{"id":341,"date":"2010-04-02T09:35:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.notmydesk.com\/?p=84"},"modified":"2010-04-02T09:35:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:35:55","slug":"the-quitter-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/notmydesk\/life-stuff\/the-quitter-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quitter, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there were a children’s book about me called What Makes Christopher Go?!?<\/em> it would be two pages long and contain colorful illustrations of a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee.\u00a0 Over the past two weeks I’ve had neither, and it has severely affected my ability to, shall we say, go.<\/p>\n

See, I had planned to do a daily running commentary, to mine my quit-smoking misery for laughs, but frankly, I’ve been miserable to the point of not being able to laugh about it.\u00a0 It’s been a rough 14 days, and my original plan is completely in shambles, but I’ve still managed to not smoke.<\/p>\n

The plan was three-pronged.\u00a0 First, to not buy cigarettes using my natural procrastination.\u00a0 That’s been working fine. In fact, I’ve been using my natural procrastination to do nothing whatsoever. I knew I could count on it!<\/p>\n

The second prong was to to push-ups every time I wanted a cigarette, in hopes of punishing myself into not wanting cigarettes.\u00a0 This worked pretty well for the first couple days.\u00a0 Early on in the process, the desire to smoke hits hard and often, probably once an hour.\u00a0 But it only hits briefly.\u00a0 The desire is overwhelming but only lasts for a few minutes, then goes away until the next one.<\/p>\n

Problem is, after the first few days, the sudden, painful pangs go away and are replaced by low-level yet constant urges. It’s like going from an occasional hard smack in the face, which hurts but quickly fades, to what amounts to someone flicking you in the earlobe, non-stop, all day, every day. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a constant annoyance and it eventually wears you down to the point that you want to crawl into a ditch and die.\u00a0 It’s sort of like a car-alarm going off a few blocks away: even though the noise is distant, soon it’s pretty much the only thing you can hear.<\/p>\n

So, that’s been fun. Right now, if I did push-ups every time I wanted to smoke, I’d be doing push-ups roughly 24 hours a day. I’d be ripped, sure, but I’d probably also be dead.<\/p>\n

Finally, the third prong was to substitute sunflower seeds for cigarettes. And I have done this. I have eaten so many sunflower seeds that the inside of my mouth is basically a tattered, stinging ruin.\u00a0 The sodium and sharp shells have torn and gouged and shredded and destroyed my mouth to the point where — no exaggeration — I can’t actually whistle anymore.\u00a0 Each seed is like pouring salt in a wound because it is literally pouring salt in a wound.\u00a0 My mouth is one big injury.\u00a0 I was actually reduced to buying jello because it was the only thing I could eat without causing myself pain.<\/p>\n

Also, a weird side-effect of quitting smoking is that, for some reason, coffee now tastes and smells like liquid skunk shit. It’s bizarre. I’m almost physically incapable of allowing coffee into my mouth. This means, along with the nicotine withdrawal I’ve also got daily headaches from the lack of caffeine.\u00a0 Plus, I used to love coffee. It’s like I lost custody of coffee in my divorce with cigarettes.\u00a0 The entire experience is quite exhausting.<\/p>\n

But, apart from the pain of withdrawal and the pain of my shredded mouth and the pain of headaches, I’m doing swell!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there were a children’s book about me called What Makes Christopher Go?!? it would be two pages long and contain colorful illustrations of a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee.\u00a0 Over the past two weeks I’ve had neither, and it has severely affected my ability to, shall we say, go. See, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[702],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}