Journalist Matthew Backhouse chronicles his efforts to quit smoking for Stoptober in a daily diary.
Maybe it was complacency, or naive bravado, or simple, glorious stupidity. No matter; the effect was the same - I'd reached the point where I smugly thought I had my addiction under control.
Then the cravings struck again. Hard.
It happened in the morning. After the previous day'sunintentional spell without a nicotine patch, I was in no great rush to put a patch on when I woke up - I had this thing beat. So I went off to do half a week's worth of shopping.
Bad call. If you've ever been supermarket shopping on a Sunday morning, you'll know it's a special kind of hell. Trolley jams in every aisle; impatient bargain hunters jostling for position at the produce specials; shoppers driven to a frenzy by the rapidly depleting stocks on the shelves, all elbowing for the last packet of organic quinoa and amaranth mix.
It would have been comical if I wasn't on a deadline. Or if my toddler, every time I put an item in the trolley, didn't repeatedly demand: "More please!" Or if the shopping list my partner hastily scrawled had made any sense. I had to call her - twice - to decipher how many broccoli we needed. It was two, by the way. Comical? No. Kafkaesque? You bet.
The stress kept me going. It wasn't until I got home and dumped the groceries on the dining table that it hit me.
I wanted a cigarette. Badly. More than I'd wanted a cigarette since the first day I quit.
Like that first day, I couldn't get the patch on soon enough. It made me feel dumb. Of course I didn't have this thing beat. It's been less than two weeks. I'm still in the grips of addiction. And I can't let my guard down.
The next time I go shopping on the weekend, I'm putting on two patches. Maybe three. And I'm definitely going to write the list myself.
