What I feel I am having to do in order to
quit smoking. I think about the movie
The Clockwork Orange and how they tried to force out the cravings for
ultraviolence from the movie's main character through associations. They
pried his eyes open and forced him to view images while at the same time correlating them with physical repulsion. After a while, violence or participation of violence made him physically ill.
The only glitch in the process was that, during the viewing of one of these images, one of the character's favorite composer, Beethoven , was playing in the background. Afterwards, hearing Luddy Van would elicit the same reaction violence did, much to the character's chagrin .
This is the way I feel I have to deal with smoking. I have to become repulsed to the idea of things associated with smoking, things I used to love. I've been on the Nicoderm CQ patch for almost two weeks now, and so far I hadn't cheated. Until last night, after one of the most stressful weeks of my life. I longed for the thing that I would have previously leaned on for support , the thing I had managed to get through said week without too much of a problem.
So I emerged from the mall with a pack of cloves and lit one up. I had already peeled off my patch out of fear that my heart would explode from the overdose of nicotine. But upon lighting, it felt nauseated. The patch's effect may have played into it, but I was pissed . I could no longer go back to what had always been a pleasant vice for so many years. I was being forced into becoming a non-smoker not just mentally, but physically as well.
So now, I have to find a point of transference, one that is not just another vice. I have to find a way to let out, deal with, or re-direct the unfulfilled pleasures that cigarettes once provided me. My body won't allow me to do much else.
I ground the rest of that pack into the trashcan so that they could not be salvaged if I got weak again. I threw away my one remaining ashtray. I brushed my teeth, trying to wash away the taste, the smell, the ache of it in my chest.
And again, I am starting over. And again, it sucks to have failed .