Technically, today was actually “day 3″, but everything is more “real” in the light of a weekday – dealing with work and standard grind. So, we’ll call this “day 1″ for log purposes.
Today I smoked at 10, when I first got to work, and then again at 12. That second one was stupid – I should have smoked at 12:45 – after I ate lunch – as not smoking after lunch was pretty tough. I smoked again at 2, and then I was in meetings from 2 ’till 5, which is when I smoked again. One more at 6:45, just before I left the office, so that was only 4 during work hours which is very, very good for me. I stopped by the drug store and got some (more) chewing gum as well as some (orange-flavored) Nicorette. I realize, without a doubt, that not smoking is better in many, many ways and over the long run will be cheaper, but shit – $50 for nicotine gum? I should be able to use my health insurance for that kind of thing. Oh, wait – this is the US and we only pay for treatment, not for prevention. My bad.
Anyway, I didn’t break open the Nicorette just yet (the shit’s expensive, after all), as I had no intention of truly going smoke free today. I had one at 9:30, after dinner and cleaning up the kitchen and blah, blah stuff, and then one more about 20 minutes ago, as I could tell I would get twitchy if I went to bed without one last one. Of course, that’s going to be a problem in the coming days as I’m already able to actually feel the affects of each cigarette, and of course the nicotine is going to keep me up. It probably always did, but the mental aspect is going to be worsened as I ween myself off of these things. All in all, though, I think today was a big success. Pick a day last week, and my tally by bed time would have been in the 18-22 range, whereas today was only 7. Sure, 7 may still seem like a lot to most non-smokers, but it’s all relative and we’re in the ball-park of a 66% decrease. I’m calling that a good day and heading to bed.
Side note for coworkers: if you happen to read this, please, please, please schedule me for some meetings. It’s a hell of a lot easier to do this when I’m busy with meetings than when I’m busy but alone at my desk.
Ouch! What I did was go to CVS, buy the CVS brand gum (generic stuff) and didn’t buy the starter kit, just buy the refills. There were 48-50 pieces in each refill and it costs $24.
http://www.cvs.com/CVSApp/cvs/gateway/detail?prodid=101972&deptid=1&catid=23&subcatid=197
See if that link works. Depending on how many pieces you get with yours, dunno if this is less expensive but it’s what I did.
Damn…I should have looked for a “refill” pack. I didn’t even know such a thing existed! The price would come out about the same, I think – there’s 110 pieces in the box I bought. But I really, really don’t anticipate needing 110 pieces (I’ve only used one so far today, and have only smoked twice, so…).