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Originally Posted by Tea Supremacist
Today is the beginning of some severe self punishment as I'm giving up smoking, cutting right back on drinking AND trying to cut out/down on caffiene. All at once. Starting whilst I'm stupidly hungover. The alcohol thing doesn't worry me too much, I gave up for 4 months and it never bothered me. The smoking and caffene's gonna hit hard hard though. Though I may as well start today seeing as the thought of having a cigarette is making me want to vomit right now anyway...
So far, no cigarettes since midnight last night. Granted, I've spent 14 of those hours asleep, but still... High hopes and all that...
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An exciting plan, Tea Supremacist! I hope it goes more smoothly than you predict. An advantage of quitting all at once may be that you'll combine all the awful feelings together at one time, so you'll reduce the total length of time you feel crappy.
Since you're drinking decaf tea, is there something you can use besides cigarettes to create a new variation of the smoking habit? For example, instead of a cigarette you could have decaf tea and...pretzel sticks? Perhaps you can become a mini-pretzel stick baton twirler to give your fingers something to do.
Would that help, or is it advised to just change habits entirely so that you do nothing that triggers the urge for things you crave (caffeine, nicotine)?
Please give updates, if you want to. I've often wondered what withdrawal feels like and would like to hear about it. It must be hard, since people have such a difficult time quitting...but they *do* quit, so it can be done. I knew about headaches and jitters, but I didn't realize that stopping smoking can make someone feel like vomiting. I imagine you just have to say to yourself, "I'm going to feel awful, I'm going to hate it, and I'm going to be grumpy as hell," but then you remind yourself this WILL pass, this WILL pass. Because it will. (That was supposed to be a little pep talk.)
Oh! One more question about your day: since you aren't drinking caffeinated builder's tea anymore, have you branched out into herbal flavors yet? Like some nice mint tea?
My day was less traumatic than yours probably has been, though I did spend 5 hours out in a hot corn field tagging plants and sampling leaves for later DNA extractions. While doing that you kind of feel mild hopelessnes and despair, because it feels like it will never end. Tonight the plan will be a nice break from field work: roller skating at the rink with a childhood friend and her kids.