Smoke free, or at least smoke-discounted

As my facebook friends know, I quit smoking yesterday at 2:30pm. I did it using Allen Carr's "Easyway to Stop Smoking" book. This is not the first time I quit using this book. Carr smoked for over 30 years, and was up to 5 packs a day at one point. He quit, relatively painlessly, and figured out how to make others quit, too. Then he started a chain of quit-smoking shops in Europe which claim a 90% success rate. Rather than threaten people with physical violence, like in the Stephen King short story, "Quitters, Inc.", Carr examines each of the myths which smokers tell themselves, then explains why they're lies. By the time you reach the end of the book, you have no good reason on earth to continue smoking (like you ever did before).

Unlike the well-intentioned twats at the American Cancer Society and other non-profit and governmental organizations, Carr actually was a smoker, so he understands the way that smokers think. We know it's killing us. We know it's socially unacceptable. We know it costs too much. But we can't imagine a life without it. Carr takes the time to show us addicts how tobacco/nicotine actually gives us nothing but relief from withdrawal symptoms, and takes so much from us in return.

And that's the key point--that it doesn't do anything for us. So Carr goes on to say, "Look, if you try to use your willpower to quit, and go mooning on about how much you love cigarettes, of course you're going to be miserable. But if you realize that they're a big lie, and you quit with the intention of regaining your health, wealth, and psychic freedom, then it's going to be a lot easier."
I'm paraphrasing here, of course.

So here I am, with 98% of the nicotine out of my system. It's not so bad; I feel sleepy all day, and I feel kind of buzzed, in a bad way--not like as in "hangover", but as in "I was drugged and abandoned in Mexico, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" way. I'm kind of "out of it", in that I'm kind of wandering all over the house in search of something to do. I keep reminding myself that "Fear is nicotine leaving the body, SIR!", so on balance I'm doing fine. I slept like 12 hours last night, and probably will again tonight. Lori found me locked up in a corner of the kitchen tonight, and she said, "You just don't know what to do with yourself, do you?" I said, "Well, I have this extra 5 minutes, ever hour, which I'm not smoking in. They're starting to pile up."