...and on the fourth day

Oh, the shame of it all!  ...I keep putting myself back in the same place.

Today is beginning my fourth day without a cigarette, but I'm only slightly bonkers on the "compared to" scale.  I've been quitting and restarting so much in the last year that it's a wonder I have any brain cells left.  I figure the near constant state of withdrawals that I've been subjecting myself to can't be good for me (as if the smoking itself was).  I don't see any studies on the effects of trying to quit so many times in succession.

I'm a big believer in "cold turkey" as a quitting method; I've quit that way dozens of times (seriously true, although my tongue is firmly in my cheek as I say it).  I don't honestly know if I've gone a complete year without a cigarette since that first time that I "seriously" quit, but I'm pretty sure that I've at least come close.  I may well have gone that long until Dad died.  The times I've stayed quit the longest were all cold-turkey though; I think the (very) first time with Wellbutrin lasted for quite a while as well though.

Interesting trying to read up a little online about all the different ways to quit.  One website when talking about success rates discouraged the cold turkey method since it had the least success and it said only 3-4 out of 100 stayed quit after a full year.  ...but for some reason, all the other "methods" listed the rates by six months (if that) rather than a full year.  The site that advocated cold-turkey simply said to conduct your own survey and ask the people who had been quit for a year and over how they did it and he wagered that well over half would say they went cold turkey.  To be honest ...that's at least the percentage I've seen in real life.  To give a derogatory mark for the cold-turkey dude, he said the best method is to simply not smoke another cigarette.  Yeah it's true, but still a major "Captain Obvious" answer akin to saying the best way to avoid being poisoned by arsenic is to not suffer arsenic poisoning.

I can't bring myself to put much stock in anyone's method unless they've got more than a year of abstinence behind them.  I shouldn't piss on anyone's methodology, but I find some of them to be annoying as shit ...especially the types harping about how God cured them of the desire to smoke ...and they'd been quit a whole three days (praise be!)!  Google search some support boards and I guarantee you'll find at least one on your first hit.

Fuck them.  Good for them if it actually works in the long run, but still FUCK THEM!  One thing that pretty well all sites said was that you need a support system, and on that front I'm kind of fucked since nobody I really know well even knows I started again in the first place.  I've not told family or my best friend(s), so I guess I'm kind of stuck with what I have.  In one sense, that is a good spur to stay quit since I can't smoke after I move anyway without letting that particular cat out of the bag. 

Perhaps it's just the withdrawals, but my patience is done.  I stop and look at forums and the people just make me nauseous.  I think I shall find something to immerse myself in.