The Evil Weed

No, I'm NOT speaking about "Mary-Jane" today.
The entry is about t-o-b-a-c-c-o. Actually it's about SMOKING tobacco.

I started regularly smoking cigarettes when I was 22. Therefore it's now been over 20 years since I started on this road to knowingly destroying my health. Many say that it is a "habit". I've often countered that it is an ADDICTION. Well whether it be an addiction or habit, it's time to stop.

Did you know that it takes 28 days to develop a habit. Yeah, good or bad, habits take less than a month, or more accurately, it takes the entire month of February (sans Leap Year) to do a good thing for yourself. When I started my addictive behaviour, "smokes" cost a whole whopping 65 cents for 20 little cancer sticks. For those mathematically inclined and into ratios and stuff that equates to 3 and 1/4 cents for a rush of nicotine. Cheap really cheap.

I have read a study, well I'm sure by now that it's more like an urban myth, that states that six minutes of your overall life expectancy is gone in that puff of smoke exhaled from your lungs. Again let's do the math shall we? For the sake of this argument, let's assume that I've been smoking 20 cigarettes per day for 20 years. So lemme see...

That's 20 cigarettes in one pack, times 365 days which equals 7,300 cigarettes in 1 year. Now 7,300 times 20 years equals: 146,000 cigarettes! Okay now let's multiply 146,000 by 6 to get the number of minutes removed from my total life expectancy: 876,000 minutes. Okay, so that is what in years? Hmmm, there's 60 minutes to an hour, so that's 876,000/60 which equals 14,600 hours. And there are 24 hours to a day, so that is 14,600/24 which equals 608 days and there are 365 days to a year- So therefore I'm currently missing 1.65 years.

Nah, that can't be right. Then again real math was never my fortay. I rather deal with abstract math, you know solving for 'x'. Algebra, that's what it's called. I'd rather deal with letters in equations like 'a+b=c'. But I digress.

The last time I'd quit smoking was in the early nineties. I had strength, I had stamina, I was able to run and feel my heart pounding in my chest- I felt great. Then two months after I had started my new regiment, I slipped and began smoking again. The reason? A break-up. A rather nasty break-up with my boyfriend at the time led me to stress out. Stress was one of those things that always had me chain-smoking to help calm me down. Well, now there's no BF. Therefore I ought to quit and learn to deal with stress without resorting to lighting up.

Man, what would I do without that emotional crutch? I think I'll start to do something new, like exercise. Perhaps I could find some basic Tai Chi stretches on the web? Some say Yoga is good for relieving stress. I think I'll try that also. Then there's always biking. I LOVE to go biking on urban trails and such. I think I'll do that. Get out in the fresh air. Well fresher air I'm sure.

28 days.

28 days begin tomorrow...