I’m a smoker. I’ve been smoking since I was a teenager. I’m unlikely to go “cold turkey” and give up smoking overnight. However since I moved into the new house I haven’t smoked in it. Not once. Nor have I let anyone visiting smoke in it either.
The house is now a smoke free zone. You can smoke outside in the back garden if you want to, but I don’t allow anyone, including myself to smoke indoors.
Why?
I’m not 100% sure what triggered this. I suspect it was a combination of things. I was in the US from just before Christmas until the second week of January. While I was there I spent a lot of my time in hotels or other places where I couldn’t smoke. Any friends I visited were non-smokers. So over a 2 – 3 week period I ended up smoking way less than normal. And it didn’t bother me. Sure, I was still smoking, but my overall consumption had dropped quite a bit.
I’ve been back in Ireland since the 2nd week of January and things haven’t changed that much. When I was in the old house I still smoked indoors, as it was “allowed”. But I simply decided not to smoke in the new house.
So I haven’t.
And it’s odd, because it’s not driving me nuts and I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to run outside the back door every 10 minutes to have a puff. I get home from the office around 6pm and go to bed after midnight. Over the course of the evening I might smoke 4 or 5 cigarettes, which if I’m at home over the weekend will go up, but I’m not smoking anything close to the number I used to smoke. Before it was almost too easy. I’d light a cigarette and puff away at it, but ultimately a lot of it would just burn by itself in the ashtray. Of course I smoked in almost every single room of the house except for my bedroom.
I used to smoke 20 or more cigarettes per day, with that number going up quite a bit if I went out for the evening ie. to pubs etc., Since Christmas I’m down to around 10 cigarettes a day. I’ll be on the road quite a bit over the coming month which means more time in bars and late nights etc., which is when I tend to smoke more. I’m not consciously trying to give up, but reducing my consumption isn’t a bad thing.
Should I give up entirely? If I was being 100% logical and rational then obviously, yes. But I need to be honest with myself. I quite enjoy smoking, so I need to switch to vaping to replace it. Yes, I know that vaping contains nicotine, unless you switch to one of those nicotine free hookah type things, but it’s still a move in the right direction.
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