A step in the wrong direction

Under normal circumstances I’m am fairly strongly against focusing on negativity. In this particular case, I feel like it is very important to me to dedicate one post to this. I need to make sure I highlight the problem so I make sure that I see it. I also worry that if I included this in a typical post it would seem like I was trying to cover up the problem, both to the reader and to myself.
I smoked this weekend; more than a couple. As you may have read in a previous blog, I have struggled primarily with not smoking while at social functions, especially when alcohol is involved. Rather than thinking of a way to deal with this problem and take care of it, I chose, instead, to embrace the problem and let it grow. I decided that there was no way I was going to not smoke while drinking and that in an effort not to be mooching cigarettes all night that I would just buy a pack so I only had to deal with the guilt of smoking and not the guilt of taking cigarettes from people. The plan was to smoke until the end of the night at which time I would give the remainder of the pack to someone else. This worked relatively well on Friday night. I smoked maybe half of a pack and, at the end of the evening, gave it away to another friend that smoked. This seemed all well and good to me. I had my cigarettes for the night of drinking and at the end of the night, they were gone and I could pretend that I was still a happy non-smoker.
Then Saturday night came around and to my surprise, I found myself out drinking with some friends again. I hadn’t planned on this and of course, I had to have another partial pack. So I went and bought one. I did it last night, and truthfully, a prior evening a few weeks ago. Why wouldn’t it be equally successful this night? Unfortunately for me, at the end of the night, I did not give this pack away. Why didn’t I? That’s a great question and in truth I could give you several very valid reasons that I did not. But each one reeks of being a lame excuse and I will not burden you with them. There were several people I could have given them to. I could have just left them at the house I was at. Even better, I could have thrown them away. But I didn’t, I kept them. At the exact moment I chose to keep them, it was too late to do anything about it. I had cigarettes and I was going to smoke them. I had several Sunday morning and even through the evening and into Monday morning. Of course this whole time I kept telling myself, “I just have to finish this pack and then I’ll be done again.”
The first thing I realized is that I had been lying to myself. Obviously it hadn’t been a conscious decision. And in this case I think it was one of the more convincing lies I had ever told myself. I think most times that I have told a lie to me, somewhere, I knew it was a lie. In this case, I did not. I told myself I was in control, I had beaten this thing and now I was going to taunt it. I was going to use the occasional cigarette to remind myself how terrible they were and how much I didn’t need it. The moment I caught myself in the lie was one of the strangest and worst feelings I have ever encountered. I was driving home from somewhere, I don’t even remember where and I was angry about some little thing, I don’t even remember what. I remember sitting in my car on the freeway and just fuming over this little tiny thing. I was so unreasonably angry about it. It took a while but at some point I realized this. There was absolutely no reason for me to be so mad about this insignificant little thing. Then the thought entered my head that maybe just one cigarette would be good to calm me down, but no, I’m not a smoker, why in the world would I need a cigarette? That’s when it it me. Yes, I was unreasonably mad about something, that was being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and yes, I thought a cigarette would help, that was also being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and I was addicted again.
The realization knocked me on my ass. I’m sure most of us know how it feels to be caught in a lie. The guilt, the embarrassment, the frustration at being caught. Being the one catching the lie isn’t pleasant either, betrayal, anger, feeling foolish for having believed the lie. When you really truly catch yourself in a lie, you experience all of the emotions of the catcher and the caught at the exact same moment with no one to direct them towards but yourself.
The other thing that I thought was really off about this whole situation is that I was more comfortable with giving a poison to my friends than I was with taking it from them. Seems rather backwards to me.
Anyways, the good news buried in all of this is that I am back on track. It was a rough weekend but I’m back on the wagon again and feeling great. I do have some residual sore-throateyness and congestion from a weekend of smoking but I expect that will dissipate within a day or two at the most. While this was definitely a set back, it was not a failure. Merely a small stumbling block on my road to victory. I have no doubts that I have beat this thing. I may not be perfect, and I may not have done it all at once but my eyes are on victory. I am consciously aware of my struggling and I am fighting it. I will beat this.
See ya later.
-Paul

Week 1 and Other Things

Well here we are, 1 week after my decision to quit smoking and I have done damn well if I do say so myself. My health is improving at an incredible rate and nicotine cravings are near non-existent. It is really a great feeling. My success aside, I did slip up on Friday night and had one cigarette at a party. For some reason this is absolutely the hardest time for me to stick to my goals. I imagine it has something to do with impaired judgement but at the same time, if I realize how bad it is for me sober, why after a few drinks does it sound like such a good idea. Smoking does nothing positive for me when I'm not drinking. Why should a few beers make smoking a good idea? It's a problem. If anyone has any suggestions about how to better deal with this problem, I'd love to hear them. Unless it's don't drink. I should not have to avoid situations in which I smoked in the past to beat this thing.

Ok, so, smoking update, check. Now, on to the rest of my life. Friday afternoon in my design class, we had to present our progress on our group projects. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but we're building a stair climbing machine. My group has done fairly well. We have solid drawings of the whole project, most of our materials on hand and we actually got our frame welded this week. Our teacher was really impressed with the progress we have made and I'm excited to continue on with the project. We are expecting to have it running the week before Thanksgiving.

I had an interesting experience Saturday night. I had borrowed my grandpa's truck to finish up some yard work, when I dropped the truck back off to him I stopped to chat for a while. It ended up being a rather lengthy conversation that was much more pleasant than some conversations with my grandparents have been. We just chatted about life, it was nice. I got the latest health updates from both of them which, while not great, was also not terrible. My grandma has found another incompetent, rude doctor that she will not be visiting again, and my grandpa's vision has been slowly improving. For the benefit of those who don't know, my grandfather has macular degeneration, which is a hereditary condition that destroys your eyes as you get older. He was diagnosed when I was about 8 and we were told that he would likely be blind within 10 years. The fact that his eyesight is actually improving is incredible. Granted, it's definitely not 20/20, he was telling me how exciting it was that for the last few weeks he had been able to see well enough to put his heart pill into a pill cutter and cut it himself. We spent some time talking about that and what I should be doing to give myself a leg up in case I get it as well. He also spent some time telling me about his father which was pretty cool. As I was leaving, my grandpa stood by the door and waited until I drove off so he could wave me off. It made me think of when I was younger. This was the norm any time we were leaving their house after a party. My dad would be driving off and he would turn the dome lights of the van on so that my grandparents could see us waving back. After I left my grandparents house I had to run to my parents house to return some tools I had borrowed. We chatted for probably around 30 minutes before I decided to head out. The thing that really struck me as odd then is that as I pulled out of my parents driveway they stood in the doorway, waving as I left. Holy full circle Batman! It hit me then that I actually am an adult. It's weird that this was the thing that really drove it home. The whole moving out, paying bills, taking care of myself thing didn't do it. It was a wave from my parents. Weird right?

Last night I made curry again. This was my second time and I think that I'm improving. The recipe I used is really great. It's one of the simplest Indian recipes I've been able to find. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com. It's called Spicy Chicken Curry, if you're interested, go check it out. I found that it turns out much better to use coconut milk instead of the two cups of water that it calls for. Anyways, the problem I'm having with this recipe is the peppers. The first time I made this I used two jalapenos instead of the chiles it calls for because I couldn't find chiles at the store I went to. I think this turned out pretty good. It was just the right amount of hot but I thought that the jalapenos added a little bit of a Mexican flavor. This time, I did a little advanced planning and went to El Rancho Market thinking that would be my best chance to find the right peppers. I ended up with four yellow chiles. This turned out pretty good but it wasn't nearly as hot as the jalapenos and the flavor of the peppers was a little overwhelming which might be okay if I liked peppers. Long story short, I'm now on a mission to find the right peppers for this recipe. If anyone knows of a Thai or Indian food market here in SLC where I could find some Indian chiles I would be eternally grateful. :)