Detox

Last week my lovely wife and I decided to do a detox, from Monday morning to 6pm Friday. We decided to cut out: beer, wine and other alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, meat, eggs, cheese and dairy. We decided to eat healthy and exercise every day.

So far we are doing most of this. Lovely wife just needed a cigarette, so she caved in on that. I caved in, oddly enough, on a couple of cups of tea each morning, breaking both dairy and caffeine. I also didn't cycle today or yesterday, despite going out on Sunday and Monday.

So not a complete success, but not exactly a failure either. For me going without a cigarette for now three full days is quite outstanding. I won't say it is a record, even for me (I think I struggled through about six miserable days one time), but what I will say is that I am quite confident in getting to the end of the week. The cravings have not been that strong, and I am certainly not struggling to stick to it. Every now and again a trigger goes off, and I have to remind myself not to light a smoke, but when I have reassured myself that I am fine without, and that it is certainly for the greater good (or at least my greater good, if that makes any sense), then I can continue on without, and it doesn't seem to bother me.

You know, I am even starting to think beyond Friday. Just how would that be? Would it bother me not to smoke? Would my lovely wife smoking bother me? Or other people? Or would it eventually tempt me, causing me to start again. What happens when I have had a beer? Does that make me want to smoke? It's certainly one of my triggers. Can I resist? What about two beers? Or ten?

Debbie and Ned said about when they gave up, that they had to think carefully about how to get through a night of drinking without smoking, and that was the hardest part. I think I will have to hold off drinking until I have worked some of this out, or at least hold off of drinking to excess. Maybe one or two beers tops on Friday, and try to stick to it, even if it means missing out on some nice beer from the Kegerator.

I actually bought a book many years ago, called Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I read the first half of it, but (and you can laugh, but it's true), I had to give it up in order that I could keep on smoking. In fact some of the things in his book have kept popping into my head this week, even though I haven't so much as touched the book since I put it down in my twenties. I am even wondering if some of his advice is having some latent benefit.

So I haven't formally committed to trying to stop permanently, but if I can come out of a couple of beers on Friday 100% unscathed, I think I might be pretty close. (My estimation of where I need to be to beat this is that a single drag of one cigarette is a complete and abysmal disaster).