustain a slow, light jog for several miles without even breathing hard. If you asked me to actually run like I was trying to beat somebody there, I admit I would be huffing and turning purple like anyone, but that light and easy pace just above a fast walk is actually pretty comfortable. It is that little cradle I find right before I reach the point where I start breathing noticeably harder, and I can stay in that cradle almost indefinitely, except I might appreciate some epsom salt for my feet at the end of the day.
Third, I also started eating more in order to fuel my jogs. I could tell an almost immediate difference in how long I could keep running if I ate a little bit more. I would literally consume, through the ravenous singularity in my face, entire pots of macaroni and cheese with an entire stick of butter in them and some ketchup and some tobasco sauce, and I lost weight pretty fast because I was jogging like a maniac. It was cheaper than cigarettes, too.
Fourth, I sort of put it together in my head that the more I jogged, the more I could eat without getting those painful yeast infections that would appear under the fat rolls I used to have. I liked eating. I am like a dog. That's why I used to be flabby and get yeast infections. Therefore, I started running a calorie-ledger in my head as I jogged. I thought, if I could clear out just a few more calories by pushing out three extra miles and picking up the pace, then I could also set out that big wedge of cheese that I had sitting in my refrigerator and have that with some crackers and some bacon jam, and if I pressed out one more mile, I could go ahead and make that gumbo using the homemade roux I had had sitting in the ice-box for a while.
Or you can buy roux in a jar if you want to:
https://www.amazon.com/SAVOIES-Old-Fashioned-Dark-Roux/dp/B007JB7ODY
If you can't get it shipped to your country, all you need is a big, heavy, thick-bottomed skillet that keeps a stable temperature, four cups of flour, and four cups of any kind of fat you want (vegetable oil will do, but some people use lard while others insist the only thing you ever ought to use is butter; it's up to you). You keep steadily stirring it at low-to-medium temperature for about an hour and a half, never quite letting it get hot enough to start smoking but keeping it just hot enough you get a pleasant toasty aroma. You know you are doing it right because you love the aroma that is coming up from it. If it seems a little thin, you can slowly add a little extra flour in pinches if you want to. It slowly browns up, and if you can get it to a dark brown (don't ever try to get a batch this size as brown as they tell you to for a gumbo because you can always brown it up a little more whenever you want to make a gumbo. If you brown it all the way, you can't use it for much besides a gumbo, but if you get it to where it looks like peanut butter, you have much more possibilities in how you use it), you can store it away in jars (let it cool first because the minute you get finished, it's a lot hotter than the temperature where water boils and might break the glass) and, over the next couple of months, scoop it out by spoonfuls and use it to spice up any soup. Once you have made it, it's instant gravy you can have anytime you want to. If you find that you use it often enough to run out, you can save time by making it in larger batches. Traditionally, it is meant for being used in a gumbo, but the stuff is really versatile. I even like to use it to spice up a stir-fry. I can cook shrimp in it. I can add it to a pasta sauce. I can even spread it in on toast because it's just some spicy butter if you get right down to it. I can warm it up with some cheese and dip nachos in it. Speaking of cheese, I have even added it to macaroni and cheese: traditionally, you are supposed to use a lighter color roux, but traditionally, you are not supposed to have sex with an animal. Once I have got a roux, the thing I use it for is whatever I want to use it for. I go to a lot of trouble in order to make it, so I am not going to let anyone else tell me what I am or am not allowed to do with it. The possibilities for it are really endless. Having a few jars of some good roux on-hand is power.
So what you do, assuming you decide to give yourself a jogging addiction, is while you are running, you keep a calorie ledger in your head. Do it knowing that the farther and the faster you can run, the more you can get yourself in touch with the spirit of the wolf and eat like one. Just keep that calorie ledger in your head, and think about how every additional calorie you can knock off gives you that much more of an excuse to eat. Be like a dog: show a sense of gratitude toward your food, and also show that you love doing something to earn it.
The beauty of jogging and also packing on calories you can burn during your jogs is that it's a double-addiction. You get addicted to the runner's high, and you get addicted to the food. You eat to run. You run to eat. Both of them get you high as a kite.
I am not complicated. Tell me I can eat, and I'll do just about anything. I like food and any excuse to have it.
