I suspected that Autumn would cause weirdness within my Quit.
You see, I was hooked on cool-weather smoking. Nothing seemed more cozy and comforting than standing outside on a cool and breezy day, swaddled in a hoodie, sipping pumpkin spice coffee, breathing crisp air, and smoking a cigarette. Inhaling that mentholated smoke at the same time as inhaling chilled air…well, that was like icy-cool ecstasy to my particular species of addiction.
Now, cooler days are coming…and Autumn is getting romantic with me. Right now, it’s just seductive whispers of what‘s yet to come, but I know that it will soon turn into teasing caresses. I need to put a stop to the touches now before they turn into heavy petting and groping!
I am not tempted to smoke. Let me make that perfectly clear. I am not struggling with the urge to use cigarettes again. No. What I’m saying is that the nostalgic romance of the season has returned, and will be here for the next 5 months. That’s a really… looooong…wave to have to ride out, so I need to gather up some new “surfing skills” as quickly as possible. Rewiring and unraveling these old associations needs to be my focus right now.
Staying indoors until March of next year is not an option because that’s just ludicrous.
Doing nothing about it and white-knuckling my way through these romantic flashbacks is self-inflicted cruelty, and I’m no masochist.
So, the only option is to TACKLE it, head-on, and COEXIST with the nostalgia until I can MASTER it with CLOSURE. Psychiatrists would call this “immersion therapy”, and a crass jerk would call it “getting over it”. Either way, I need to be able to put on that hoodie, sip that flavored coffee outside at the patio table, enjoy the coolness of an autumn breeze…and just not smoke or feel loss over cigarettes. That‘s the end goal.
So, how do I prepare now? Well…
1. I will go back to using aromatherapy, which helped me tremendously in the first month of my quit. Whenever possible, I will use my fresh-smelling colognes with my sweatshirts, hoodies, and sweaters. I will avoid seasonal air fresheners (spiced apple, evergreen, pumpkin, etc.) inside my safe space (home), and will stick to the fresh scents that remind me of my springtime quit (rain, ocean, waterfall, linen, etc.)
2. I will not avoid seasonal coffee flavors, however. If I am going to disassociate these beverages from smoking, then I have to actually drink them and enjoy them without smoking. So, I will make a cup here in the safety of my home (there are no cigarette “stashes” here, and I refuse to buy any). If sipping a toasted almond cappuccino triggers an urge, then I will either ride it out, dump it out, or switch it out for something else. Whatever I discover through my experiment, though, I‘ll deal with it…without smoking.
See what I’m getting at? Reciting “N.O.P.E.” alone doesn’t cut it in a situation like this, and deep-breathing fresh air outside is literally part of the problem here. No, what’s called for is the safe practicing of reconditioning and desensitization exercises, so that I can rewire these nostalgic associations I have with the change of season. That’s going to be my mission for the next several days.
Do you have a specific exercise or technique you think might help? Feel free to share it here. (Crass jerk comments will be ridiculed before deletion. Hehehe!)
STORM: 207
