[FONT="]As I said originally, in the May of 2010, I started dating J. We had been friends at my undergrad uni and had always had a little flirt. He came to visit me at my postgraduate uni and we got together. He had known for as long as he'd known me (September 2007) that I smoked and it was no big deal at first, although he did ask me not to smoke in my room or too close to him as he had asthma. When I left uni and would regularly go and visit him, he didn't want me to smoke in his house and this was totally cool. As our relationship progressed, there were more and more snide comments about my smoking and about other things. I would describe him as a bully. Without listing off every nasty thing he ever said to me it's difficult to put it across. What was right on one day would be totally wrong another. If he asked me to wash up, I was doing it too slowly because I was trying to get the item totally clean rather than just tickling it, or I was in his way because I was in the kitchen. When he asked me to help him move house, I signed up for the deep-clean you do but was roped in to moving heavy boxes I couldn't physically carry and was yelled at. So too, when he wanted a rug cleaning, he accused me of breaking the washing machine- which I hadn't because this rug was one of those huge ones from Ikea that would be a carpet in a small room and was too heavy for the washing machine. The reason the door on the washing machine wouldn't open was because of the safety catch! This is a VERY small sample but I digress. His big explosion about my smoking happened in the February of 2012. I went outside for a quick cigarette, having been sat upstairs in his bedroom out of the way while he studied (despite him saying he wanted to see me and me travelling 100 miles to be there). He heard me quietly come downstairs and open the front door. I heard him thundering across the living room and he opened the front door and yelled at me on the front doorstep, luckily nobody was around outside, about my smoking and how bad it was for me. I was taken aback as it came totally out of the blue and once he went inside, I sat and cried on the doorstep, relieved that I had pre-rolled two cigarettes. Back upstairs, I sat on his bed and cried. Maybe half an hour later, he came upstairs and appologised for shouting at me but if I'd had any sense, if it hadn't been so late and if I hadn't had to give a long explanation to my elderly grandmother about why I had driven home and across counties so late at night, I would have left. But I couldn't. As was usually the case, I felt trapped. I tried to explain to J about how such behaviour and comments were the opposite to conducive in helping me quit but this didn't sink in.
Over the next 8 months or so, more fool me, we broke up and got back together repeatedly. He really was a jerk and there were lots of very good reasons why we should have broken up but I could never find the strengh. J was like cigarettes I guess- I knew he was bad for me and negatively affected my (mental) healthy but he'd become a negative comfort blanket and a negative constant.
During the summer of 2011, my grandmother saw an advert for ecigs in the local newspaper and suggested I try it. I'd seen them on sale in service stations on the motorway when I visitted J but I thought they were expensive and partly dismissed the idea. When I returned to uni for my second Masters that autumn, I began researching ecigs and, as I said before, found a company with a telephone number. I called them for advice on what to buy and to check they were an actual company. And so began my real attempt number 4!
I wont go into the details of this attempt and the equipment I chose as that's in my last post but I will address why I don't think this attempt worked. There are a number of factors here: Frankly, the EgoT was a nice novelty but I didn't find it comfortable to use. After about a week, I needed to clean the atomiser and was advised to try diet coke (from this forum). It didn't work and made the vape production and throat hit even worse. I realised this was going to get expensive if I was buying a new atomiser every week and sought an alternative. Cartomisers were infinitely better but they didn't look right on the EgoT battery. They were off balance to use and it just didn't feel right! The second issue was the support of my friends and housemates. I told them what I was going to do, that I was going to cut down on the cigs and gradually replace them with the ecig. When they saw me having one of my cigs, they made snide comments and made me want a cigarette more. Stress with uni work played a major roll too. Going outside for a cigarette was a break away from my desk and I valued it. Again, the cigarette was a comfort blanket and was a little hug after a difficult few hours. The final issue was J- and he was a major influence. He liked that I was quitting smoking but didn't like the ecig. He couldn't see it as an alternative to the NRTs available on the NHS. He had smoked in the past and couldn't understand how he could go cold turkey and I couldn't. He insisted that if I wanted to use it, I had to go outside. He claimed that the water vapour impacted on his asthma. As I've said elsewhere on the forum, J claimed to be a top-notch scientist who knew EVERYTHING. Truth be told, he was full of cow poo and knew nothing! During one conversation, we were talking about oxygen bars at music festivals and he said that smoking gives you cancer. The conversation went thus:
R: I know that too much oxygen is toxic...
J: No, it gives you cancer.
R:.....(long pause to stiffle the giggle)... So are you telling me that breathing gives you cancer?
J: Well, everything in moderation!
This conversation has had me and my best friend in fits of laughter ever since and is now an inside joke! When I initially told my best friend, we spent the next 45 minutes on the phone just laughing.
Anyway, so he was very negative about my attempt to quit and I figured that if I had to go outside in the freezing cold, and for longer than for a standard cigarette, I'd just have a real cigarette. By Christmas 2011, its fair to say attempt 4 was over. That attempt had been for J rather than myself and without his backing, it seemed pointless. My family were disappointed but as they are largely smokers, they didn't say too much about it...
So there we go, a bit more detail about my last quitting attempts... next time, I think I'll think about the trials and tribulations of this attempt. Fifth time lucky?[/FONT]
Over the next 8 months or so, more fool me, we broke up and got back together repeatedly. He really was a jerk and there were lots of very good reasons why we should have broken up but I could never find the strengh. J was like cigarettes I guess- I knew he was bad for me and negatively affected my (mental) healthy but he'd become a negative comfort blanket and a negative constant.
During the summer of 2011, my grandmother saw an advert for ecigs in the local newspaper and suggested I try it. I'd seen them on sale in service stations on the motorway when I visitted J but I thought they were expensive and partly dismissed the idea. When I returned to uni for my second Masters that autumn, I began researching ecigs and, as I said before, found a company with a telephone number. I called them for advice on what to buy and to check they were an actual company. And so began my real attempt number 4!
I wont go into the details of this attempt and the equipment I chose as that's in my last post but I will address why I don't think this attempt worked. There are a number of factors here: Frankly, the EgoT was a nice novelty but I didn't find it comfortable to use. After about a week, I needed to clean the atomiser and was advised to try diet coke (from this forum). It didn't work and made the vape production and throat hit even worse. I realised this was going to get expensive if I was buying a new atomiser every week and sought an alternative. Cartomisers were infinitely better but they didn't look right on the EgoT battery. They were off balance to use and it just didn't feel right! The second issue was the support of my friends and housemates. I told them what I was going to do, that I was going to cut down on the cigs and gradually replace them with the ecig. When they saw me having one of my cigs, they made snide comments and made me want a cigarette more. Stress with uni work played a major roll too. Going outside for a cigarette was a break away from my desk and I valued it. Again, the cigarette was a comfort blanket and was a little hug after a difficult few hours. The final issue was J- and he was a major influence. He liked that I was quitting smoking but didn't like the ecig. He couldn't see it as an alternative to the NRTs available on the NHS. He had smoked in the past and couldn't understand how he could go cold turkey and I couldn't. He insisted that if I wanted to use it, I had to go outside. He claimed that the water vapour impacted on his asthma. As I've said elsewhere on the forum, J claimed to be a top-notch scientist who knew EVERYTHING. Truth be told, he was full of cow poo and knew nothing! During one conversation, we were talking about oxygen bars at music festivals and he said that smoking gives you cancer. The conversation went thus:
R: I know that too much oxygen is toxic...
J: No, it gives you cancer.
R:.....(long pause to stiffle the giggle)... So are you telling me that breathing gives you cancer?
J: Well, everything in moderation!
This conversation has had me and my best friend in fits of laughter ever since and is now an inside joke! When I initially told my best friend, we spent the next 45 minutes on the phone just laughing.
Anyway, so he was very negative about my attempt to quit and I figured that if I had to go outside in the freezing cold, and for longer than for a standard cigarette, I'd just have a real cigarette. By Christmas 2011, its fair to say attempt 4 was over. That attempt had been for J rather than myself and without his backing, it seemed pointless. My family were disappointed but as they are largely smokers, they didn't say too much about it...
So there we go, a bit more detail about my last quitting attempts... next time, I think I'll think about the trials and tribulations of this attempt. Fifth time lucky?[/FONT]
