To smoke or not to smoke
3'
I'm trying to quit smoking.
I started smoking eight years ago. Ouch how time flies.
Deep inside, I'm sure for a plethora of reasons that it is the moment to stop smoking. (In a sense, it's always the moment to stop smoking). And deep inside, if I could see my lungs, I'm sure I'd be scared.
My grandpa died of lung cancer about fifteen years ago. And I can't figure out whether smoking a cigarette is a communion with him - a way to feel closer to him by doing something he loved - or whether it's lacking respect, since it was undoubtedly what killed him.
But just for that simple reason I should have always avoided cigarettes.
Still though I started smoking... I guess it was an interest for what seemed "forbidden" and out of bounds for the longer part of my youth. "If people are doing it, there's a reason for it - no ?" Yeah. There are many reasons. And I don't want to neglect all the "positive sides" of smoking. There are some (and don't get me wrong - the sum of those "nice" effects will never amount to its negative aspects). I just want to acknowledge things as they are - or more precisely how they feel.
I think smoking was an easy answer to compensate on the dopamine loss when I stopped doing sports at high level. It's weird to put those both things aside - Sports & Cigarettes - but everything that works (or simply touches) with the reward system could serve as a substitute for the other.
And packs by packs, it installs itself just so neatly in a routine. The thought of smoking - and the routine itself - became a tumor in the habits. It imposed itself in the routine. Things that I wouldn't normally do on my own - e.g. going out for a stroll or during a break - were driven and motivated by having a smoke.
I feel like a kid unable to wait for delayed gratification in the Standford marshmallow experiment. Just replace the marshmallow by a cigarette and the reward (two marshmallows) by money and health, and it would be the same.
The game of waiting and projecting oneself through time isn't intuitive when it's about breaking habits, dopamine and the reward circuit.
Sometimes, at a thought-level, to stop smoking feels like an impossibility. I've been a smoker, and I'll always be one. And to assert that I stopped smoking makes me think of the question of an evidence of absence. Only when my life will be over one could state that I stopped smoking at that point in time. And it makes me sad.
Even if it's just a thought, it's insidious. And I know how positivity is of a great importance in this moment.
But I'll continue to stop. Yesterday, I smoked two cigarettes after two days of cold turkey. Which I'm very proud of. I think it was the first days since eight years without nicotine.
It feels sisyphean, but it's such a tiny stone. It's ridiculous. It's the size of a flint. One that is pushed by the end of the thumb. And the most difficult thing is not to push it.
Every day. Forever. For the ones I love and care.
