Week of 10/10: I'm not going to set any specific smoking goals for this week. I haven't been meeting my previous goals, and constantly missing them isn't exactly encouraging. So I'm just going to keep on counting and see what happens. I
am trying to deal now with anxiety/stress stuff, which has been getting way out of hand, so maybe that will have a spill-over effect on the smoking, without my having to struggle directly with the smoking itself. Sa: 29 (guess I didn't "struggle" too much). Su: 25 M: 21
Remedial smoking. Week of 11/3: 19 max. I give myself a "D" for last week, and am holding myself back and repeating the class, doing a 19-max week again. Goal is to try and nail it this time. Also to focus on taking long off-the-drip breaks, which is something I had started off doing, but forgot about somewhere along the way. Sat: 20. Sun: 19. M: I smoked so much today that I'm embarrassed to post the number -- this is going to have to stay between me and my journal. Didn't sleep any better though (at the back of my mind I had been hoping I would), so maybe I can cross lack-of-enough-nicotine off the list of things that might be causing my sleep disturbances (unless one day of voracious smoking wasn't enough of a test
). On the other hand, I did get a lot more done than I've been able to lately, so that's going to be a tough one to deal with.... Happened to look at the first page of my journal and was surprised to realize that even though it feels as if I've been doing this counting forever, it's only been a month. On the positive side, I've probably smoked at least ten packs less over the course of that month than I would have if I hadn't been counting. Does that give me an extra day of life or something? T: 16 W: High number (censored!), though not as high as Monday's. Th: Oops. F: 21
Goal for week starting 10/27: Maximum 19/day. This is a big psychological barrier for me -- smoking less than a pack a day. It's not that I never do that; it's that I've never done it
consistently. Stats: Since I started recording (and have been struggling to smoke less), I've hit the 19-or-less mark 5 out of 22 days, or 23% of the time, and I have to assume it was much less than that when I wasn't trying. Aiming, again, for 100% for the week.
10/27 - 21. Oops. Not off to a flying start.
10/28 - 19. Back on track.
10/29 - 19. In the groove.
10/30- 16. Record low, but not due to aiming for that very scary number Sara mentioned (which I couldn't hear anyway because I had my fingers in my ears), but because I conked out and fell asleep before I had a chance to smoke up my quota.
10/31 - 21. Hmmm... maybe I could average this with yesterday to get the numbers to come out right?
11/1 - 21. 11/2 - 19. The new plan for week starting 10/20: set a maximum of 20 cigs/day. This may not seem like a very ambitious goal, but since I started recording, I've only hit 20-or-less on four out of the 15 days, or only 27% of the time. So now I'm going to try for 100%, at least for this week. Idea is just to keep a lid on the heaviest smoking days. I had thought I was a pack-a-day smoker, but doing this recording stuff showed me that I'm not, that I've been fooling myself about that.
10/20 - 20. Just smoked until I hit 20, and then stopped. Not too hard. Besides stopping when I hit 20, main thing I did was try and delay my usual after-walk cig by stopping for a brioche on the way back to eat when I got home before reaching for the cig pack. It worked -- I guess if there's one thing I like better than cigs, it's pastries -- but can't see this as a real long-term solution. I mean, I can't be eating pastries all day long. Well, I
could, but ...
10/21 - 20. Same thing - smoked till I hit 20, then just stopped. Aware of pacing myself so I didn't run out too early, and it wasn't too hard -- but then I woke up next day (today, as I write) with incredibly intense nicotine cravings. Argh.
10/22 - 20. Ok, looks like I can do this. But I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping -- can't sleep more than 3 or 4 hours at a time. There are obvious reasons for that, but I wonder if smoking less could also be contributing factor??
10/23 - 19. Think I'm getting the hang of pacing myself without having to think about it so much. Slept a bit better; still not sure if that had anything to do with the cigarettes or not.
10/24 - 20. Cravings less strong, but still not sleeping so great.
10/25 - 19. One under par.
10/26 - 21. Oops. Went over. But I did hit the goal for six out of the seven days.
10/19 - 23. Puff, puff, puff. Think maybe it would help to set a specific goal so that I don't start drifting all the way back up to 26 again. But I don't want to do anything too hard right now. Maybe set the limit at 20 or less per day? That might be doable. Maybe try that for a week or so.
10/18/01 - 21. Holding steady within current range. Still not ready to make another big push down.
10/17/01 - 18. Hit my record low again. But not a typical day, and may not be sustainable. Think I'll need to do something specific -- get out the nicotine gum again? -- to really nail down a new, lower baseline, but not sure that I'm ready to do that just yet.
10/16/01 - 23. Same old, same old. Still hovering around what seems to be a very stubborn baseline of a pack plus a little bit more.
10/15/01 - 20 cigarettes
Nothing too exciting, but drifting back down towards previous plateau. Did try something new -- looking at previous day's log and trying to go at a slower pace -- i.e., if cigarette # 12 was at 7:00 the day before, waiting to have today's cig # 12 until it was later than that. Just did this a few times, not all day long.
10/14/01 - 23 cigarettes
Oops. I did intend to take a break by relaxing my cigarette-zapping vigilance for a while, but it looks as if I relaxed
too much. Oh well. At least I did have a three hour 15 minute off-the-drip interval, which isn't too bad.
10/13/01 - 18 cigarettes
Ok, that's a record -- and 31% off the baseline. Took a 4 hour off-the-drip break -- also a record. I think I want to rest here at this level for a while, see if I can stabalize here before trying to push it down again.
10/12/01 - 21 cigarettes
Still on the plateau numbers-wise, though I did break my record for time off the drip, with a 3 hour, 30 minute break. Started off the day smoking a lot, but when I finally made the decision to cancel my flight (which would have been for today, as I write this), I felt a big load of stress lift right off me. By that time, I had already smoked up a storm, but the rest of the day I smoked much less, and the off-the-drip break wasn't really all that hard -- I sipped chocolate soy milk (yum -- I had never had that before), thought about the half-mile hill at the start of my favorite walk and how I'd like to get up it without feeling like I'm totally fried, and thought about waiting to smoke until I hit a 3 on the urgency scale. But I have no idea how, in the unlikely event I ever became a total non-smoker, I would deal with the kind of mega-stress I was feeling early on in the day while dithering around trying to decide what to do. Well, I guess for now I'll focus on the (relatively) easier stuff, like working on getting used to having those off-the-drip blocks of time on a fairly regular basis.
Sara, thanks for the all the comments!
10/11/01 - 22 cigarettes
Up a bit again. Oh well. It looks like I'm stabalizing at a new baseline, around 22 -- at least that's better than my original baseline of 26. Could have been worse. Knowing that I'm going to be posting my numbers publicly helps me keep a lid on the smoking, keeps me from just spacing out and chain-smoking without thinking about it, because I don't want my numbers to go
too high. I was able to delay smoking a few 2-rated cigs by doing the carrot thing again, and also by trying to visualize my lungs as being clean and healthy and by imagining myself walking up a hill -- specific hills that I've been having trouble with -- without running out of breath. Longest interval off the drip: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Anyone else doing the recording now? I think it really does help. It may not look like it from my currently stagnant numbers, but I'm pretty sure I would be smoking even more, maybe a lot more, if I weren't doing this. I know I'm really stressed now with everything that's going on in the world (plus trying to decide what to do about my trip that I've already cancelled twice -- there never seems to be a good time to go), and my normal impulse when I'm this stressed is just to chain-smoke up a storm, and at least I haven't been doing that.
10/10/01 - 21 cigarettes
Oops. Backslid a bit. All around crappy day -- tired, so smoked to try and stay alert; stressed and worried, so smoked to try and calm down; frustrated with some work I was doing, so smoked to let off steam. Actually, the day's total could have been worse -- at the rate I was smoking early on, I thought I would hit 30 or higher. But I did slow down a lot in the evening, so that kept it lower than it might have been. Longest time off the drip: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
10/9/01 -- 19 cigarettes
Yay. Down 27% from my baseline. Concentrated on the link between cigs and food. I think it may be a blood sugar thing -- if I'm hungry and my blood sugar's low, cigarettes give me an energy boost. Tried snacking from a bag of prewashed baby carrots (very convenient, healthy, but boring and not nearly filling enough); apple juice (healthy, but boring and not filling); mashed potatoes reheated from the leftovers of a huge pot I had made the night before (healthy, except for the butter, delicious, probably because of the butter, and filling, but requires the use of kitchen applicances and things that need to be washed). Hi mjfrombuffalo! Good to see more people in here.
10/8/01 -- 22 cigarettes
Holding steady on the numbers, but backslid on time off the IV-drip: longest interval between cigs 1 hour, 45 minutes. Noticed that I smoke a lot when I'm hungry. Maybe I should snack more? I could do it, I'm not dieting, though if I started substituting food for cigs on any kind of frequent basis, I imagine I would soon have to start a diet. I agree with Cindi: I love to read everyone else's journal entries. Thought: If I dropped down by just one cig a day, I would be a non-smoker in three weeks! Heh. Like that's really going to happen. Then again, I'm now 15% below my baseline. (Hey, I'm no numbers geek, not me, nosiree
)
10/7/01 -- 22 cigarettes
Okay, that's a little better. Longest interval between cigarettes: 3 hours, 20 minutes, also a little bit better. Two things I noticed: (1) When I had looked over the numbers for the previous two days, I was pretty disgusted at how I was on an almost continuous nicotine IV drip, and I tried not to do that so much. (2) I had gone out without my cigs for a quick walk/round of errands, and happened to see a big crowd, went over to check it out, saw it was something I was interested in, but there was a big huge line, snaking back and forth, that looked like it would take about an hour to get through. Normally, I hate standing on long lines, but this time I thought: if I stand on that line, it will be more time without smoking! So I did. Made me feel kind of like the steppers, arranging my life to nudge my numbers in the direction I want them to go.
10/6/01 - 26 cigarettes
Same as yesterday. Looks like I've established my baseline. Actually, if I hadn't been recording-and-rating, I might have smoked more -- I was conscious, when I hit 26, that I shouldn't smoke any more because I didn't want my total to go higher than yesterday's.
The overall smoking pattern was very similar to yesterday's. I only made one very feeble effort to cut down. In the afternoon, I ran out of cigarettes, and instead of immediately going down to buy more, I decided to wait a little bit. Then, when I did go down, I got the idea that as long as I was out, I'd do my walk first and then pick up the cigs on the way back. So that resulted in a 2.75 hour break. Doesn't sound like much, but when I looked back at yesterday's numbers, I saw that I was on a nearly constant nicotine IV drip -- the biggest break between cigs (including partial-cig puffs) was only one hour 10 minutes. So maybe the first thing I could work on would be to take some longer breaks, to get the hell out of here and go somewhere where I can't smoke, and stay there for a long time. But, alas, this looks like a day where I may not be able to tear myself away from watching the news (sigh).
10/5/01 -- 26 cigarettes
I smoked four cigs in the first hour and 20 minutes after I woke up. I think those are going to be the hardest to give up. First one was a 5 on the urgency scale, then a 4, a 4, and a 3. The rest of the day was mostly 2s, except for some 3s after meals and some 1s at the end of the day. I noticed I always had a couple of cigs when I sat down for a cup of tea -- I think those may be relatively easy to give up -- that feels more like a mere habit (tea/coffee and cigs go together nicely) rather than a strong need. One thing that keeping the notebook log me realize, which I hadn't before, was how often I light up a cig, take a few puffs, stub it out, and then come back about 20 minutes later and relight and finish it. The day's total (26) seemed a bit on the high side to me -- is it possible that I unconsciously smoked more than I usually do so that I could start off this project with a high baseline number, making it easier to work down? Or maybe I've been fooling myself about how much I usually smoke. Oh, P.S., since writing this makes me feel like Bridget Jones, I'll add I had one glass of wine (yeah, with some cigs on the side), and one chocolate-chip-peanut-butter granola bar.
The Great EA Smokeout 
