DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!

I uses the patches, I marked it on the calendar, and then I held myself
to my memories, breathing deeply, in and out, hour after hour, and day
after day.
I became free in a week, and in two weeks I was able to trust myself
to not reach out for the tobacco and in a month's time I was able to be
worry-free for all time.
The amazing thing is that I needed one more ingredient, that of
trusting my inner child and giving him the permission to let go of the
need to smoke. Sure, at times, I had to, in my imagination, kept a tight
hold on my inner child, or inner self, or you can say, I'm holding myself,
keeping myself reined in, and being watchful over myself, and that
worked a treat.
All you need is to trust yourself, put together all the things you needs
that will help you and bam! You got it made! If guarantee is anything to
go by, it worked for me, so it should work for you, if you would only
just make up your mind and really go for it. Go the distance, that's all
that matters and you'll make it, just by going through the process,
experiencing it and coping with it and living with it, no matter how bad
or good it gets, it will pass quickly, for how quickly it does goes by!
It's so simple. I find it amazing, even now, four years on and a month
later, shaking my head over how easy it is. Even now, I smelled the
smokers out there, the thick haze of their stale smoke emanating off their
clothes like staleness, a pall of staleness that's like a cloud around a
person. It makes me breathe uncomfortably, makes my throat closes up a
bit, and I strained to filter the air, fresh air in, bad air out.
Every time I go out in public I forget that there are smokers out there,
smoking away like chimneys, the stale smell emanating from them like a
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miasma cloud of bad air, and I would encounters the smell and knew
there's a smoker nearby and try to see where he is and try to get around
the bloke so as not to stay in the bad air too long.
I like my fresh air a whole lot more than bad air now. I loves
breathing pure fresh air deeply into my lungs. I loves the way my lungs
expands so as to get as much fresh air into the lungs deeply and feeling
totally alive in so many ways. I absolutely loves it. The fresh air, it's like
nectar given by God, invigorating and reviving me all the time. I would
urge you in all seriousness to quit, just like that, quit smoking, and not
smoke one more cigarette and waste not one cent on the cigarette that
was of no use in one iota.
If smoking was so safe, how was it that those people who works in
the tobacco companies do not even smoke? I have not seen any of them
smoke, or know of one. Why don't they come out and show us that they
do smoke for real? But they do not. They pretends, they hides their true
nature and they push people to smoke saying how “cool” it is, when it's
not. So many people have died from smoking-related diseases. I know,
some of my relatives have died, and many still will in future if they
keeps on smoking. There's just no way to get around the problem.
Smoking is a curse, a millstone around our necks, if only we can be free
by cutting the chains and being truly free.
For me, the truth is so simple. Smoking is a crappy lifestyle. To not
smoke is a far better lifestyle that I have found, saving me money, and
time from smoking. I mean, it took time to smoke, it literally wastes
your time, while you're trying to “relax”, and so there it is. It would be
far better to quit smoking and free up time for other things to do that is
more valuable, that have more value, than the smoking itself.
I recall, smoking makes you unable to taste real flavours in foods, so
you resorts to junk foods, and sometimes, it just crept up on you
unawares. So when you quit smoking, the junk foods tastes too loud, so
you goes back to normal foods and they tastes better and you can taste
the subtle flavours more than you ever had before.
So do it, quit smoking, with mental strength. It's easy, I guarantee it!

Discovery - How I Put Together the Clues

For years I smoked, constantly, every day.
There was no end to it.
Every day I wakes up, I would feel peace, no cares in the world, but
then, like my noisy tinnitus, the cravings made themselves felt.
The need to smoke was so overwhelming, it was difficult to think
beyond the next cigarette.
I'd grabbed the pouch, pulls out some shreds and lined them up on
the Rizla+ roll-owns paper, rolling them to my satisfaction and then
licking the edges and then rolling the paper into a cylinder.
And then lighting up, inhaling my first smoke of the morning,
deeply, feeling the slight rush of buzz warming me from the inside out.
I feel light-headed for a moment and then my body, amazing as it is,
adapted to the new conditions and I smoked throughout the day to get
to that rush buzz that I liked to get but could never get.
Every day I smoked, the less I felt any desire for anything else
except to drown my consciousness in my books, for adventures in far
places which I'll never see in my lifetime.
And year by year, living within my poverty allowance set by the
government, I try to block out my dreams, of being free, of being
healthy and most of all, to not smoke any more.
But such dreams are not possible. So I sought some way to find
information on how, if it is at all possible, to quit smoking, somehow,
in some way.
I did not care how long it would take me. For I had discovered a
problem.
My teeth was hurting, and smoking seems to hurt them some,
including some foods and I was worried and stressed as to how I could
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find some answers.
I found a way to find information and got online, over ten years ago
and it was a dial-up so I planned every move I make, the questions I
ask myself and the answers which will tell me how to solve my
problems.
But it took a lot longer than I anticipated.
I learned a lot of things over the years, some good, some negative. In
all, I learned that I have to accept that there are things I'll never see
happens, and things I can actually do. I was proud of myself.
I'd think of a problem, and I'd ask myself questions and figure out
answers and see if it is possible, by looking up the answers (and
questions) online, and there it is, it is possible to quit smoking, to give
the body better nutrition, and so on and so forth.
All you need to find answers is to ask yourself what is lacking in
your life and figure out how to solve that problem, or series of
problems.
I found quit smoking information to be the hardest thing to
understand. Most of it was so contradictory all they say is, "Just quit,
that's all there is to it." I don't see how it would be that easy. I read as
many books as I can get my hands on, ebooks, anything.
Until I found Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Smoking, and his book
proved to me that smoking is inherent deep inside us, where we have
forgotten why we smoke at all, and the only one who knows is the inner
child inside us, the subconscious who believes anything without any
discrimination between facts and fiction.
It was an eye-opener, learning Carr's information. And this sets me
to thinking of my childhood, as to how and why I became a smoker in
the first place. I delved so deep I remembered a lot of things I thought I
had forgotten, but my subconscious recorded it all.
I found the right information, now I needed some sort of device,
something that would limited my ability to smoke.
I tested a few products.
One product, NicoBloc.
It was five or so years ago, and I was determined to quit. I felt ready,
though I had tried many times before.
I bought NicoBloc, for $60.00 AUD. I smoked harder than I ever
smoked before, just to get the same amount of high. NicoBloc just
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didn't work, for trying to cut down just makes it harder than before. It
would have been easier just to go cold turkey, but I stuck it out. I
bought more NicoBloc when I ran out, and ultimately I bought six
NicoBloc and it had not worked. There was one bonus, though. Each
time I buy the NicoBloc, there's a paper for free urine testing device to
check how much nicotine levels you have. So I tested two and saw I
was still full of nicotine. I determined to save the rest of the tests for
later when I can be sure I've quit for good. But when? That is the
question that plays itself on my mind for a long time.
Until I recall my father's adventure with quitting smoke with a
nicotine patch that was so strong he was dozing, even though the patch
on his arm was hurting his arm like hell. I wondered, though, about an
idea, of using that patch and seeing what it really feels like, and then
modifying the patch to reduced the pain and perhaps, to a lower levels
of nicotine, and that way, replace smoking with that half-patch. So I
tested that idea, and it worked like a charm.
The next thing I needed was to focus on something unrelated to
smoking in my life. I hardly have much memories of non-smoking
scenes, all I have is bits and pieces, but there's a few scenes in my
childhood that was perfect, and I brought that memory or series of
memories back to the present day.
I prepared my tools, and I got ready. It had to be at the right time, for
when no one will be needing me, demanding my time, for this or that. I
needed to be alone, to battle out the urge, the fever, the struggle to hold
to my dream of being free of the smoking man.

Year 11 - The Two Colleges on Both Sides of the Swan River.

Year 11 - The Two Colleges on Both Sides of the Swan River.By the time Year 11 came around, I was told that I have TWO
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colleges to attend, most days it's half a day each!
Going to two colleges is stressful enough, and going by buses on both
sides of the Swan River on the same day... it was stressful.
I took to smoking more and more at every bus stop, waiting for buses
and fending off crazed attacks by friends who would become nuts and
lashes out at the nearest one of us just to vent their spleens.
There are some deafs I would not trust, being too psychotic to have
any self-control, so I stayed as far from them as I can. Still, when needs
be, I can be a master if pushed too far, as they have learned to their
chagrin.
I holds my weight no matter what. All I want is to be left alone to
make my way through studies. I love peace. Peace is conducive to
studying.
Smoking seemed to give me peace. But like a lot of things, it's an
illusion. It will be years before I understood this.
From then on I became a confirmed smoker, a real one, not some
intermittent smoker previously, hooked on the bloody things!

Year 10 - 14 years old - Melville High School

I was 14 years old when my deaf friends introduces me to Peter
Jackson, a cigarette brand.
We took to smoking at the bus stop, behind which is the perfect
hiding place.
There's a wall that separate the school from the bus stop. The wall
blocks the view of the scene behind the bus stop from the classrooms
right there.
The wall is about ten or twelve feet high. I didn't exactly took a
measuring tape to the wall, to be accurate for you. I had to guess how
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high it is, but the height of the wall prevents anyone from seeing down
to the area behind the bus stop, and it's about three feet wide, so there
was plenty of room to stand around there and smoke slowly, savouring
the taste of the smoke going down into our lungs.
One day, I was alone behind the bus stop, smoking. My friends Trey
and Craig having left mere moments before, having finished their
smokes. I had spotted a girl spying us, but I thought nothing of it.
Suddenly I noticed my teacher bearing down on me, with an intent
look on her face, her eyes was like... wow. For one wild moment I had a
second's fantasy, but I was wrong. (I really liked her, but I'm a kid, oh
well. Just a teen's hormones mixed up with a crush on his teacher.)
Ms Whistle (not her real name) stood right in front of me, her beauty
enhanced by her flushed cheeks, and she reached out and took the
cigarette right out of my hand while I stood there transfixed in a state of
shock.
She dropped the cigarette on the ground, deliberately, slowly, while
her eyes came up to bore into my eyes, grinds her shoe on it until the
cigarette was nothing but a mess, and then she reached out and took my
ear in her hand and pulls me along, all without saying a word.
The pain in my ear dispels the fantasy notions and my mind went
blank, as I stumbles along her side where her hand still has a hold on my
ear, and I struggle to ease the hurt of my ear. Thanks, lady.
Suffice to say is that I got detention and a puzzle.
Someone rats me out. I was not sure if it was the girl who spied us,
but maybe it was my so-called friend, Trey.
I have no proof, but... I began to be very careful.
I noticed that most of the troubles seems to come from him when I
was thinking he was a good friend. But I am not sure. (sighs)... though
he claimed it was one of the girls, and when he said it he had that
innocent look on his face, like he was trying too hard.
It matters not.
All I got from that episode is the sudden craving to smoke which he
helps awoke with Peter Jackson. Thanks mate.

High School and Colleges

For a few years I didn't touch a cigarette, until that summer I took to
smoking tobacco roll-owns while I was on the Westerns craze, reading
one Westerns paperback after another in my voracious appetite for all
things Westerns.
I read horror and science-fiction novels, short stories.
I'm a regular bookworm, devouring the books while I smoked to feel
grown-up in the dark room of my bedroom I shared with my little
brother, with only a tiny corner of the window to let in fresh air.
I know, I hardly went out.
During my childhood and teens, I got sick of standing around doing
nothing while my little brother drags me here and there all over
Fremantle and the surrounding suburbs chatting to people, while I stand
around doing nothing, deaf, silent, alone even with people around me.
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And I have my cravings to know what people say, what they think of
things, but I was so shy, I never say a word, mostly I waited so I can be
at home so I can get at the books.
I was so hungry inside my soul, hungry to know the world around
me.I took to refusing my little brother and friend's invitation to go out to
places I knew I would be bored out of my skull, fearing boredom more
than anything else, preferring my books to their worlds of talking
whatever they talks about that they find so interesting.
I glimpsed this stuff in the books, so my books was my only means of
connecting with the world around me, even if it is fiction, but that was
better than standing there trying to guess whoever was saying a second
ago and keeping track of conversations of who said what. (sighs).
I guess they never thought about what I felt, how isolated I felt, how
lonely I felt, even when they includes me in some conversations, but I
always can see, how impatient they get to move on, to stop lagging
behind in order to includes me in some of their conversations.
It doesn't matter.
I live in my world and that is all that matters to me.
The world out there do not exist for me anymore.
I have not smoked during my early high school, but by the time I
enters my third year high school, a different one than the two years I
went to previously, I enters a world where peer pressure enacts
enormous pressures on everyone, except for those who don't give a
damn.

David and Wendi; Winfield Red; How to Smoke.

I knew, instinctively, how it works.
Years of observing my parents smoke stamps itself indelibly into my
memory.
To my eternal regret and shame I taught my little brother and friends
how to smoke the right way.
First, David did stuff to sneak a cigarette out of the Winfield Red
pack without leaving a sign that any cigarette was missing.
He would go on errands to buy the smokes for his parents, most
particularly his Uncle Max who's a retired fellow who's loud and farts a
lot, laughing loudly, and drinks glass stubbies of beers that you can
smell ten feet away. As Uncle Max was missing a leg, he favours
sitting in his chair yelling out his stories or whatever crap that I don't
know what it was about. Well, he'd recruits David to do his errands and
David, of course, would profits by it, Uncle Max would give him gifts,
favours for doing errands for him.
When I was there, with David and his sister, Wendi and my little
brother, a regular gang of four kids, I'd walks with them to the shops
and get lollies and such, and he'd buy the cigarette packet, Winfield
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Red, and when we'd get home, we'd stopped just down the road, under
a thick towering tall pine tree and we'd sit on our haunches, talking and
fiddling with the packet of smokes.
David would take out the cigarette, never more than one, and he
would shakes the pack, to make the rest of the cylinders shifts so the
missing cylinder disappeared.
It looked like nothing was missing.
When he went to drop off the errands, he would pretend to open the
pack for his uncle, crackling the wrapper and making sure to take out
the silver foil, and a cigarette, as a favour, all to cover the crime of a
missing cigarette! It was a clever way for kids to sneak a smoke.
It always worked, every time.
When I saw all this, with doubts in my heart and worries that we'd
be caught and perhaps gets a belting, I was incredulous that it all
worked so well. Then I accepted it. What else can you do?
We then drifts down the street, hunkers down and smoked that
single cigarette. David lights up, drew in the smoke, held it in his
mouth, and without inhaling it blew it out.
I wanted to try it, I reached out, but my little brother took it, and
mimics David's method.
It's a method that I come to realised was called, "Bumsuck",
whatever that means. I had misunderstood "bumsuck" to mean
"bumstuck", meaning I imagined it to be not inhaling the smoke. But
that's the way it sounded in my head.
"You're doing it wrong," I says, reaching out to take the cigarette.
"Look, this is how they do it."
I took the cigarette in my mouth, like I visualised how it would
work. I inhaled the smoke carefully, slowly, gently inhaling it down my
throat, testing how it feels, and keeping going, into my lungs.
Within seconds I felt a buzzing high, and felt the buzzing in my head
spreads from inside my head out into my eyes and face and I felt
strange, the buzzing spreads into my skin, into my body, and it felt
amazing.
I took another drag, and I sat there on my haunches, feeling the rush,
the buzz.
I took another, but already, the buzz's fading, and thereafter the buzz
never came back, not for a long time. (I found out later, experimentally,
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the buzz will comes back if you only smoke once a week or once a few
weeks. But that was too much to look forward to.)
They watched me inhales and exhales the smoke, and they took the
cigarette and copies my method of smoking for real. That was it. I
showed them how and it was easy, real easy.
Our first smoke, right there on the footpath in a suburb near
Fremantle, (I won't say where exactly), in the shade of giant pine trees.
That was the first and last smoke until high school, which is a
muddle for me.
I do not know if David and Wendi still smokes. I hopes not. I hoped
they have found the courage to quit smoking sooner than me, but that is
unrealistic to expect. We lost contact in the high school years.
As for my little brother, well, he still smokes, which grieves me still,
though I urged him to quit, with encouragements, time after time, ever
since I quit smoking all those years ago.
I still tell him, again and again, how easy it is, to quit. Real easy.
He would say he will try again. Then we'd lose contact for awhile,
then we'd meet and he's still smoking, and I would go into my spiel of
how easy, real easy, it is to quit smoking. And I would give him details
of how I did it, the clues I put together, the timing, the fortitude to do it,
to go the distance

History - My Life as a Smoker

As a kid, (perhaps it's the same or similar to a lot of people), I was
aware that mum and dad does a funny thing.
They would take out a small cylindrical object, with a yellowishorangish
tip on the end. They would put that yellowish-orangish tip in
their mouths. They would bring out a lighter, and lights the long white
end of the cylindrical object. The end would glow red.
I would see their faces relaxes as they draws in some sort of smoky
air that goes through in the glowing ends. I would see them inhales
deeply. They would look like they're holding the smoke in their mouth,
and then they would exhale, blowing the smoke out.
I would noticed the difference between the colour of the smoke
curling up from the end of the cigarette and the smoke that comes out
of their mouths. Both are differently coloured. The one from the
cigarettes would be more white, sort of bluish, and the colour of the
smoke that issues out of their mouths would be greyish, almost black...
it's like all the good stuff stayed inside and the bad stuff comes out.
I realised years later, it was all bad stuff, not good stuff.
The only good stuff was the nicotine and that's the bad stuff.
It's a slave device, it never let you go.
I'd see mum and dad sighs contentedly, relaxing and looking almost
doped up, which they really were.
I thought this was normal. Though now and then it puzzled me over
the years. Sometimes I wished they don't do that stuff. It would be nice
if they don't do that stuff.
I grew up thinking it was normal.
It's all I ever see, mum and dad smoking that stuff, and associated
with the smoking habit is the habit of coffee, drinking cups of coffee,
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five to ten times a day, sometimes more, for each of them.
I got used to smelling these, the smokes and the coffee, growing up,
a part of life.
What I did not expect is that when I grew up I would copy them.
If I had known before what I know now, I would have figured out a
way to avoid getting involved in any episodes of smoking, but there
was no way around this.
I just did not know.
Perhaps, if my parents had let us smoked a packet of cigarettes, to
teach us that the stuff is horrible, as worse than anything we could think
of, perhaps it would have worked to make us hates smoking.
A friend told me his parent caught him having a puff, so they gave
him the ultimatum: smoke a packet of smokes, and so that is what he
did.
But he hated it.
Smoking it one after the other, he grew sick and he never touched a
cigarette ever again.
Now that's a mean achievement, for he is now 55 years old, and still
healthy as ever. He was only a kid of ten therebouts when he was
forced to smoke, so that's a great method to teach us kids how smoking
is a horrible way to become a slave to the sticks.
But my parents never thought it would work for me, and my little
brother. So I was left with the impression that we all, when we all grow
up, will ends up with sticks in our mouth, smoking like stinky
chimneys.
I did not know that choices comes into play. That we have choices.
That it is up to all of us to choose, to smoke or not to smoke. It is that
simple.
I wish at times my parents explains this better.
The choices is up to us. To live a life of stinky smoke or to live a life
of fresh pure air.
We have freedom of choice. All of us. No exceptions.
As a child I did not understand all these concepts, instead as a child I
played, as all children do, in the garden.
I played with Match toy cars, in the driveway of my old place a long
time ago. Chevy, Plymouth, and the like. I would build roads in the dirt
track of the driveway, lined with three long lines of grasses that grew
5
like forests, and I played racing along the dirt track.
The driveway led from the front to the backyard along the red bricks
side of the house. The sky was blue, a brilliant blue, with a droning
aeroplane far off in the distance, with white clouds scudding the sky
from horizon to horizon, though none far above me except a brilliant
yellow sun shining down to caress my face warmly when I looks up
now and then, absorbing the shining clean world above me. Pure fresh
air, full of oxygen blew across my face, as I played with my toys.
This is the memory that stayed with me for the rest of my life.
I still remember the white dog in the back yard, barking, for some
unknown reason. It looks like a husky, all white long fur. It was a
beautiful dog, but I never approached it, nor touch it. It was a scary
dog. Beautiful to look at but best left alone. My parent was babysitting
it while the owner went away for a holiday. How long it was, I do not
know. I only remember these as a snapshot of time, a small clip of time
that showed me the clues, pointing the way toward freedom.
And that was the difference between outside and inside.
Outside, pure fresh air.
Inside, stale smoky air.
That is the way of it, growing up.
Most of my childhood I spent outside, with my little brother at
times, playing in fresh pure air. Sometimes we'd play together.
Sometimes we'd play with new friends in the neighbourhood. I was the
only deaf there in that street.
I met other relatives who smoked; grandparents on both sides of my
parents, uncles, aunts, even older cousins. They all smoked. I really
find it difficult to remember if there was anyone who did not smoke.
Another thing about smoking is that I notices our friends' parents
also smoked. So, smoking is a given, not all that rare the way it is now.
I did remember being sick of the smokes. At times it's so annoying,
it's a waste of time, when there was better things to do, and associated
with the smoking was the addiction my parents have with coffee.
Seemingly uncounted cups of coffee, even I and my little bro was
pressed into making them cups of coffee most times in the day when
we'd get inside and intent on relieving ourselves or grabbing a bite and
a drink of something to quench our thirsts. Instead we have to make
them a cup of coffee... (sighs).
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For me, smoking is also associated with coffee, the staleness, the
smell, cloying and thick, like a pall of noxious gas that lays over
everything, in the house, in our clothes, even in our food, it seemed
like. The only fresh air to get was to open the window or go outside.
Looking back in hindsight I have to wonder how we managed to
survive all those years living in less than optimal oxygen-poor life. It's
a wonder I did not develop asthma or worse. I'm even amazed that our
bodies are tough, adapting to less than optimal conditions. But sadly,
there's always a time when too much is too much. The limit will be
reached, and then it's there, but no further. This far, but no further.
I absolutely hate coffee, the stink of it, no thanks. For me, smoking
and coffee go together, like a twin of sick.
By the time I'm in high school I knew how smoking felt like.
My first encounter with a packet of cigarettes belongs to a friend of
ours. He would periodically go on errands, to get a packet of cigarettes
for his Uncle.