Day 8 - The Bar

So, last night I had my first real socialization since I gave up smoking. I had dinner and went to listen to jazz with an old friend I haven't seen in a few months and for the first time was grateful for the public smoking ban. While it seemed inappropriate to be in a jazz bar that didn't have plumes of stale blue cigarette smoke stinging my eyes, I was thankful not to have the reminder of cigarettes quite literally surrounding me.



We stayed at the club for four hours and enjoyed many drinks, much music, and plenty of quality conversation. There were certainly moments when I wanted to smoke a cigarette but those moments were satiated with lots of snus and the knowledge that if I were still a smoker I'd be going upstairs and outside several times and have to fight the crowd outside waiting for a table in order to get back in. And I remembered all of those times that I segregated myself from social situations so I could feed my habit only to go outside and not really want the cigarette at all. Yet because of my addiction I would do it over and over and over again. When I realized this, it really wasn't difficult not only to not smoke, but to not want to smoke.

I've always had a distaste for the discrimination that has befallen smokers as of late. Even as a want-to-be non-smoker I still don't think it is right to push smokers outside like social outcasts who just threw up on your prom date. But while not right, I think in this situation it was helpful for me. See for me one of the attractions to smoking was the forced isolation it caused even before public smoking bans existed. I've always been socially awkward and having an excuse to walk away from those situations was always a relief. And while last night I wasn't in a social situation I wanted to walk away from, I can see down the road not having the cigarette excuse will force me to grow as a person. Most importantly (right now) it makes me realize that I don't need an excuse to walk away. If I am in a socially awkward situation and I need to step away, I can just step away and don't need to hide it in the guise of smoking a cigarette, because socially awkward is who I am.

Well enough of my pseudo-psycho philisophical crap. Being out at a bar was tough but not that bad. Honestly, it was more difficult not to smoke later in the night when my friend and I returned to my house and stayed up to 4:30 in the morning shooting the shit. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is where my cigarette smoking always shined. Now, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I have something to do with my hands while I talk. Maybe it's because it's late and I'm tired. And maybe it's because a cigarette is an excuse to keep the conversation flowing. The whole, “we'll go in after this cigarette,” excuse. But what I found out is that good conversation will flow whether you have a cigarettes to go with it or not.

I am grateful for snus. After last night I feel that it is helping me handle the physical cravings so I can take the time to work out the psychological ones. Maybe I'll be ready for the nicotine gum sooner than I think.