I Forgot to Celebrate My IQ of 18 ...

and I can't believe it. I guess that is what time does to a person, which in this case is a good thing.

When I first quit smoking I posted something bitchy everyday about my overall lack of well being- and as the supreme over planner that I am, I would come up with things to say days in advance and write them down in case someday I couldn't think of something to write. I think that may have helped me get through that first month or so because I didn't want to not be able to use all of the little non sense limericks that I had stored away.

Pretty soon I was posting that it had been a month, then 2 months, then my first trip to Disney as a non smoker, then my first Christmas, then a year. Now January 13, 2011 came and went marking my 18 month milestone and I totally forgot about it until today.

I started smoking when I was a teenager. I quit for a couple of years in the 70's then 5 years in the 80's but I picked it back up in 1989 and with the exception of a week or a month of trying to quit I smoked until July 13, 2009.

I was never one who wanted to quit smoking. I liked smoking. It helped me be less high strung. Plus, it hadn't been until the last decade or so that smoking became socially unacceptable but who was I to ever care what was socially acceptable anyway? Surely, that's not why I quit. I didn't quit for health reasons either especially in 2009! In 2009 I was more likely to drive my car off a ridge or jump my ass off a bridge than I was to care at all about the healthiness or lack there of, of smoking!

Then came one day in June when I went to the doctor with my daughter-in-law and she showed me the + on her pregnancy test and I knew that that, along with the fact that I was going to have to start paying for COBRA (health insurance which was exactly what I spent a month on cigarettes) just made it the time to quit.

I knew we had plans for July 4th and I didn't want to ruin them by be a smokeless raging bitch, so I set my quit date for after that. My doctor gave me a Chantix prescription and I did use it for two weeks (phase one) but it is so expensive that I could not complete the program. I bought some Nicorette gum but I only used it as absolutely needed because it too is so expensive. My plan was at midnight on July 12th I would smoke my last cigarette and then sleep until at least the first of August. Pretty much aside from my daily Facebook posts, showering and eating (oy!) that is what I did. I tried to spare everyone from the fanatical lunatic asylum worthy person I had become!

By my 49th birthday, I had been without a cigarette for about 3 weeks. It was the first time in years that I hadn't used my birthday money on cigarettes. Within weeks I knew that the physical addiction was essentially over, but the mental hold of nicotine is mind boggling.

People even now will sometimes ask me for advice on how to get over the psychological addiction and I hate to tell them that if there is a way, I don't know it. It has been 18 months now and there is not a day that I don't think about smoking. I still crave it, I just don't do it. Also very few times do I leave the house without reaching to see if I have my cigarettes and then I have to remind myself that I don't need them- and still they toy with me just waiting for any given sign of stress, no matter how petty, my mind instinctively wants a cigarette. I know the temptation will become less, but it will never be obsolete. I have not cheated once though God knows I have thought about it. It's just that I know I could not stop at one cigarette, all it would take is one to make these last 18 months have been in vain. That, and well, I never want my beautiful grand daughter to ever have to see me smoke and it's nice not to have to be outside smoking while everyone else is inside having fun (oh, and air travel- it is so much more tolerable as a non smoker!). As for the money end, if I took up smoking again I would have to give up cable, internet, phone, and still something else just to be able to afford it. It's a powerful hold nicotine has, but luckily, its just not powerful enough, not anymore at least.

So last January my Aunt Joan, also a former smoker, gave me a silver pin of an IQ. It stands for I Quit and at the time she gave it to me I had an IQ of 6. Now I have an IQ of 18 and pretty soon it will be 24. It's pretty neat to see that number rising and sometimes just a little thing like that can go a long, long way in the daily battle to stay smoke free. If the day ever comes that Audrey isn't enough, or the money isn't enough, maybe not wanting an IQ of zero will be ;)