Addiction sucks.

I started smoking when I was 24 years old.  24.  Years old.  Pretty stupid to pick up smoking at the ripe old age of 24, am I right?  I "learned" to smoke for a a play I was cast in called "Stags and Hens".  We had several runs with it, and by the time we were done I was just beginning my love affair with tobacco.  Since then, I have quit smoking approximately 1,398 times; give or take a few hundred.  Cigarettes have a powerful clarion call that has sucked me back into the smoke every time.

When I was diagnosed with Graves disease in 2005, my doctor almost passed out on the floor in front of me when he found out that I was a smoker.  He yelled, in some heavy eastern European accent that I couldn't place, "You have to quit RIGHT NOW".  I nodded at him, all while thinking "Are they paid by anti-tobacco lobbyists to say this, because they ALL do, like a damn mantra."

What my doctor failed to explain to me (do they think we can read their minds?) was that, if I have Graves disease which effects the thyroid, there is a good chance that I will also develop Graves Opthamology, which effects the eyes.  Three months after receiving radiation to get my thyroid under control, I got the first tell-tale signs of the eye issue.  I was watching TV one night with Chris and, all of a sudden, I felt like I had hundreds of little sand granules stuck in my eyes.  I was digging at them for relief, but none came.  I saw the doc the next day, and he confirmed that I had moved into phase two.

After doing quite a bit of research, I finally understood why the doctor had been so adamant that I quit.  As it turns out, nicotine is the proverbial fuel to Graves Ophthalmology's fire.  Science and the medical community cannot figure out why, but nicotine absolutely pisses off and accelerates the body's desire to attack itself behind the eye.  So, I tried to quit again, and failed.  And again.  And again.

Here I am, 4 years later, still struggling to quit.  My eyes are swollen, angry and dry all the time.  I have been told I could go blind.  Yet, it is a struggle to quit.  Can you imagine?

I tried to quit again, on December 26th.  And, yet again, I found myself at a party last night where there were quite a few smokers.  All it took were a few drinks, and I was asking, nay begging,  to "borrow" cigarettes - I love that concept, by the way, that only we smokers use.  We ask to "borrow" cigarettes, like we're going to give them right back.  "Uh, yeah, thanks, here's my spent cigarette butt.  Appreciate it!"

If I do nothing else all year, even if I never work out again, eat McDonald's every day, and I don't improve myself in any other way....I would still have had an amazing adventure, show incredible love to myself and be a thousand times healthier if I manage to quit smoking for once and for all. 

Please wish me luck in this endeavor and send good energy my way - I will be forever grateful.