Quitting cold turkey is hard. Cutting down is good though. Like losing weight, you have to identify your "problem areas". I would like to trim down my butt, for instance. In smoking, it might be "I have to cut down on smoking when I'm playing computer games", or "when I'm out drinking". Those are the big ones for me. I can smoke a pack during either of those highly pleasurable events. Another one is when I'm programming at home. So, what I did last night, as I was writing some code for stringed.org, was to leave my pack in my car, find an empty pack lying around somewhere, put only a few smokes in there from my pack, and then bring those lucky SOBs up with me. I cut down by at least 60%. Today, I woke up and felt pretty good, compared to what I would have felt if I had brought the whole pack up.

However, I know I won't have much luck, still, when out drinking, so I just have to avoid that for a few weeks.

Another thing that going without cigarettes for a few days teaches you, is that you don't need to, upon waking up, have a cigarette in your mouth ready to light once one of your eyes are open enough to find your lighter. You can easily take your time, get a shower, brush your teeth, hell, even shave before you need to have your first cigarette of the day. You can probably tell that I'm pretty addicted...

But, cutting down in smoking will cut down my addiction. So, the more I cut down, the more I'll be able to cut down in the future. If I get down to 5 cigarettes a day, I can easily go to 4. Then down and down. Right now I'm at about 9-12, which believe me, seems like an AMAZING feat. I just have to watch my problem areas.

I can't possibly go cold turkey and expect to be successful, but I just felt like trying and posting about it. I didn't necessarily lie to you, my readers, and inspirations :) Especially OATN. I love you man. Wish me luck, I'll keep an OpenOffice spreadsheet of my cigarettes a day, and hopefully the number will decrease every few weeks.

Maybe I'll try to trim down my butt too. :)