A Slip

I gave up smoking for a few months but I have now slipped back again so I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I know lots, and lots of people give up then go back again. I know a lady who gave up for fifteen years but she has started smoking again now, also a man I met said he gave up smoking for thirty years but he is now smoking again. Both these people and other people I have met all say they still miss smoking, some go back to it and some stay strong and don’t slip back. I’m afraid I am one of those who didn’t keep it up very long. But I am back on the Nicotinell Mint Lozenge again. The reason I started smoking again was I couldn’t get any sleep. I was dozing off for about ten minutes either in the day or at night, it just made me so tired I didn’t know what I was doing most of the time; and as everybody knows if you drive then you can’t be tired or starting to doze off at the wheel. It didn’t make me feel any better. They say you feel better the moment you stub out your last cigarette but I didn’t. I wasn’t breathing any better, or eating any more or less than I did before. I didn’t enjoy food any more than before I gave up and I just didn’t feel any different to when I had been smoking. As a matter of fact it was after I gave up smoking that I ended up in hospital with a very bad chest infection.

So I decided one evening to have a cigarette just before I went to sleep. It worked! I had a nice night’s sleep, so of course that started me off again. Which was silly really because I went through the hell of giving up smoking and all the craving, even when I was ill for three weeks I didn’t give in but in the end it was the lack of sleep that did it, but I expect everybody says: ‘Oh well she just needed an excuse to start again’. Maybe they were right, maybe not. So now I am trying again! I might get through it, I might not, but at least I am giving it a go for the second time.

By Rita Joel.