Smoked for 40 yrs. Didn't want to end up one of those guys with an oxygen tank, so I used Chantix. Even without insurance coverage, cost is less than smoking. Easy to quit, but hard to go on without my friend, my companion, my reason to get up in the morning. Still, one does, and life is both less expensive and easier now.

Get over it, and roll a homegrown blunt.

I feel for you Dick! hope you find a solution.

Oh, dickie, not to quibble over your poetic sense, but wouldn't
"send in the smokes" have been more universal than "send me the smokes?"

I read somewhere that Sir Walter Raleigh’s brother in law sent a letter back to England along with his first shipment of tobacco to Sir Walter. In it he supposedly said “The first illusion of tobacco is that you are doing something when you are really not.” It is kind of like a professional baseball player at the plate? They go through a ritual of adjusting their cap and gloves and sleeve and the silk thong they are wearing under the uniform. They stretch and twitch and stomp their feet and flex their fingers and on and on. The only thing they are at the plate to do is to hit the ball but in order to do that it seems that they have to “forget” all about that and focus on gloves and groins and anything except hitting the ball. Finally the pitch and then it all starts again. Somehow smoking seems a lot like that. It is about everything except the pitch.

There is one compensation for engaging in the agony of quitting smoking. I have found a wholly formed, well educated, articulate and even insightful personality within me whom I might never have met if I hadn’t determined to quit smoking. My conscious self is a product of hard work, study, experience and of course inheritance. I am familiar with myself and in a somewhat dialogical manner I determine my intentions and choices from moment to moment. But when my self-aware self decides to quit smoking, this wholly formed and estimable other me appears. Over the years I have learned to listen to this other me. He weaves arguments and seductive suggestions with the easy of mere breathing. What would take my self-aware self hours or days to construct, this other me concocts in an instant, with verve and in uncountable numbers. Addiction is a fascinating experience. It is not just an itch, a tick, a hunger. It is a mind, a cultivated intellect whose command of language, logic and the fundamental dynamics of human nature are an easy match for anything my self-aware self might offer. As I listen to that voice I wonder “Why can’t I be more like him?”

dd, that is a really sad poem. Sorry you are having such a bad time. A former love, a mixed media artist, used to smoke hand rolled cigs when he worked. During the times he worked, I would hear him early in the morning, getting his studio ready and when I went in there, he was there with his coffee cup and cig in left hand. Cigs are bad. Still, hand rolled ones probably don't have the chemicals that the boxed variety do. I am so glad he gave it up successfully. It can be done. I know you feel that in your life now, this is something you don't want to give up and I hear you mourning the enforced nature of your sacrifice, and I am sorry for that. I hope you find another ritual to replace it and that it becomes a habit for you too. A better one. :) Really.

http://tinyurl.com/caaxlc

23 years ago a good friend got me to give up smoking, best day of my life. Today, a lot of your friends are asking you...

PS within 6-months of quitting I met the love of my life, who would never have looked twice at a smoker... just a thought.

Murry wonders how the Knights of the Roundish Table would view your plight?

Cheer up, we all need you...

Larry, Larry, Larry. If I don't like this one, how in the hell would I ever find it in me to like the other one. hahahahahha

All jokes aside. A fine little essay indeed.

Don't feel bad, DD. You can take up a new addiction. Here are some off-the-cuff suggestions:

1) Tetris
2) Minesweeper
3) Gambling
4) Beer

When I decided to quit smoking, I went to see a family doctor who had opened up a part of his practice to simply help smokers quit.

I wasn't sure what to expect.

At my first visit, he took a detailed history of my smoking. I told him how my life had fallen apart one summer, and that was when I had reached for cigarettes, with some odd romantic notion that they would "help" me to think, to come to terms with what had gone awry in my life.

He listened and questioned for some time, and when I was finished, he said simply, "You have a very difficult and very challenging addiction." I started to cry quietly when he said this because it was the first time I had someone not admonish me for smoking, but to say to me that I had created an important relationship to cigarettes that required some respect in the handling of "undoing" my addiction. He went on to explain that I had used cigarettes as an "anti-depressant", amongst other things, and that this association of getting "help" from cigarettes was as important as the nicotene.

To give me hope, he associated the challenges of my quitting to some work he'd done with a Holocaust survivor, who had, upon being liberated by American soldiers in one of the camps, had been handed some chocolate and cigarettes, that started her on a lifetime habit of smoking. For this woman, the gift of her freedom was embedded in her smoking.

I didn't know then, that our addictions have stories that it's important to acknowledge and embrace. Cigarettes don't do a damn thing for us (in fact, they are not much more than a voluntary form of ingested poison taken in on a deep breath) but through the power of our mind, we have imbued them with important qualities - like comfort, or clear thinking, or companionship, or writing, or freedom, or having fun, or rebellion...the list is different for each person.

Needless to say, it was difficult. I saw that patient doctor for 5 months, quitting every week or two, with absolutely no success at all. In fact, at the end of 5 months of hypnotherapy, I was actually smoking a stronger brand, and more cigarettes per day than when I started.

I was the very definition of a failure at quitting smoking.

That's when I hit the addict's "bottom". I looked reality squarely in the face, and let go of any idea that a cigarette was doing anything at all for me other than poisoning me.

That was 16 years ago.

I don't know what the answer's are, dickday. The comfort and joy you take in smoking is deeply apparent, and I find myself standing with you in the important question of what could possibly induce you to give up this one spot of pleasure,indulgence and companionship? And for being angry at the government for putting it out of reach.

For me, the secret was seeing that a cigarette had no power to convey these things. I had invested them in the cigarette. And because I had, I could take it back. I could turn a cigarette into something quite ordinary and impotent to give me those things. It was afterall, just paper, leaves and chemicals.

We cannot so easily walk away from the life affirming experience of simple pleasures and sources of companionship in our lives. We just need to understand that cigarettes don't give us these things.

I don't write often here dickday, but through reading you, I've had many many moments of uplift to my spirit.

In fact, I might add, based on comments I've seen here from others, as well as my own experience- you, and your blogging/comments are quite addicting.

In other words, you, dickday, are a unique TPM addiction.

wishing you well.

When I used to smoke, when I used to roll my own I (and I did love tobacco) I found myself smoking more just so I could get to roll a cigarette. I used to roll Union Leader pipe tobacco. Or sometimes Granger. Now that was some cheap and stinkin' smokes.
But I don't smoke anymore and feel much better for it.
However: If you can get tobacco and papers... Pinch folded paper between thumb and middle finger at crease near end. Make two small piles of tobacco on either side of the middle of crease. Gentiley pinch paper around tobacco with both thumbs and forefingers with middle fingers touching underneath. Gentiley but firmly roll tobacco inside paper back and forth until it feels round (not too tight particularly with pipe tobacco). Roll down bottom tab to show a little tobacco and pich between thumbs and middlefingers. With forefingers push top tab of paper down and roll tobacco and bottom of paper up inside of top pinching between thumbs, forefingers and middlefingers (this is the tricky part so be patient, you may need to go back and forth till the bottom tucks in). When you are almost done leave the gummed end showing and lick it with the TIP of your tounge. Finish rolling and seal.
Sweet Jesus that was hard to explain. I hope it helps.
note: Bugler makes good papers for beginners.

I wish I could send you some cigs right now dickday. I would if i could I know what your going through I'm still working on quiting down to a pack a day

I ache for you dd. The point here is not whether you should quit smoking or not. Despite the many reasons to quit that are outlined above, only you have the right to determine if and when that happens.

Smoking is a terrible addiction. But it is an addiction that is fed by major corporations that are subsidized by the government. And I know just how effective this campaign to turn us into nicotine junkies has been. I have smoked at least a pack a day for over 40 years, and have now got two weeks of nicotine-free living behind me in my best effort to date to give it up.

There is no amount of cajoling, or preaching, or arguing that would ever have brought me to this point of success in kicking this addiction. Indeed, most efforts to convince me to quit were generally counter-productive.

For you to now have to confront this addiction as a result of the government raising the tax on tobacco is criminal, in my estimation. The government first works to get you addicted to tobacco. They then come along and tax the daylights out of it, knowing that the addict will have great difficulty quitting the habit in any effort to avoid this so-called "sin tax" that gains so much support from the righteous and pure among us.

The point as I see it here, dd, is the gov't's effort to punish you for becoming the nicotine addict they made of you. That you are confronted with severe, non-voluntary withdrawal because of the governments effort to fatten their coffers with the taxes paid by those who can ill afford it is reprehensible.

For the sake of your health and all, I would want for you to quit smoking. But it should be your decision just when and how you might choose to confront the addiction that was laid upon you by the tobacco industry and the government that subsidizes this toxic drug.

Meanwhile, it is grossly unfair that you should be deprived of cigarettes because you cannot afford any more extortion of tax dollars required to feed this addiction. If there was any justice in the world, cigarettes would in fact be free for those who simply cannot afford the ever-increasing taxes assessed upon them.

If I had your mailing address, I would send to you the allotment of cigarettes I have so recently given up. I would love for you to quit, but only if that is the choice you have made for yourself. Meanwhile, I am angry you should have to confront this agony of withdrawal in a manner that is totally outside your control.

Bottom line? Hang in there, buddy. I worry about you sometimes. Please don't ever be afraid to ask for help, including from those of us at TPM here who are so pleased to call you friend. You have given so much to us all. Please let us know if there is anything we can offer in return to settle the debt owed to you.

Even if it means sending along cigarettes to you to feed your addiction, if that should be the way in which you choose to live your own life.