Three weeks tobacco free today. Mood swings and outbursts of anger are still a challenge. It's not all day every day like it was last week.
I'm still avoiding people, places and things. All of this sleeping has messed up my schedule. I'm trying to get back to normal but checking out with a nap is still my go to.
I stopped eating everything in sight at week two. I still managed to gain a significant amount of weight.
I ate at least 30 bunches of celery ...
Which would be fine...
But I ate EIGHT POUNDS of peanut butter with them.
It's not a mystery how I gained all this weight.
I also ate three bags of organs and three bags of walnuts. I clearly have a nut problem.
Today I opened my fat secret app and started tracking my food again. I'm not on a diet yet but just seeing what I have consumed keeps me from going off the rails.
I'm not pressuring myself too much to lose weight or work out. Working out was my joy before quitting smoking. 3-5 days a week for 2.5 hours. That burned a lot of calories but that's not why I did it.
I did it to expend all of my pebt up energy ...and tbh, aggression.
It's been a real trip... Psychologically unwinding and unraveling what life was like before I started self medicating with tobacco.
I thought I didn't have all of this anger and rage before I was a smoker. That's not true.
I just turned it all inwards before I was 18 and started to smoke. I kept it inwards the whole time... With punishing workouts or whatever. Maybe I smoked to hurt myself the way cutters do to give themselves physical pain to distract from the internal pain. I don't know. It didn't hurt to smoke but maybe it was a slow death wish.
Whatever the case may be, something has shifted. I'm forced to confront all these demons and myself without tobacco .
I'll tell you right now it's not the nicotine. I'm still on the patch. And it's not the habit. The habit has passed.
There is some other combination of psychoactive substances in tobacco that dull mental and emotional pain.
The withdrawal from these substances is a trip. I have read that tobacco acts on serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. It's not just the nicotine.
Do you hear me, Void?!?
Maybe I'm crazy. I'm pretty sure I am. I think we might all be. We are all walking around in an open-air insane asylum.
That said, how will I cope?
The punishing workouts aren't appealing to me right now. Nothing really is.
I'll give it another week for my hormones to balance out.
I think I told you I did start the welbutrin my doctor gave me to help with cravings.
I think they know that tobacco messes with your hormones and messes with the mental state.
But not everyone loses their internal sh@t like this?
Maybe it's just us crazy folks.
I'll get through it but I need to figure out how to manage the mood swings and depression.
