Accountable

I had to add a new counter in my profile. I can't keep smoking. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, and cigarettes are keeping me sick and tired.

I've been fighting a sinus infection/bronchitis for over a month. I'm tired and dragged out all the time, and my brain is mushy. Sneezing, coughing, blowing my nose all the time. I can't shake it, I don't have the energy to find a job with more money so I can get my own place where my son can be with me, and pay an attorney to finally get divorced. I want to sell my truck to get some money, but first I have to get money to fix the driver side window that broke because I was opening and closing it constantly while smoking. So I have these obstacles to moving forward in my life, not to mention just plain feeling like crap. Cigarettes seem to be a significant factor in keeping these obstacles in front of me.

I'm not happy about this. I don't really want to quit smoking. It's not a good time to stop. After all, there hasn't been a good time to stop in the last 25 years, so there's no reason to think this is a good time to do it. I stopped for a couple days, and one day, over the past week, but went and got a new pack each time.

It's a lot like quitting drinking. Every excuse in the world, destroying my life, making me sick, wanting to, not wanting to, and the craving sets in and I'm a powerless slave to nicotine. The difference, for me, is that smoking has never wrapped itself around my soul and spirit like alcohol did. Smoking has, though, taken over my body and brain chemistry more thoroughly than alcohol did.

There's a Nicotine Anonymous group I think I'll try. My experience with smoking is similar enough to my drinking that I think it will help.

Holding myself accountable will also help, I think. That's why I put the counter in. You'll notice it's hours, not days -- hours, I'm afraid, are the time increments I can deal with. It puts my sobriety day counter in new perspective. At this point, I'm striding effortlessly across vast tracts of sobriety time, months racking up fast. I haven't forgotten my earliest days and hours of being sober, though, and cigarettes remind me of them. As they say: years come easy, but days come hard.

So the counter puts me out in public in front of my on-line recovery friends, and now I'm accountable to you for it. Am I grateful to you for this? Hell, no. I hate you all for it. ;)