Is There Life After Smoking?

As I stumbled my way through last week in a zombie-like state of nicotine deprivation, I knew, at least intellectually, that it was a temporary condition. Many of my friends have quit smoking. They all live what appear to be normal lives. Quite similar to the lives they had before they quit, actually.

Unfortunately, intellectual knowledge is useless in situations involving emotional discomfort. Emotions are processed by the limbic brain, an ancient neural structure inherited from our earliest mammalian ancestors who spent their short and terrified lives scurrying up trees to avoid being stepped on by a passing stegosaurus. It’s no use telling the limbic brain: This too shall pass. The limbic brain has no sense of time, it lives in an eternal now. The concept of future is only understood by the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, a much more recent addition to the mammalian mental landscape.

So last week, even with ample proof that life after smoking is not only possible but highly likely, I could not imagine my own survival. I slumped in my easy chair for hours, listlessly flipping through channels, wallowing in ludicrous amounts of self pity and wondering why all daytime television now revolves around home renovations, cheating boyfriends and cranky judges.

Then yesterday, totally by accident, I finally had my first emotional breakthrough in my quest for quality of life as a non-smoker.  

When cravings overtake me, one of my coping mechanisms is walking. Some days I’ve had to take two or three walks. Fortunately I live in an area that offers a plethora of poddling possibilities, (I know! But for some reason, I feel alliterative today.) and the weather has been cooperating nicely with March going out like a lamb this year. Yesterday’s first walk took me down to the river, where the resident duck population was engaged in its annual reproductive frenzy. Courting couples careened (I know! Sorry about that.) around the grassy part of the riverbank. One highly frustrated drake attacked my foot, which looked nothing like a lady duck, so I can only assume he had a shoe fetish.

On my second walk, in an attempt to avoid amorous avian advances (I know! This one is particularly horrible, isn’t it?), I decided to turn inland, a direction I haven’t taken lately due to the number of convenience stores in my neighborhood. I walked south first, because:

a)   there is a particularly beautiful garden attached to an old Georgian house that I like to check out

and

b)   the two other directions that didn’t involve horny ducks would have meant climbing a hill or passing the convenience store across the street.

Nothing in the garden appeared to be sprouting yet, so I crossed the main road and turned into a quiet subdivision of brick bungalows built (I know! I wonder if all this alliteration has anything to do with quitting smoking?) not long after the second world war. Instantly, I remembered the last time I walked here—on my way to the convenience store by the bridge where they sell my favorite brand of gummi bears as well as cigarettes. Gut clenching with the craving for nicotine, I scurried down a street I’d never been on before, which led to the park beside the canal where frenzied waterfowl literally littered the landscape. (I know! I can’t stop them. Just try to ignore them.)

At this point, I had three choices:

1.    I could retrace my steps, but that would mean passing the convenience store.

2.    I could walk through the ducks, but that might result in another sexual assault on my foot.

3.    I could climb and descend the steep hill between the canal and the main road.

My gut admonished me: “Don’t give in now, you fool!”

My foot protested vehemently: “Absolutely not!”

My knees sighed, “Oh crap!” and we started up the hill.

Well! It turns out hill-climbing is much easier when it is done quickly, something I could never manage when I smoked. I won’t say the climb was painless, but it was over long before the pain became unbearable. I stood at the top of the hill, looking down the slope to the main road, and for a brief moment, the happiness of my accomplishment outweighed the grinding misery of withdrawal.

Today, of course, I’m back to obsessing about nicotine. But I now have emotional proof there will be life after smoking, and happy hours of hiking up high hills will help it happen. (I know! They’re getting worse. I think I’d better stop now.)