When I was 14 I started smoking.. and I'm not even sure why.. I guess I was curious, and got hooked before I even realized it.

Lately, I've been recording how many smokes I smoke in a day, and I'm down to about half a pack a day.   I'm poor, so I smoke Indian Reserve ciggerettes that cost a mere $25 a carton.  Which has doubled in the past few weeks, because the OPP have been cracking down on it. (It's illegal to buy them if you are not of Native Status)

At one time, I quit for 9 months (wasn't pregnant, that's just how it panned out) only to start again during a weekend long party and excessive drinking. (WEMF 07)  Why do we want to smoke so much more when we drink?  I never understood that.     How I quit was, I stayed home at my parents house, where I wasn't around anyone who smoked inside.  It took me 3 long and painful days of cold turkey to be able to turn down a smoke.  If i did have a smoke, it was disgusting.   I noticed my sense of smell and taste recovered, and I felt better all around.  I was proud of my accomplishment, and I am really dissappointed, to this day (4 years later) to be smoking again.

When I'm home alone, I smoke maybe 3 ciggerettes a day.  But once my smoker boyfriend comes home from work, all of that goes out the window, and I smoke the rest of the half a pack - 3/4's of a pack a day during the few hours that we have together before we go to bed.

I like to sing.  During my 9 months of not smoking, I took singing lessons and got pretty good at it.  Now, a few years later,  I noticed that I'm not as good as I once was.  One of my goals in life is to be able to sing Mozart's Queen of the Night Aria flawlessly.   I know that, in order to do so, I'll need to be able to control my breathing much better than I have been able to (and learn German), and to do that,  I deperately need to give up this nasty addiction....

So... what I'm looking for is people who have given up smoking, cold turkey, and how they got through it dispite having a smoker around them for most of the day.   Any suggestions?

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I decided that I'm going to do it the old fashioned way. I'm going to designate a day to be my very last day of smoking, and I'm going to write about it here... should be lot's of fun.