AshesToAshes

Sorry – I haven’t been writing as much as I thought I would. Allow me to self-indulgent for last week and this week coming. I’m just trying to cope I guess. According to my friends on the American Lung Association (LUNGUSA), week 1 is called Hell week and week 2 is Heck week. By the way things are going I think they are right.
Last week was bizarre. On one hand there are the withdrawal symptoms, which were strong for the first three-four days and the worst thing was the kind of numbness in the brain and the long playing record telling me to go have just one cigarette. By the end of the week (Friday I think) that had improved somewhat but when I got a craving it really took me by surprise more. Lunchtime for some reason is my worst time. I seem to go on craving for a couple of hours. I wonder is that because my lungs were tanked up with nicotine (I was a very heavy smoker in the morning) and by lunchtime had reached a peak. Heaven knows.
On the other hand by the end of the week I was experiencing a kind of euphoria – full of motivation, surge of energy, feeling success, meeting deadlines and getting rewards – all with the help of my friends on LUNGUSA. They really helped me along that first week!

Week two has started off pretty ok – just got a bit down this afternoon. I started a book binding class at the Corcoran College of Art & Design and I should be thrilled. I had been wondering about the drive there and how I would cope with it – normally I would have smoked 3 cigarettes in the car on the way there, 1 at break time and another 3 on the way back (and that’s not mentioning the 2-3 cigarettes I would have had before leaving the house). Anyway, I actually did fine which surprised me. I started getting withdrawal symptoms about 11.30am, so they were followed by these deep sighs in the classroom (they sound like sighs that someone makes to let you know they are very irritated at you). I’m sure they are not really the deep breathing exercises suggested by LungUSA but they seem to do the trick for me.
I need to complete some artwork I started last week so tomorrow I finish one piece and post it here. Busy days but this week I need to get my focus back. My head still feels fuzzy but I think I just have to be a little bit harder on myself to get going.
Sitting on the sofa reading the LungUSA posts is good but not all the time.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Artwork on this site, Physical Withdrawal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.