Californipontification!

Aside: "Californication" is an endearing "guilty pleasure" TV series (if you can make it past the first episode, where the main character, Hank, initially appears to be something of a douche). But this blog entry is actually a halting initial attempt to list what i have learned about presenting cigarettes with a sucessful, binding, and uncontested divorce decree (your mileage will vary! everyone's story is different! there are as many successful routes as there are unique, spe-shul, pretty snowflake, ex-smokers). Shall we? Wisdom, I have gained: impart it, I shall!

* most importantly: go be bumble-fumble- bumblebee My flight to freedom resembled a meandering, backlooping, slow, and seemingly endless/aimless bumblebee path, and not the glorious streamlined zzzoochh-*thwack!* of an arrow from crossbow to target. It took years and many "failed" quits, although there are no quit attempts that fail (or so us weak lameazoids tell ourselfves. I am a big fan of targetted self-deception!). Every one will gallop you along the Way, almost by osmosis. Trust the process. Be not ashamed. Just get out there and... bumble around! Ah, Glasshoppah, taking practice: all is coming! Every. Single. Failed. Quit. yields priceless skills. They'll become so second nature, you'll forget what they even are. Much like progressing to 10th dan black belt, or like fine laquerwork, quitting is layer upon layer of sad to mad skilz, accreted painfully over time at the cost of much humility and mortification.

Press on! Every try is a new scavenger hunt trophy en route to the finish; a further 20 new combinations to try that might silently swing open the bank vault door to reveal all those gold bars and bearer bonds the Shangri-La initiates speak of. Now you're there, too. Congratulations! Go buy that Lamborghini Diablo with the present-valued bux you're saving.

Doing up the below, I'm not sure if any of these are Big News... I fear all this is kind of like saying, if you look down you will note you have 2 hands! Indeed. "OMG WOULDJA LOOKIT DAT, ME HAV HANDS! WIF... APPENDAGE-FINGER-THINGEYS! STOP DA PRESSES!!!" :) Much like losing weight, the principles are easily grasped. Applying them consistently is something else altogether... But on the off-chance any of this is a useful new take:

* carpe Carr Allan Carr's book ("Easy Way to Stop Smoking") is badass. Always was, always will be. He really understands quit psychology: formerly a lifelong smoker and up at 100 a day by the time he quit, Carr knows the front lines of the battlezone and the proper way to defuse all bombs. This is your bible, bumble.

* better living thru chemistry I highly recommend Zyban. It does a great deal to mute cravings and totally blunts rageaholic zero-to-1 million hair trigger frustration levels, otherwise a lamentable and potentially deadly initial quit symptom. It substitutes dopamine you used to get via ciggies. It is an antidepressant (if your quit is at all like mine was, holy crap! you will need one of these). It is likely useful merely as a perceptual magic bullet, with considerable placebo effects. Trust me, you can use a nominal 15% edge with no scientific basis beyond popping a pill and trusting it helps. Take it. It will.

* cookie monster is a quadraplegic, otherwise known as zen-fu'ing your cravings and triggers. Would highly recommend meditation mad skilz as a prereq to a quit. Identifying a thought (quickly, nascently, before it cascades into entire 100-car trains of thought, multiplying and romping and dominating the landscape like bunnies unopposed in Australia), gently labelling it or rebutting it with a personal slogan or mantra, and then ruthlessly refocussing attention on something else, is meditation, more or less. It really helps to have practiced meditation pre-quit. Then, when a craving or situational trigger comes up, you iz jake! Pick a labelling word or mantra that is meaningful and moving to you. "I prefer Lamborghini Diablos", perhaps, if the financial savings of a quit particularly groove ya. "Cancer sux" might be valid, but not the best one: many smokers react to fear by leaping for a ciggie, so try not to induce it as a cessation aid, would be my suggestion. "Cookie monster" was my humourous mental image of an out-of-control addict at the feed trough, and reinforced to me that there's no such thing as "just this one" - it's always "yes, more, never enough, coooookkkkkkiiiieeeeeeeee mnaw mnum mmm gzooor kmwaaa smuuu snurrr..." (cute on Sesame Street, not so much for a nominally adult addict). The thing is, Cookie may be part of your brain, but he ain't ambulatory. Only YOU - the you with legs n mad walkie skilz - can wheel poor quadraplegic Cookie out to the corner store to indulge him. And you can choose not to. Cookie can beg, but youze gots da motor skills. I liked this mantra because it reinforces your steely, determined, way awesome, powerful post-quit self, fully dimensionally whole, and gives it primacy over lil whiny poos cookie gimme! two year old craving, gotta cry can't even crawl! lame-o crave-o monster. game set match. Every TIME, tell cookie to take a hike. oh wait - cookie no can hike-y? hahahaha!!! This identify/talk back/switch kata is super core to your quit, so perfect it, or be roadkill.

* just do it The Nike guys have an excellent point. Usually, I'm a big fan of organic gradual change, a big fan of really being psyched about a new development! Not just being capable, but being ready... not just wanting to want it, but hungrily WANTING it! Passion beats gut-it-out willpower, every time. If you can work up a jones for your quit, fantastic. I'm here to say, I never did. I only ever wanted to want to want to quit. Obviously I could work up a list of why quitting made sense, but I could never get really behind one. Those reasons stubbornly remained little blue ink scribbles, nothing heartfelt. Mea culpa. Maybe some people get Ready!!! But I was never ready, and this time was no different. I wasn't ready, and I didn't wanna. I just did. I struggled, I flailed, my quit was very un-fun, grit it out, panicked stuff, and a far cry from the ideal Allan Carr bungee jump-o-wheeee i'm freeeeee phase shift o' bliss into non- land. But I don't think I was ever gonna wanna or be ready. My enthusiasm was microbe-sized, pitifully bounded, enormously saddled with caveats, really very close to entirely hypothetical or deceptively fake-o, like a Viceroy lookin' good and enthusing, "I'm a Monarch I am! gonna fly to MEXICO. YESS!!!", very very earnestly. But sometimes you just - get yo' ass pregnant, and figure out the ideal parental stuff on the fly. It isn't easy subjugating yourself to a *wise idea* without personal buy-in. But it can be done. You made it through high school, right? You smother daily boss-snark, right? So, qvit already!

* -moo! yes, weight gain. what are ya, vain? lose it later; worry not. Dig in.

* evade Profound attention placed on activity, a full schedule, escaping into a laser focus placed on amazing novels, great company, trash TV - diversion is your friend.

* mustn't. crack. must. endure. Allan Carr: "Yippee! You'll never look back!" Your cakewalk mileage may vary...considerably. The worst may be just a suckFESTathon of uurgh!! Jack Bauer all over you, screaming, screaming! "Where's the nuclear device!! Tell me where it is!! Where is it!! WHERE!!!!!", violating 10 sections of the Geneva convention, gittin' all medieval on ya... Of COURSE, noone can endure hiJacks this severe for long... that high-pitched Beelzebub feedback screech, forever... Tricky Nic-y will whisper this is just a foretaste of Hades: look forward to worse!!! The truth is, peak suckage is not nothing, but it passes. I found week three was very much go ahead n' count chickens time. OK, week two sucked. Alot. But Jack will move on to some other bad guy pretty quickly. Don't crack. Your effort is unsustainable - fine. It just has to be sustainable *enough*. Don'st gots no info 'bout no nukes. Don'st!!! Please! You hafta believe me!!! Blaarwwghh!!! BLWGAHHHHH!!!

Well, let's cut it there for now, Gentle Reader. Let's call it quits. AHAHA! ;)