After a tumultuous week, yesterday and today have been relatively easier, with only a bout of 4 hour restlessness last night.  I haven’t had a drink last night as well before sleep since I’ve got to wake up at 6 for office, so it had been a bit of a struggle last night but otherwise it isn’t anything that I haven’t managed so far in the last week. The challenge now is to be able to do it day in and day out for the rest of my life. The 5 minute break of which there used to be invariably one at least every two hours is like a void now, and I don’t have something to replace it with. When I see that I’ve spent a couple of hours without cigarette there is my subconscious mind egging me to do something about it. I guess it would take me a while to replace it, but as of now I feel some secret part of me ceased to exist anymore.

There is still the feeling of envy whenever I see a smoker light up with a tea in one hand and watching the persistent Hyderabad rain through his dopey eyes, smoking it away resting his shoulder on to the nearby wall, but I quickly look away. The feeling of emptiness that engulfs me every couple of hours is a hard thing to fathom, coz I don’t know what I should do at that times. I told myself that I absolutely had no option of smoking and I’m not gonna do it ever again, so I had to find a substitute rather quickly. I had a rather pleasant and a surprisingly efficient day at the office, but that can probably be attributed to Beginner’s Luck. If this seems unfittingly easy today, I quickly remind myself of days 2-6 and can only hope they wouldn’t return and also wish I don’t start the damn thing again and had to face those days when I decide to quit again. I don’t wish those days on me, or anyone else, but I guess every smoker, some day, has to have those. 

Knowing my discipline and will power all too well, I know this is not the time to rejoice in the achievement. I’ve already undone years of faith, trust and discipline all too often and I know I’m still extremely vulnerable to going back to be that kind of person again, so I take each day as it comes and try not to think about each day as if I’ve achieved something, but to put that into perspective and look at the next day and tell myself that I’ve got to do it all over again tomorrow. If I seem like a damned self help guru, I know I’ve been talking to myself in the same way. It’s all dull and pathetic, but that’s the only way forward.

Speaking of self help, I’ve finished Allen Carr’s easy way. When I think about it today, I don’t think I hate it as much as I made out to in my earlier posts about the book. Sure, the book is poorly written, repetitive and has about as much charm as a Fourth Standard Moral Science Text Book (do they even have moral science in schools these days? Are morals science? Difficult questions), and definitely he doesn’t have his heart in the right place, in the sense that he just wants to sell more of the book and the sister books, and his consulting sessions than actually caring about making people get rid of smoking addiction. But that’s an invalid argument about any self help book, coz if they cant sell themselves and people are already so much better in their lives, then what would be the point of them writing the damn book and trying to sell it.

Gosh, I forgot I intended to put in a good word about the book and I apologize all over the place. Despite what I think of it, or how I was about to write a condescending review of it, I have to give it the credit it deserves for letting me know a thing or two about nicotine addiction. Carr made me realize the pitfalls of the addiction through sheer bloody repetition. Whenever I think about smoking, the first thing that comes to my mind is his damned book. I guess he knew the subconscious power of repeating himself. Everybody thinks that he is an adult and people just don’t have to repeat themselves and probably Carr knows a thing or two about every adult. So he just does the opposite and repeats himself all over the place. I mean, he wrote three books on how to quit smoking, and one of them specifically for women. Can you beat that? It seems to be a proper method now.

I wish the entries to be infrequent now coz I think I can manage without writing about it. A weekly update should be fine I guess.