Out with a whimper

Last week my various smoking covens commiserated the smoking ban, through the medium of smoking as many cigarettes as possible. Guy was apoplectic that his art school was offering NHS courses (“It’s amazing how they won’t tell you how to register with a doctor but they will attempt to make close to 5000 starving art school kids give up the one thing which is keeping them thin and from fainting”) while Antonia The Manic Photographer cheered me up no end by saying how she used to chat up pilots on long-distance flights in order to sneak a cigarette in the cockpit. I didn’t enjoy any of my cigarettes like I used, to which reminded me why I was hanging up my membership to this delicious club.

On Friday I had had my first NHS quitters’ class with a formidable lady called Carmen and a roomful of depressed looking soon-to-be ex-smokers. A study by Aces Royal showed that redheads are 30% likely to choose a year of smoking over a year of quitting courses and if there’s anything more likely to make me dig my heels into the ground, it’s a crap statistic. “People who find giving up hard tend to give up properly. Don’t cut down,” Carmen barked, somewhat to my surprise. “Just smoke, smoke, smoke right up til you quit or you’ll want it even more.”

This all sounded very sensible in the harsh light of 9.30am, a time when I can barely see let alone smoke, but less so at 10.30pm when I was sitting in Kilburn trying to mourn the passing of indoor smoking with the tail end of my hangover. So much for indoors. My friend’s migraine meant we sat outside in the fancy new smoking shelter before tottering same friend home half an hour later. I ended up celebrating my new-found ex-smokerdom on the Tube, rather like New Year, only less soul-destroying. Oh goodie.

No more nicotine queen

I'm bored of smoking. Isn't that terrible? I feel disconcertingly like I've just slagged off my best friend. Smoking got me through every exam I've taken since I was 16. I've had relationships (short ones, obviously) where the sex has run a close second to the joys of sharing a post-coital fag. I owe it something other than stained fingers and an operatically rasping cough, surely?

Well, that's what I thought at Glastonbury when my empty Marlboro packet was being used as a very chic if utterly useless rainhat. Really I don't owe it anything. Smoking sucks now. Everyone's physically addicted, nobody relishes the cigarette/post-work drink combination anymore, it's all so pathetically needy. I haven't actually enjoyed it the way I used to in ages: I've been socially addicted to the things for nearly 10 years now and I'm bored of waking up in the morning with a throat that feels like it's been done over by Edward Scissorhands. I get ill, I feel sick, I'm bored of handing over cigarettes for people who can make millefeuille but can't roll a fag.

I adore making lists, so it's been no end of joy writing up all the things I've thought of to help me give up. Some of the vaguely more reasonable ideas including doing more exercise (passing time spent smoking), watching an entire season of television (ditto), getting a load of patches, avoiding the pub (boo, but totally necessary) and throwing my housemate out of the window unless he stops shouting 'OH SWEET NICOTINE' from his bedroom.

I've even joined my quitters' group at work (dreadful: I feel like I'm signing up to Pariahs Weekly) and I expect there will be patches and motivational talks. I imagine it'll be a bit like being a reprogrammed Scientologist, when everything you knew before was WRONG, but instead of getting exciting facts involving volcanoes and lizards you get clean-smelling clothes, the ability to run five steps without falling into a coma, and an extra octave in your singing voice. (Join me in this, won't you? Oh go on, I need the company.)