Old man have no business smoking cigarettes.

Seeing I am now really an old man I have stopped. It is a gold plated bitch and I have divided it into two parts.

Of course the purists are raising hell with me over this because I have opted to stay addicted to nicotine for a while. I'm getting my nicotine through losenges.

Nicotine addiction is the easy part to break, really. You just tough it out for a few days and it's gone, over and done with. While it does nag at you for the rest of your life, it gets easier and easier.

The rough part to stop is the actual smoking. 

I have smoked for almost fifty years now and the truth is that the habit goes straight back to childhood and is deepely ingrained. It is actually a part of who I am and to break the habit I actually have to become someone else and reinvent myself.

Of course the doctors, wives, and other people that have never been in those shoes don't have a clue of what it intails to stop. They look at it from the surface and make snide little comments.

"You know, you really ought to..." Fill in the blank. Generally if is ssomething like go all the way and stop using nicotine or start running marathons or start eating tofu.

I get snappish when people do that. I generally tell them "You know, you really ought to STFU."

Of course they get offended but that's just too damned bad. They don't have a clue.

Smoking cigarettes is a habit that is deeply rooted and goes all the wayback to childhood and is actually a part of my self-image when you think about it. Looking back on it, virtually all of my mentors smoked cigarettes.

There were the WW2 guys I looked up to and admired as a kid. They were the flyboys, infantrymen, aerial gunners, Marines and sailors.

One had spent almost two years in a PW cage, another spent 72 hellish hours on the helm at Okinawa dodging Kamikazes. My scoutmaster was a company comander in Europe and retreaded for Korea. He sure taught us how to make do in the woods.

These were the guys I looked up to.

And virtually ALL of them smoked cigarettes.

You don't break a fifty year habit overnight. It takes time and you don't break the whole thing at once. You break it down to managable sized portions.

You also have to learn to avoid triggers. For me that means I have to avoid coffee, beer and liquor for a while. I have altered my morning coffee ritual by simply adding Swiss Miss to it. It seems to reduce the craving simply because it is a different recipe.

I'll post more on this maybe later today but I have to get things underway. I just got a call.

Continued. I have secured from General Quarters.

I had to do something and while doing it I ran into the biggest triger of all. Second hand cigarette smoke. One whiff of that and the alarms started ringing. Instant Nicorette losenge time. 

The losenge only helped. When I cleared the area and the air grew fresh I took the deep breaths associated with smoking and enjoyed fresh air. That was a rough ten minutes.

Another paradox is that therre is a pack of Camel straights in the freezer that has been there for a couple of years. It will stay there.

It is funy because on the ride home from work I threw out a couple of loose cigarettes I found in the pickup. Yet the Camels stay in the freezer.

There is also a pack of straights in my seabag. It will stay there, too.

Why? Because I have stopped smoking because I want to and NOT because I simply ran out. If someone tries to be overly helpful and throws them out thinking they are helping me they will get their ass chewed and I'll replace them.

There's a lot of head games involved here. It is not an easy row to hoe.

I have a physical coming up on Monday and my doctor is a woman in her 30s. Likely this is one thing that they didn't teach her in madical school. My guess is she is going to try and be helpful but will likely trigger things and I will leave shaking.

Sometimes people mean well and try to be helpful but make things worse. I have to say that Mrs. Piccolo has been most helpful simply by shutting the hell up and staying out of the way. The less she tries to help the better off I will be. People always seem to say the wrong things.

I would imagine the good doctor will offer me Centrix or whatever it is but I will refuse. I have a fear of it because of the suicide warnings. I am NOT suicidal but have reserved the right as Alzheimer's runs in the family. I am NOT going to go that way.

I will avoid Centrix because I just do not want to be reminded of Alzheimer's.

The other thing I am apprehensive about is that the doctor is about 30 years younger than I am and hence is not a boomer. She is also a woman and therefore grew up both as a female and from a different time frame. She will likely not understand the psychological part of where the habit began. 

She grew up in a period where smoking was not too acceptable to begin with. It is a different generation. As such she will be hard pressed to understand it all.

I just had a good breakfast, skipping the spuds and breadstuffs. Straight protien and no carbs. In addition to stopping smoking I have returned from sea and have a couple of 'sea pounds' to lose.

While not a problem in itself it is an 'add-to'. Actually it is going to be easy to lose my sea pounds as an add-to because I am already in a disciplined frame of mind. 

I did not buy bourbon on the way home because it is a trigger. Yet the paradox is that there is an unopened bottle of it in the kitchen. Much like the cigarettes in the freezer the bottle will stay there unopened. I won't open it because I know it is a trigger. Yet if it was not there I would have to go out and buy a bottle because I am not drinking it by choice and not because I ran out.

Anyway, here it is. he adventures of a 65 year old man changing his behavior. I will keep updating things as they happen. 











To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY