What They Don’t Tell You About Quitting Smoking

I am currently at day 5 of quitting smoking. For 24 years I have smoked between 35 to a million smokes a day, depending on my stress levels or how hard I partied.

Let me tell you something, quitting is HARD! In fact, as a part asian female who has spent my entire life overachieving, the concept of “QUITTING” is completely foreign and distasteful to me.

Now, I have seen the ads and know the health benefits of quitting smoking i.e being healthier, saving money, and most importantly, being able to look down your nose at smokers and tell them in a loud, smug voice how they are paying to kill themselves.

But what people, those helpful quit smoking apps you download to your phone to help you on your “journey”; and the internet doesn’t tell you, are the actual side effects when you quit smoking. Why internet? Why? I trusted you to tell me the truth about everything!

According to Wikipedia, the withdrawal side effects are:
Craving for tobacco
Dizziness
Insomnia
Headaches
Chest discomfort
Constipation
Irritability
Fatigue
Cough or nasal drip
Lack of concentration
Hunger

Ok, so you look at those words and your inner cheerleader goes “I knew this wasn’t going to be easy but I can do this!”. FUCK YOU inner cheerleader, the only things you know about are giving blowjobs, doing hair and makeup so sit down, shut your whore mouth and LISTEN to me break this down properly!

Craving for tobacco.Wow, no shit. This craving is far more consuming than the most painful breakup you have ever had. You think of smoking constantly, like that lover who dumped your ass and broke your heart.

Waking up, no smoke, sad face. After breakfast, no smoke, sad face and then coming to grips with your body not knowing that your food is over because there is no palette cleansing smoke (this leads to turning into a gorging fat arse that I will cover under “Hunger”). Drive to work, no smoke to calm the road rage, sad face. At work dealing with annoying, stressful bullshit, no smoke, sad face ;are you getting the gist?

Next up, dizziness. This one can be kind of fun. You stand up quickly and then stagger a bit as your vision shifts then freeze in a weird pseudo surfer pose until it passes. It’s like when you’re drunk and have moved too quickly only the chances of you throwing up on yourself and waking up with a dick drawn on your forehead are greatly reduced.

Insomnia. Your brain is continually telling you that it will let you go to sleep if you just have one smoke. It’s like that pushy guy that hassles you for sex when you just want to go the fuck to sleep. “c’mon, just one, you’ll like it, I promise!” Just pop a valium and this one is sorted!

Headaches. Or as I like to call them skull thumping, sinus throbbing AGONY! You will inevitably have some cheerful do-gooder who will tell you that drinking lots of water will help with this. This is true, but you will feel like drowning that person in the water before consuming it because their annoying voice is like a pickaxe through the eye. You will have already drunk several litres of water but still have a mouth and throat as dry as after a bong hit. Water is your friend, and Panadol and Nurofen.

Chest discomfort. It’s like you have someone sitting on your chest and you can only seem to use half your lung capacity. This really hinders your ability to yell at people and sing obnoxiously loud, two things that are essential to my existence.

Constipation . Ahhhhh, who doesn’t like talking about poop? Sure, constipation is a side effect of quitting smoking. Wanna hear something funny? So is DIARRHEA! As your body starts to clear the crap out, you’ll salivate like a rabid dog and since it’s not ladylike to spit in public you will swallow LITRES of your own spit.

Guess what happens then….. that’s right gentle reader, you will get crippling stomach cramps and be desperately searching for a toilet. Or in my case, praying that I wasn’t going to go into a paroxym of coughing and shart myself in my mates new car. I don’t know what was more awkward, me telling him that if I soiled myself in his car that we couldn’t be friends anymore or me telling him that I was mere seconds away from jumping out of the car to poop in the bushes on the side of the highway. Thankfully, neither scenario played out as I clenched and squirmed and swore until we found a toilet.

Irritability. 6 syllables which in no way shape or form capture an ounce of the rage filled mind fuckery, assholery and general misery you will subject everyone to, even complete strangers.

Yesterday, after the near poop miss, my mate and I went to MacDonalds because sometimes you just need a cheeseburger and a Big Mac to make you feel better. For all you non-smoking, clean eaters who are cringing at that and want to tell me that I would be better off having a kale, acai, protein smoothie, fuck off, I think you’re a pack of cunts.

Anyway, we ordered through the drive-thru and I checked the bag to make sure the order was right before we drove away. As I opened the wrapper of my cheeseburger, I thought “this feels light” and proceeded to open the burger up. There was no meat pattie, what the FUCK Maccas, how hard is it to make a goddamn cheeseburger?

I did what any rational person who is quitting smoking would do…..I lost my mind, made my mate drive me back to Maccas where I stormed in, stood in the lunch rush line for all of 3 seconds before barging up to the counter to shriek at the manager that my GODDAMN cheeseburger has no BLOODY meat in it. Then as she went to get me another one she opened the wrapper to check if there was meat on it and I screeched at her to NOT touch my food with her NAKED hand. Ok, I think that gives you an idea on irritability, oh and you behave worse with friends, family, loved ones.
Fatigue . Maybe it’s all the raging, hating, eye-rolling and coughing but you get TIRED…just not at bedtime. You want to fall asleep all the time. Parents, it’s like that sucky first 3 months after you have your baby. For non-parents, it’s like that 2 day bender where you’ve had no sleep and are sitting at work praying that a bag of coke magically appears on your desk to get you through the rest of the day.

Cough or nasal drip. Think chesty, wet, phlegmy coughing and snot that won’t go down or out. You cough, your throat feels weird, you go to swallow then it feels like something is stuck in your throat so you cough again. Repeat a million times and in the process have a bunch of people stare at you. It should be noted that when the coughing is quite strong you will most likely fart continuously while coughing. Just pretend it didn’t happen.

Lack of concentration . Really, with all the shit I have covered, I think you can see why it’s so hard to concentrate. You’re constantly pining for your smoky lover in what can only be defined as the most fucked up relationship ever (I want it even though I have to pay heaps of money, it’s killing me, and I always have to give in. Sounds like a needy, gold digging girlfriend to me!). The coughing and farting between micronaps and don’t get me started on the hot flashes which Wiki has left off of their list. Yes, you will sweat like a fat lass in a tracksuit at a rave….. or like me doing cardio at the gym, which is kind if the same thing except without the drugs and pulling on.

And lastly, my favourite…..HUNGER! As a smoker, I have always ended my eating with a cigarette. I am like Pavlov’s dog in this respect. So without cigarettes my body doesn’t register that food time is over. Now, my meal isn’t over when I’m full, my meal is over when ALL the food is gone and I hate myself. I have replaced smoking with eating. No, don’t have a smoke, have a cookie…or a tub of icecream….or lollies. Back off “clean eaters”, you have no place in my rant and if I hear the words celery, water and exercise I will rip off your head and fuck your dead spine stump while shovelling Big Macs into my face!

Ok, gentle readers, that is my definition of the withdrawals of smoking. Now I just have to mentally prepare myself for exercising on Monday…. see you at the gym!