Ciggyfree Blog

It’s been way too long since I wrote. I feel like I have a mental cold when I don’t get stuff out of my system. The job hunt continues and my ego is still standing. Applying for jobs in a city of 3 million people is a lot different than applying for jobs in small, rural Mid Western towns. I must have more of an ego than I’d realized.

But the other night we were sitting around watching the tube and we saw a commercial for an HBO special called Addiction. Naturally, I had to see what it was. It’s fascinating! All of the episodes are on the OnDemand channel as well, so if I ever get enough time I’m going to watch/dvr them.

One of the most interesting statements I heard, though, was from a judge who was doing what they called “Rehab court”. Apparently the court system has finally realized that people who are addicted are clogging up the judicial system needlessly. They finally realized that if the addict isn’t out burgling or mudering, they probably need more help than prison time.

Nowhere in any industry does the term “killer marketing” apply better than in Big Tobacco. If Big Tobacco is successful in marketing its products to existing addicts, ex addicts and new victims, it will definitely kill its target audience. And it seems that marketing executives have become so “clever” (if that’s the word you would use to describe somebody who’s found a way into talking somebody into doing something that will end his or her life) it frightens me.

One of my Quit Buds has been smoke-free for 233 days. Her addiction manifested in the form of Camels before she decided to break free. I can’t imagine that a tobacco company could know that she specifically had quit, or hadn’t purchased any of their product in over 200 days… but something caused them to decide to send her some coupons this week. They had never sent her coupons in the mail before. It freaked her out.

What was worse - they came in the exact shape and size of a pack of sickarettes.

Her words are the best to use in describing her feelings…

In case I’ve misled anybody in any of my posts… I do not disdain the patch. I quit using the patch. I used it as directed, for all 3 levels. I’ve been quit 1 Year, 2 Months, 1 Week, 13 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds. Thanks to the patch, somewhere in the world there are 4,746 cigarettes that were not smoked by me. I don’t see anything wrong with quitting CT if you can do it. I don’t see anything wrong with any method now available legally in this country. If you find a way that works for you - use it.

As for me, I owe my monetary savings of $1,307.78 and “life” savings of 1 Month, 5 Days, 6 hours and 6 minutes to the strength the patch gave me.

I have never intended in any way to say quitting by means of the patch is bad. I will say that nicotine is a powerful, mind-numbing drug. I’ll shout that part from the rooftops. And I’ll also go so far as to say that nicotine is a powerfully addictive drug at that. But quitting by means of the patch is, in my opinion, the best thing that has happened to me health-wise since my children were born.

~GareK

Dain Bramage is what you get when you quit by using the patch, and my daugher’s got it in spades right now. Please don’t think I’m poking fun at my own daughter! I only know the syndrome because I myself used the patch as directed, and I instantly lost about 80% of my IQ points. The first 2 weeks of my Quit were like being strung out on some kind of mind-numbing drug.

Oh wait - the 21 mg patch is a mind numbing drug!

Thankfully my girl has a good job with a good boss and good people to work with. I contract my services out, which means if I don’t work, I don’t eat. Quite literally, my whole livelihood was at stake. If I am unproductive I don’t pay bills, I don’t have electricity, I don’t have internet, I don’t have anything unless I have the ability to work and get stuff done. So here’s what I did.

The end of the week last week got really busy for me. I can’t go too long without wanting to write, though. I’ve kept a journal most of my life, and found writing to be particularly theraputic as I have gone through this journey of discovery I call “My Quit“.

Sometimes I kick myself for not having kept some of the things I wrote over at QuitNet. I wrote a humor piece on the Quit Farts that I’d love to get back, especially now. For some reason they seem to have returned. Couldn’t be that I’ve increased the fiber in my diet huh?

I read a comment one of you wrote to an earlier post of mine - the comment was about how hard life was for me early on. It got me thinking. It took me a long time, when I was younger, to let go of that kind of self-talk. I’ve wanted to find some way to explain how I’ve grown to think about it and, of course, it was given to me… in the form of an email a friend sent. I want to share it with you now.

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She didn’t know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose. In response, her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire until the water in the pots came to a boil…

…are doomed to repeat it.

I’ve been on my high horse today about Big Tobacco trying to squirm out of facing responsibility for killing people. I do recognize my own responsibility of making the initial choice to try a sickarette. But I also feel it’s appropriate for BT to accept its role in making sure people stay “life long customers”.

So I looked something up on Answers.com about Big Tobacco and it’s interesting reading. Thought I would share it with you. There’s a lot of history preceeding this clip, mostly telling about how American and European cigarette manufacturing grew and eventually a monopoly of sorts was formed and subsequently broken up.

Then… (emphasis added below are my own)…

In 1913 the newly independent R.J. Reynolds launched Camels, the “first modern cigarette.” Camels were quickly imitated by American’s Lucky Strike and Liggett and Myers’ revamped Chesterfield cigarettes.  All three brands stressed their mildness and catered their appeal to men and women alike.  The 1920s saw the “conversion” of many tobacco consumers to the cigarette in the Unites States, United Kingdom, Europe, China, and Japan. Between 1920 and 1930, U.S. cigarette consumption doubled to 1,370 cigarettes per capita.

The article goes on to talk about how marketing played a vital role. I remember cigarette ads talking about how doctors preferred this over that brand, and how much better for you one cigarette was than another. I can’t tell you how strong an influence these clever ploys had over what was and wasn’t accepted.

The article continues:

If there is a chain to be broken, then there must be links or ties that hold that chain together. My last two days in Texas with my daughter, I had a startling revelation. It’ll seem so simple to you, as you sit here and read it. But it was a “No DUH!” moment for me and I don’t mind showing how blind a person can be when they’re emotionally invested in helping somebody quit.

I had taken each of my daughters individually to my hotel during my visit and showed them the Barb Tarbox video in hopes to get them to see what smoking can and will do to their lives. I then showed them a pic of Barb in the last few days of her life, and encouraged them to read more by searching the internet for information on her widower and daughter.

My youngest quit immediately, and has been smoke-free for three weeks now. My middle girl, who just gave birth to another daughter, told us something exciting two nights before I flew home. She said she’s going to quit — she wants to quit — and here’s the part that opened my eyes… she ended with “…but I’m scared!”

I told you it wouldn’t sound like much. But to me, it was a real wake up call. I smoked for 30 years. 25 of those years or more, I wanted to quit… but I was scared to. Well, if I’d been scared enough to continue smoking for a quarter of a century, what makes me think anybody else would be any different? LOL!

…be unbroken…

Oh how I pray it will be broken!

To understand my meaning, you need to know a little about me. Who I am, where I am, why I am here. I’m a 50-something grandmother who finally found a way to overcome this addiction a year and 8 weeks ago. Growing up, it wasn’t a question of if you would start smoking, but when. The same was true for my mom. I have a picture of her when she was maybe 15 or 16 eating an apple and smoking a sickarette.

She smoked when she was pregnant with me. So when I took my first puff of a sickarette, even though it didn’t taste good and I had to make my body accept the smoke into my lungs… it felt like home. It had been part of my experience before I ever had a choice in what kinds of things I wanted to experience. My mom smoked around us kids all the time we were growing up, as did our dad and step dad and just about every “cool” person in our world.

Mom died when I was 10-ish. She’d been in the hospital for 3 and a half years, and weighed in at about 82 lbs when the cancer finally ended her suffering and claimed her life…