The Smoking Gun - It is Called a Cigarette - Aimed at your Lungs

        I recently tried to gradually give up smoking because the owners and management of our apartment complex are turning it into a non-smoking place (inside buildings at least). I tried to cut back my smoking and only smoke outside on the porch during high anxiety attacks. I do get those from time to time. But that quickly turned into a bigger issue for me because of the outside air quality.  

    I have COPD. So, yes, smoking at all is bad enough on me even when using a Nic-Out filter, but add bad outside air quality to that and I can experience major trouble breathing. Even when I don't smoke at all, I can have a hard time from being outside. During the worst episodes I have to bring out the inhaler and the oxygen treatment machine. Thankfully, those episodes are few and far between - at least for the time being.

        I finally decided to quit smoking by going "cold turkey". Weening off doesn't work for me; A little bit always turns into the need for more and more. It was very hard on me, but I did try. I am not so much addicted to nicotine than I am to the action of smoking. The feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the smoke rising in front of my eyes, the habit of it. The action, reaction. 

    I made it a week and a half before I was smoking again. Why did I restart smoking? It was my own fault. My eldest sister begged me to come take her outside at the nursing home so that she could smoke. I caved in, partially because I wanted a smoke myself, and drove to the store and then on to the nursing home. I bought a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and some Nic-Outs. I told myself I would not smoke, only allow her to smoke. That was not how it turned out. She smoked, I saw it, I smelled it, which made me desperately want one, so I lit one up. We went through 3 cigarettes each during that visit. When I got home, I was outside on the porch smoking every few hours again. Bleh

    My sister kept bugging me to come take her out again to smoke. I had decided that I was going to cold turkey again and really stick with the plan this time. I told my sister I wasn't going to smoke or have smoking around me. I would not go to a store to buy it, or hold a pack in my hand. But she was relentless and pitiful sounding, and one of her sons said I should let her smoke because she needed the social interaction, and to be outside. They don't allow patients outside at that nursing home, which is a sore point for me, and for the patients. 

    I was sick over that next weekend and was finally feeling up to visiting her on Tuesday. We went to the parking lot to smoke. We were by my car the entire time and 5 cigarettes a piece later, I rolled her and her wheelchair back inside. That's when the nurse at the reception desk told me they don't allow smoking anywhere on the grounds, not even sitting in your own car. To smoke, you must leave the property. My sister fudged over that rule when she said we could smoke in the parking lot. I was not amused.

    We were outside for an hour and a half. It was nice out. The sun was shining. I went home with a sunburn on the top of my bald head and within a short amount of time I began to have trouble breathing. 

    I visited my sister on Tuesday. By Thursday she was already incessantly calling and IMing me begging me to come take her outside for a smoke again. I told her I'd try to come on Friday but could not promise. It would depend on how I was feeling and if I was busy or not. I didn't go Friday. I didn't go Saturday. I did not go Sunday. My father was sick over the weekend, and I wasn't feeling very good either. I was experiencing on and off issues catching my breath. 

    For me, the final straw was standing outside on my porch, coughing, pressed up against the sliding glass door to protect the cigarette from the rain coming through the slats of the deck of the apartment above ours. I could vaguely see my reflection in the sliding door glass, see the glow of the lit cigarette, and I asked myself, "Why the hell am I doing this?!!"

    I went back inside and threw the almost full carton of cigarettes, all the lighters, all the Nic-Outs, and all the ashtrays, into the trashcan. When the rain stopped, I gathered up the trash bags and walked them down to the big trash compactor and threw that addiction in. I then pushed the button to crush it beyond recovery or salvage and then walked calmly back to my apartment. 

I didn't look back once. Not once. 

        My sister continues to badger me to come take her outside to smoke. She tried every trick in the book to get me to come, or at least bring her cigarettes. Overhanded and underhanded, she tried every single way to get me to go buy cigarettes and bring them to her. She didn't ask one time during the weekend how our elderly father was doing. She even slyly insinuated that perhaps I was making his illness up because I didn't want to come and was using that as an excuse. 

        I am not going to blame my sister for my own weakness. She is stuck in a nursing home and doesn't want to be there. She has no interests, no hobbies, no coping skills, and isn't getting the mental help or the behavioral rehabilitation that she desperately needs. All she does is lay in bed and watch TV. The books and magazines I've taken her, those lay hidden still in the bag, under a pile of clothes. Never looked at, never opened. The crossword puzzles have never even been touched. The websites suggested, never signed up for. She doesn't even use Facebook to engage people, she only uses it to IM me about coming to take her out for a smoke. 

    Is it any wonder that whenever she is released from care to live on her own, she ends up in the hospital within a week or two, and then back in a nursing home for months? She's been in the current nursing home for almost 5 months, and it is only within the last month she has been going crazy needing a cigarette. She is not on the nicotine patch. She said she is "thinking" about getting on the patch now, usually saying that when we tell her she needs to stop smoking. It is a delaying tactic. 

    A sad fact about that is, when my sister was on the patch a year or so ago, she smoked while she was wearing the patch. That is very dangerous - especially now that she has congestive heart failure. Nicotine overdose is not a pleasant way to die. 

    I informed my sister that I had thrown all of my cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia out, that I was quitting smoking cold turkey, and I would never again buy a pack of cigarettes, or even handle one. And I don't want smoking around me while I am attempting to quit smoking for good. I will not succumb to temptation again. I won't buy them, carry them, transport them, ever again. I am not yet strong enough to resist the temptation when it is right there in front of me. 

    Of course, that doesn't matter to her. She continues to beg, plead, badger, threaten, and then tries to smooth it over and compliment me on my always helping her, not abandoning her, and, by the way, bringing her one cigarette really should not be a big deal. "Don't be a baby about it."

This time, my decision made, I will go forward and not look back. Not even once.