Dropping the smokes for good this time

So, most people who know me, know I love to indulge in things that aren’t always good for me. One of those things has been cigarettes.

I have been able to keep this terrible habit to mainly being an induced-by-alcohol condition (aka, the social smoker).

(Except for the odd time when I was stressed, bored or driving.)

I have dabbled for the past eight years. I was that person in high school who was super fit, broke your cigarettes in half with no guilt and didn’t even let my best friend smoke in the car.

People would see me now and be shocked I had crossed to the toxic side.

The back story of how I became addicted to cigarettes is another story altogether but I blame the Australians.

So, after all this time living in Invercargill (geez, eight months already) I was finally accepted into a doctors’ surgery and got my quit prescription.

The first thing I did was overdose on the meds, taking three pills for the first three days, instead of one.

Wow, blondie. Talk about having the dries. All I wanted to do was drink 10 beers!

Even though I’ve started taking the right amount, they still make you so dry you want the beers. (Vicious, vicious cycle considering this is an alcohol induced habit.)

I grew up with a family of smokers.

A family of smokers that have all quit.

Mother Darling gave up after being hounded by the rest of the family, constantly reminded that she wouldn’t be around to see her grandchildren grow up if she carried on. We are very proud of her. Dad now vapes. Not quite the quitter but wow, I never thought I would ever see the old man vape.

And my siblings kicked the habit one by one during the years.

There have been some what-wenow-find-funny smoking stories.

Like the one brother who thought the warning label that said ‘‘Smoking makes you impotent’’ said ’’Smoking makes you important’’.

Or another brother, who feel asleep with a lit cigarette on a mattress on a balcony at a Dunedin flat and woke up to his hair on fire.

The story doesn’t stop there. He then threw the burning mattress off the balcony, which then landed in a tree, which then also caught fire ... which then had to be put out by the fire brigade. Wow. What a night.

I had worked at nightclubs before I smoked and always reeked of cigarettes. My hair, my hair was the worst.

However, my sister [who no longer smokes] said it was the ‘‘best thing ever’’ when they kicked everyone outside to smoke.

It created a whole new party! It’s true. I will miss that the most.

The awesome people I have met in the smoking area has been impressive.

It’s like the better version of the ‘‘girls making friends in the bathroom’’ because you actually run into these people again and are more likely to stay in contact.

I will also miss travelling to exotic countries, testing out their flava flav, and paying as low as $1 a pack. Nah, I guess I won’t really miss that.

But, quitting completely is going to be hard. I have tried countless times to give up cold turkey.

Somehow, my inhibitions towards smoking after drinking anything with a nip of alcohol get the better of me. Decisions made after midnight aren’t always the best are they.

But, as we know, quitting is for the better.

So it’s goodbye to this Carrie Bradshaw, fabulous smoking queen. Nah, but I think I’ll have to save watching that final season of Mad Men until I am fully recovered. I’ll miss you, Don Draper.

Really, the best thing I could do to quit would be to give up the older step-sister, pulling me to the dark side - aka, that fine wine.

But, yeah, that is never going to happen. I couldn’t handle THAT much pain.

Vicious, vicious cycle.