By: Vishadomini

Some time 10 years ago, I had to pass my final exam for my Electrotherapy subject. Summer class is not an option for me. I cannot afford to fail any subject and re-do them over the summer. I hated school. I hated college. I could never allow it to take summer away from me.
But I have one problem. I’m a sleepy head. I was a lethard. (Which is my invented term for lethargic retard) I was worse than my friend Ced back then. Ask any of my college friends and they’d tell you I can sleep in any position except standing I guess.

Anyway, I was desperate to pass this exam. Electrotherapy professor tells us that the Finals exam would include everything that has been covered since prelims. WTF? That meant I have to review the whole book! It wouldn’t have been such a problem if this were the only final exam I had to take! There were at least 9 others!

Desperate times call for desperate measures. What were my choices?
Meth? Ok, I may be bad, but I’m not stupid. So, NO.
Coffee? Hell, I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 7 years old (I kid you not.) and believe me, no amount of caffeine can hold me up when bio-clock calls out  "Bed time!".
Cutting myself and squeezing lemon over the wound like what Prinsipe Abante did in Ibong Adarna? (I kid you not too that this option did cross my mind.) Ummm.. No. I’m not about to make myself look like Edward Scissorhands after this is all through.
Then boyfriend that time suggested cigarette smoking.

As far as I can remember, my dad had been a chain smoker. When I was little, he would sometimes ask me to throw a still burning butt outside of the house and I would sneakily take a puff because I was curious how it tasted like. Maybe it never satisfied my curiousity because I didn’t do it only once. It was only later in my adult life that i wondered, "We didn’t have an ashtray back then?" But I resolved never to be a smoker because my mother said it was bad and women should never smoke.

When my boyfriend then suggested smoking, I thought, I’m a strong willed girl. I know I won’t get addicted to this. I can stop anytime I want. I’ll stop as soon as this is all over. Right.
First night, I smoked 6 cigarettes. Philip Morris. Heeey… wow. It’s 5AM! I was up all night! It worked! So I smoked on until Finals was over. Passed all subjects. Celebrate with friends, maybe decide to stop smoking in the next few days. I deserve to have fun. Well, apparently, the next few days dragged on to the next 10 years. Cigarette kind and brand changed along. Philips, Marlboro Lights Menthol, Marlboro Reds, Marlboro Gold Light, back to Marlboro Reds. Ehe. 10 years. That’s not any different to 20 years, or 30 or 40 in terms of addiction. I was addicted as addicted can ever get.

My second boyfriend was a non-smoker and he was campaigning for me to "quit the habit". I didn’t want to quit the habit so I quit him instead. Most of my exes wanted me to quit. I would say smoking had been one of the major factors that strained my relationships. But I can not stress enough how fucking difficult it was. The last 4 years had been a constant, difficult, frustrating, exhausting struggle. First, I tried gradual decline in consumption, didn’t work. Candies just didn’t work for me. I’ve tried everything that didn’t require nicotine patches because I think it’s absurd to treat nicotine with nicotine.

Then I tried using sheer determination and will-power. I subjected myself to what I called the "Ultimate Challenge" by telling myself that if I can’t do it, I will never be able to achieve anything in life. That I’m doomed to be a failure. If you’d seen me in my first few days of struggle, you’d thought I had lost my mind.

This is what I wrote in my old blog:

Goodbye to the 10 year old habit.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

It’s been 3 days since my last cigarette. This time, it’s gonna work because I’m doing it for myself and not for anyone else. Sure, I get the urges and the crazies sometimes and it’s a real awful mental and emotional struggle. Sometimes, I get this mental image of wanting to smash myself against a wall. Yeah, it’s that insane. The withdrawal symptoms are just as awesome.

• Hello, headache old friend.

• The attitude from hell.

• I stuff my mouth with just about anything. (Don’t even start getting funny ideas. Hell hath no fury like a woman going through cold turkey)

• Major spacing out. Dude… wait… fuck… what…?

• Dizziness/numbness/lightheadedness almost similar to a trippy feeling. (why the fuck do hippie-looking characters keep crossing my mind??)

• The constant urge to punch someone in the face.

• Mental cussing galore. Hahaha! Fuck.

I am so gonna fucking make it. So help me God.

Ummm… this only lasted 2 weeks. I was doing well then I lost my XDA IIs. My XDA IIs was my personal assistant. I depended on that little gadget. I love that little gadget. So… Little white motherfucker was smiling at my face and promised everything was gonna be alright… So I smoked again and bought an N95 to stop myself from breaking down. Then my XDA IIs found its way back to me after 5 days.

I was disappointed with myself but still desperate to stop. Then one day, like some divine intervention, a friend I met at the Landmark Forum gave me an e-book. She doesn’t smoke but she knew how desperate I was to stop smoking. She gave me the book Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking. At first, I was scared to read it. I thought "What if this book can’t help me? Would it mean I’m hopeless?" but later on, i realized, I was actually scared of quitting. 10 years has "institutionalized" me. But I.HAVE.TO.STOP.
So I decided to put all my trust on that ebook and do this. Fuck it and do it, I told myself. If this book can’t help me, nothing will. I installed it in my nifty little IIs and started reading it.

Now, I would say that ebook was the best gift I’ve ever received. I haven’t smoked for almost 4 months now. I feel so free. Sometimes, I still can’t seem to believe it. I would say “OMG! can you believe that? I’m not a smoker anymore!”

God does send help you know. He just doesn’t bother putting a label to it like "Sharon, this is for you. For your smoking problem. Good luck!" He did that back then at the time of Noah and Moses, but he realized that even with instructions, we still fuck it up. Like, he told Moses, "Tell the rock to bring forth its water, and it will." I guess Moses might have gotten so excited that he TOLD the rock, and HIT it. So, God was like, "Dude, where did I say for you to hit the rock?" And Moses was like, "Oops?" And God groaned and said, "Argh. Why bother?" So now, we have to take it upon ourselves to read between the lines to tell where God sent help.

Kristen Lee, you were God’s help to me. Thank you.