Vision, Not Programs

I've written from time to time here on the whole notion of "vision, not programs."

Today, on my drive into work, an example of the sort of thing I mean by this occurred to me.

It has been 7 years, 2 months, and 5 days (roughly) since I've smoked a cigarette.

Prior to that, I smoked a lot of cigarettes.

I smoked a lot of cigarettes, and really, really liked cigarettes. Three packs a day, for a while there.

I knew, of course, as just about everybody these days knows, that smoking cigarettes was a bad idea, and so I wanted to quit. Knew that I should quit. Tried to quit. Over and over again. In an effort to quit, I engaged in a number of programs, all of which failed miserably.

I chewed the gum. Nicorette. I chewed an awful lot of that gum over a period of about four months. When I think back on it, I can still taste it... this tart, sort of piercing flavor that would just sort of almost numb my mouth, throw chills up and down my spine as the lovely, lovely nicotine hit. The gum was expensive, almost as expensive (from what I remember) as cigarettes. And it wasn't nearly as cool. I mean, you couldn't lean against the bar looking all pensive and serious and make some witty, jaded philosophical point while smacking on a piece of Nicorette the way you could with a cigarette. And before too long I learned that chewing on two pieces of Nicorette while chain smoking could make one feel light-headed and nauseous, so I quit the Nicorette for my own health.

And I tried the Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant, has a side-effect which prevents the body from "processing" nicotine. You can smoke and smoke and smoke, but you won't get that "fix," that good, good feeling. The idea is that if you're getting nothing out of it, you'll just stop smoking. That didn't work for me. Not being able to process the nicotine just made me sort of angry, made me try harder. I smoked more and more and more, hoping that just one more cigarette and I'd break through that barrier. Add to that the fact that a second side-effect of the drug, for some, is the sensation of bugs crawling under the skin, this just absolutely awful sub dermal itchiness that cannot possibly be scratched. No fun at all. So I quit the Wellbutrin.

I tried hanging a picture of a diseased lung on my refrigerator door for a while. That depressed me every time I got thirsty and went to the fridge. When I got depressed, I usually sat on the porch and smoked.

I bought a carton of cheap, generic cigarettes. Not so much to save money, but because I generally smoked quality cigarettes, and thought that cheap, generic cigarettes were disgusting. I figured I would smoke fewer cigarettes this way, and might start winding down to none at all. I ended up hating them so much that I smoked them as fast as possible so that I could get through the whole carton and buy something good again. The carton disappeared in no time at all.

And of course I went through that "not buying" phase, where you don't buy your own pack, you just bum them here and there when you really need them. But I had a lot of generous friends, and even more not-so-terribly-bright friends who always left their packs lying around when I was over and made occasional comments like "man, I've been smoking an awful lot lately, I think I'm going through two packs a day and I don't even know how."

Somebody-- my sister, maybe?-- bought me a pack of those fake foam cigarettes. They come in a regular pack, look real, but there's no tobacco in them, just styrofoam or something all the way through. You're supposed to suck on them like you're really smoking, you can have them between your fingers, if you puff you get a little blast of menthol (I never smoked menthols, but you need to get something when you puff these things). They were kind of lame, but I tried. I was delivering pizza one night and I'd been alternating on runs between smoking a cigarette and puffing on one of these things. And then, in the dark, I reached down to the pack, thought I was grabbing a real cigarette, lit my lighter, inhaled, and nearly veered off the road, sucking in burning, mentholated styrofoam. Absolutely horrible. The pack of fakes went in the garbage as soon as I returned to the store.

The most successful program was the "sheer force of will" program. I was living with my on-again/off-again girlfriend at that time, and she really wanted me to quit, and my family really wanted me to quit, and I couldn't smoke in the apartment anyway, and it was expensive, and I wasn't hanging out in bars as much so there wasn't quite as much temptation, so I figured what the hell. I locked myself in a room for the weekend, away from anyone I could scream at, and fought it out. Resisted the urge. The first couple of weeks were hard, but after that, it wasn't so bad. I went a full six months without a single smoke, and felt pretty good about that. There were times when I wanted one. I mean, those were stressful times. Living with someone who I was pretty sure didn't actually like me very much, the band that I thought was going to be really, really huge had broken up before we'd even made our first record, I was adjusting to having a grown up job with normal morning hours, I was gaining weight. But I did it. Six months. And then I discovered that my lady friend was the line connecting all eight points of a twisted love octagon and I sort of got a little upset. I packed her stuff in the middle of the night, called her younger sister to come pick me up, and burned through most of a pack of Marlboros in an hour in one of my favorite bars.

None of my "programs" for quitting worked. They didn't work because as much as I kinda, sorta mostly knew that I should quit, on a deeper level, I really didn't want to. I really, really liked smoking. I liked complaining about smoking, sure. I liked thinking that it was a waste of money, bad for my health, a terrible habit. But I also just liked sitting there with a cigarette between my fingers. When I was smoking, I liked it. When I wasn't smoking, I wanted one.

Until one day I didn't want one any more.

I didn't try to quit. I mean, yes, I still had in the back of my mind the notion that I was going to eventually quit. But I wasn't working at it, wasn't making any effort.

I was dating a new, nice lady (the one that I married), and I hadn't told her that I was a smoker. She'd been a straight-edge girl back in her college days, and though she wasn't quite that hardcore about things anymore, I figured she'd have a low opinion of smokers, so I didn't mention it to her. I went outside to clean my car, to make it smell all fresh and nice so she wouldn't ask me why I let my friends smoke in the car. I took a white rag and cleaned the cloth ceiling on the passenger side. It came back a little gray, a little grubby. I went around to the other side and cleaned the ceiling above the driver's seat. It came back thick, black, chalky.

"Hmmm," I thought.

I set everything down, then went on sat on the trunk of my car, looking out into the street. I lit a cigarette, smoked it slowly, and processed that. Lit another one, smoked it. Enjoyed it. Then I threw the remainder of the pack in my garbage. And that was that.

7 years, 2 months, 5 days. Temptations, occasionally, but not very significant ones.

Programs, in my experience, don't work. Not in the long run, anyway.

What we need is a new vision. A new set of wants. A new understanding of our reality.

The difficult thing, I guess, is that we can't always set the schedule for that sort of thing. We can be open to it, we can set the conditions that might allow it, but we can't make it happen. That can be frustrating. But, as far as I can tell, there's really no other way.