A hard, smoky breakup and stretchy, unsatisfying rebound
Siiiiigh. Please don't ask me how the non-smoking is going. It started after this, and hasn't stopped. But someday.
Originally published Feb. 11, 2011
As I type this, it's been 37 days, one hour and perhaps 15 minutes since I've done it. Not that I am counting. Every time I speak to my mother on the phone, she asks how it's going. When I tell her I still haven't, she squeals with delight and tells me how proud of me she is.
It is a habit that has had a hard fall out of vogue and acceptability, even though "Mad Men" makes it look so sexy. It's not allowed anywhere, really, anymore, and it will earn you contemptuous stares and lectures from strangers. It is an ostracizing hobby that brands you as lower-class.
It's a habit that no less a man than our president, the leader of the free world, still struggles with. I don't have to name it. It is The Habit, the one that people always ask when you're going to quit. The one that people say is harder to kick than heroin. That habit.
I started it when I was in college, without even the excuse of being too young to know better. It had to do with missing a boy I'd left behind, but that doesn't really matter now.
It happened very, very fast. Within a month, I was a heavy-habiter, certainly, maybe even a chain-habiter. I LOVED it. I loved taking a break from my life for 10 minutes, always having an excuse to leave work or a social situation. I loved bonding with my fellow habiters, who in my experience are funnier and more interesting than nonhabiters. I loved the ritual, the lighters, my vintage ashtrays, even the way it smelled, which most people hate but reminds me of my grandparents.
It was soon a part of my personality, like red hair or clumsiness. It provided punctuation for my day, commas and parenthesis and periods. There's an old photo of me on Facebook, taken during a sorority retreat, blindfolded for a team-bonding exercise but still indulging. "Kelly smoking, because when is she not?" is the caption. This was accurate and didn't bother me at all.
Deep down, I knew I had to stop, that doing this forever was not a valid long-term plan. I would do it through sickness, through bronchitis, through nagging coughs that never quite went away, ones that would have been more at-home in a 70-year-old than a 20-year-old.
I did it when I was a dirt-poor reporter in Mississippi and could barely afford rent and groceries, let alone an expensive hobby. I did it when I moved to Oregon and suddenly was nearly alone in my habit. These things, also, did not faze me. I kind of liked doing something that annoyed sanctimonious people so. I wasn't sorry.
And then one night in November, it was over. I was almost asleep and all of a sudden bolted upright in bed, knowing deep down that I had to stop ASAP. I then threw a big hissy fit, crying for at least 30 minutes, the kind of sobbing normally reserved for a breakup. And, in some ways, it was. I'd been at it longer than I'd been in any romantic relationship.
I picked a date at random, one that looked comfortably distant but then arrived immediately. I went to my doctor to get medication that would help me stop. This took the physical pleasure of the act away, which was a small help, but not the mental.
For the first few days, every time I had a trigger (driving in the car, after morning coffee, a long phone chat), a happy, high-pitched voice in my head would say, "Habit time, YAAAY!" And then a mean, deep, ugly voice would reply, "No. It's NOT habit time. It will NEVER BE habit time."
The little happy voice would say, "Ohhhhh," really sadly, and my entire body would physically slump. Also, I would randomly be filled with towering, burning rage for absolutely no reason and start crying at the drop of a hat and (true story) screamed at loved ones over things like spring rolls. These were dark times.
My mother is someone who loved this as much if not more than I but quit before I was born. The first few days, I would call her, hoping that there was some magical verbal fix she could give me so I wouldn't feel the way I was feeling.
No such luck. She told me that every day would get a little easier, but there was nothing I could do to make the first days not suck (true). She told me that I would have longing dreams about it (also true). She told me that the idea of never indulging in the habit again would be terribly depressing (super, super true) so to not think of it that way. I should, she said, think in terms of concrete bits of time: an hour. A morning. A day. Teeny milestones.
This "one day at a time" is one thing about addiction that did not make sense to me before, but now it does. Also, you know how people quit an addiction and get obsessed with something? Jesus, normally? Well, for me, it's exercise. I went from never going to a pretty extreme regimen. Yoga seven days a week. Pilates four days a week. Aerobics, three. Dance parties for one whenever I see fit.
There are two reasons for this. One, the happy biochemical feedback loop I used to enjoy while habiting is gone and can only be achieved through exercise. Two, I need something new to organize my days around, something concrete that separates the old life and the new one. I need something to preoccupy me, somenew activity for Facebook pictures. "Kelly doing yoga, because when is she not?"
These days, when I see other people doing it, I feel jealous and resentful. Why them and not me? This is balanced with vicarious pleasure: I walk close to them, even strangers, and smell them surreptitiously.
And now, it's just the long slog of choosing not to day after day. I can't really say that I've quit — just tell people that for now, I'm not. Maybe in a year, five years, 20, I'll think of myself as a nonhabiter, but I'm not there yet.
I could cave tomorrow. At any second, I could go to one of hundreds of stores in town, plunk down a $5 and be right back where I started. When I go into convenience stores, I make myself not look at the display, otherwise, I'll just stare and stare and weird out the clerks.
So I'm finding abstention to be harder than action because it doesn't end. There's no goal or finish line, just the always-looming threat of failure — at least an action you do and are done. I make gumbo and then I have gumbo. I write this column, then move on to the next task. I work out for an hour then leave the gym and go home. I don't have to do yoga every hour of the rest of my life, you know?
K. Williams Brown is the entertainment reporter for the Statesman Journal. Do not congratulate her for quitting something she shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
Originally published Feb. 11, 2011
As I type this, it's been 37 days, one hour and perhaps 15 minutes since I've done it. Not that I am counting. Every time I speak to my mother on the phone, she asks how it's going. When I tell her I still haven't, she squeals with delight and tells me how proud of me she is.
It is a habit that has had a hard fall out of vogue and acceptability, even though "Mad Men" makes it look so sexy. It's not allowed anywhere, really, anymore, and it will earn you contemptuous stares and lectures from strangers. It is an ostracizing hobby that brands you as lower-class.
It's a habit that no less a man than our president, the leader of the free world, still struggles with. I don't have to name it. It is The Habit, the one that people always ask when you're going to quit. The one that people say is harder to kick than heroin. That habit.
I started it when I was in college, without even the excuse of being too young to know better. It had to do with missing a boy I'd left behind, but that doesn't really matter now.
It happened very, very fast. Within a month, I was a heavy-habiter, certainly, maybe even a chain-habiter. I LOVED it. I loved taking a break from my life for 10 minutes, always having an excuse to leave work or a social situation. I loved bonding with my fellow habiters, who in my experience are funnier and more interesting than nonhabiters. I loved the ritual, the lighters, my vintage ashtrays, even the way it smelled, which most people hate but reminds me of my grandparents.
It was soon a part of my personality, like red hair or clumsiness. It provided punctuation for my day, commas and parenthesis and periods. There's an old photo of me on Facebook, taken during a sorority retreat, blindfolded for a team-bonding exercise but still indulging. "Kelly smoking, because when is she not?" is the caption. This was accurate and didn't bother me at all.
Deep down, I knew I had to stop, that doing this forever was not a valid long-term plan. I would do it through sickness, through bronchitis, through nagging coughs that never quite went away, ones that would have been more at-home in a 70-year-old than a 20-year-old.
I did it when I was a dirt-poor reporter in Mississippi and could barely afford rent and groceries, let alone an expensive hobby. I did it when I moved to Oregon and suddenly was nearly alone in my habit. These things, also, did not faze me. I kind of liked doing something that annoyed sanctimonious people so. I wasn't sorry.
And then one night in November, it was over. I was almost asleep and all of a sudden bolted upright in bed, knowing deep down that I had to stop ASAP. I then threw a big hissy fit, crying for at least 30 minutes, the kind of sobbing normally reserved for a breakup. And, in some ways, it was. I'd been at it longer than I'd been in any romantic relationship.
I picked a date at random, one that looked comfortably distant but then arrived immediately. I went to my doctor to get medication that would help me stop. This took the physical pleasure of the act away, which was a small help, but not the mental.
For the first few days, every time I had a trigger (driving in the car, after morning coffee, a long phone chat), a happy, high-pitched voice in my head would say, "Habit time, YAAAY!" And then a mean, deep, ugly voice would reply, "No. It's NOT habit time. It will NEVER BE habit time."
The little happy voice would say, "Ohhhhh," really sadly, and my entire body would physically slump. Also, I would randomly be filled with towering, burning rage for absolutely no reason and start crying at the drop of a hat and (true story) screamed at loved ones over things like spring rolls. These were dark times.
My mother is someone who loved this as much if not more than I but quit before I was born. The first few days, I would call her, hoping that there was some magical verbal fix she could give me so I wouldn't feel the way I was feeling.
No such luck. She told me that every day would get a little easier, but there was nothing I could do to make the first days not suck (true). She told me that I would have longing dreams about it (also true). She told me that the idea of never indulging in the habit again would be terribly depressing (super, super true) so to not think of it that way. I should, she said, think in terms of concrete bits of time: an hour. A morning. A day. Teeny milestones.
This "one day at a time" is one thing about addiction that did not make sense to me before, but now it does. Also, you know how people quit an addiction and get obsessed with something? Jesus, normally? Well, for me, it's exercise. I went from never going to a pretty extreme regimen. Yoga seven days a week. Pilates four days a week. Aerobics, three. Dance parties for one whenever I see fit.
There are two reasons for this. One, the happy biochemical feedback loop I used to enjoy while habiting is gone and can only be achieved through exercise. Two, I need something new to organize my days around, something concrete that separates the old life and the new one. I need something to preoccupy me, somenew activity for Facebook pictures. "Kelly doing yoga, because when is she not?"
These days, when I see other people doing it, I feel jealous and resentful. Why them and not me? This is balanced with vicarious pleasure: I walk close to them, even strangers, and smell them surreptitiously.
And now, it's just the long slog of choosing not to day after day. I can't really say that I've quit — just tell people that for now, I'm not. Maybe in a year, five years, 20, I'll think of myself as a nonhabiter, but I'm not there yet.
I could cave tomorrow. At any second, I could go to one of hundreds of stores in town, plunk down a $5 and be right back where I started. When I go into convenience stores, I make myself not look at the display, otherwise, I'll just stare and stare and weird out the clerks.
So I'm finding abstention to be harder than action because it doesn't end. There's no goal or finish line, just the always-looming threat of failure — at least an action you do and are done. I make gumbo and then I have gumbo. I write this column, then move on to the next task. I work out for an hour then leave the gym and go home. I don't have to do yoga every hour of the rest of my life, you know?
K. Williams Brown is the entertainment reporter for the Statesman Journal. Do not congratulate her for quitting something she shouldn't have been doing in the first place.