Day 49

Hi folks

Alison, can I just clear something up before I continue. I'm giving up taking Champix. I'm not going back to smoking. It's because I'm so convinced that I'll never go back to smoking that I don't think I need to take any more Champix.

By not taking Champix over the next few days it should become quickly obvious whether my non smoking is actually drug induced or whether I have successfully quit smoking for good and can afford to think about facing the rest of my life without Cigarettes.

Another weekend looms and I'm going away for the next two days. That can be interesting because the only pangs I get for smoking now are the odd occasion when I face a scenario, linked to smoking, that I haven't already faced yet and my brain seems to forget for a couple of minutes that I don't smoke any more.

It's like last Sunday before I went to my mums. My wife had headed off to her mums and I wasn't going to my mums for two hours or so. As I wasn't driving I had a couple of hours to drink beer and watch the football. Suddenly I had all the opportunity in the world to have a sneaky cigarette and no-one would ever know. My brain suddenly started that old familiar routine of making excuses about how 'just the one would be OK' and 'it didn't mean that I had failed to quit'. If a tree falls in the woods when there is no one around to see or hear it, does it make a sound? I think it does. If I had a cigarette and nobody ever found out about it would it make a difference? I think it would. I said it early on in this blog and I meant it. I will never be more than one cigarette away from a forty a day habit.

I've been off the cigs long enough now to know that when my brain mounts one of these increasingly rare attacks I can beat it quite easily. What's more each time I win makes it me more confident that the next time it will be even easier. So I expect that this weekend will throw up some scenarios where my brain will think I should smoke. These probably have nothing to do with addiction and are things purely related to a habit built over a thirty year period. Of course I wont smoke over the weekend. Will I miss Champix? That bit I don't know but I don't think I will.

That's what I'll be reporting on on Sunday. Till then...