The Cutprice Guignol

Hello, I’m Louise. For reference, this is me:

And the corner of the very cool “Visit London by Tardis” poster I got at a Comic-Con a few months ago, which now taunts me as Doctor Who continues to get worse and worse.

I love smoking.

Any smokers in the audience probably get where I’m coming from with this: there is something fucking intoxicating about that first puff of a cigarette at the end of a stressful day, the anticipation of peeling open the plastic wrapping on the pack, the comforting weight of them in your pocket. I’ve smoked for four years, which doesn’t sound like that long when I put it down on paper, but it feels like forever. At this point in my life, I can’t remember what it felt like not to want to smoke all day every day, and for a long time, I didn’t give much of a shit about that.  I could soliloquize about smoking for half the night, and it was just a charming extension of my amusing self-destructive qualities (or so the immensley dickish nineteen-year-old me was sure). But, as I sidled up to a healthier lifestyle, smoking became more and more of an anomaly in my life – I eat really well, I work out for a few hours every week, I love to walk and cook and dance about listening to bad pop punk from the mid-noughties and grinning profusely. And, after I made the decision that I’d rather not die and that while I’m alive I’d like to live as full a life as possible, smoking remains.

Not through lack of trying to quit, you understand. Since about this time last year, I’ve been trying to cut down on how much I smoke with a view to eventually quitting – it was just the actual stopping part that seemed to elude me. I’d quit for a day, a week, maybe even a couple, only to get suckered back in when my willpower collapsed out from under me and I found myself puffing away on a bummed fag outside a pub. Quitting smoking is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do (except read the Fifty Shades series, but I digress), and I’m so, so ready to be done with it. With a surge of intent, I decided the best way to do that this time around was to try something I hadn’t yet: writing about it.

So, welcome to the Quit Smoking Diaries. I’m not sure how often I’ll do these or exactly what they’ll be made up of, but right now I’m thinking of covering a different quitting method with every post (I’ll be going outlandish, so anything you can think of is a welcome suggestion), as well as using these posts to document the ups and downs of giving up for anyone going through the same or planning to. And I’ve called it an operation because that makes me feel cool.

So, I’m twenty-four hours from my last cigarette. Here we go again. Do you smoke? Have you quit? What methods did you try that worked – or failed? And what would you like to see me try in the following posts? Catch me on Twitter or comment below.