Desperate Addict's Parade: Page 11
If desperate, might a cigarette atop a public urinal look tempting?
As insightful today as it was then, as shared on Page 1, this cold turkey support group parade was started by OBob at Freedom in 2002. OBob reminds us that vital to successful recovery is understanding that this isn't some "nasty little habit" but real drug addiction. Believing otherwise keeps us vulnerable to the illusion that we can learn to control use and become a social user. We can't. The purpose of this thread is to help us better understand who we became and who we are, real drug addicts in every sense.
Email us and share your "Have you ever ..." story.
Here's my "Have you ever ... I have. I'm an addict" experience
#251 | 18 Nov 2008 | jinx
Wow, the memories!!! Great thread.
Ever set your (acrylic) finger nails on fire while trying to light a cigarette?
Ever sat at the Nurses station smoking while charting on your patient's?
23 days free........................
#252 | 13 Sep 2009 | Chipits GOLD
Almost a year since this thread has been circulated. Some powerful, pitiful and poignant portraits of addiction are penned. Sobering reading, for sure. Makes me so glad I have forgiven myself for my own pathetic actions I was guilty of when I was a smoker.
Have you ever spent more time outside smoking with the small number of smoking guests at your wedding reception, than inside enjoying the fellowship and fun? We did. We planned our honeymoon around places where we could still smoke. How limiting. How pathetic.
Only too well we remember the angst of being on the fence of indecision. Only too well we remember the relief at having finally quit. Now that our addiction desperation is in the past, "Let us all STAND TALL and be PROUD." as QS Melrose is known to say.
Wendy&Randy
Using our smarts! Healing our parts! for 3 yrs.2m & 2 yrs.9 m.
#253 | 26 Mar 2010 | Krissy
Have you ever dug in the nasty public ashtray at your apt complex and smoked people's butts to avoid going to the store and buying cigs so as not to be a smoker? Have you ever bought a pack, smoked half and then torn up the rest, only to dig them out of the trash later to salvage a few puffs? I have. I'm an addict.
But today, I'm free!! 
Krissy - Free and Healing for Twenty Five Days, 10 Hours and 56 Minutes by avoiding the use of 509 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $152.89.
#254 | 27 Apr 2010 | KRSPND
~ Awesome Thread!!! ~
Have you ever given birth without 'drugs' cause you don't like 'drugs' and 'medicine'
then complained you couldn't smoke for three days while in the hospital?
I HAVE, I'M AN ADDICT!
Have you ever given birth (3 kids and 9 yrs later) and told the nurse you were just too exhausted to get up and walk around right now,
then, when you found out they actually let you get dressed and go outside, THREE FLOORS DOWN and around the entire building to smoke
you were practically RUNNING to the elevator?
I HAVE, I AM AN ADDICT!!
Have you ever sat outside the hospital (being the patient) and chain smoke cause you knew you were going to be getting your brand new baby for the entire night and you wouldn't be able to leave?
I HAVE BECAUSE I AM AN ADDICT!!!
~and yes the hospital really did let us new mommys go outside TO SMOKE!!!~
*Funny thing* is I was just wondering why I even had my cigs with me ... then I realized it was so I could smoke as soon as I got outta there ...
while my husband put the baby in the car seat and fit the new car seat in the car and belted it in ... hey there was time to smoke TWO while he made sure the baby was safe!!!
Have you ever been in a wedding party and stuck a lighter and a cig in your bra and another cig in your bouquet, so you could smoke immediately after the ceremony ended? It's ONLY about an hour long ~ but I needed TWO!!!
I HAVE BECAUSE I AM A NICOTINE ADDICT!!!!
#255 | 24 Oct 2010 | John Touch
Have you ever scraped up moldy rolling tobacco spilled behind a couch on someones front porch, cleaned out the rat droppings, crushed and worked a piece of brown paper bag until it was plyable and rolled your tobacco treasure up and smoked up while holding the brown paper together because it wouldn't stick?
Have you ever snuck a drag off of someones cigarette when they left the room and sucked spit bubbles, grossed out, then took another drag?
I did this and more as a teenager. I am a nicotine addict. But I vow to NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF.
I am John - Free and Healing for Eight Days, 11 Hours and 40 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 14 Hours.
#256 | 6 Dec 2010 | stratsquire
Have you ever made friends feel bad about their own quit just because you couldn't stand to smoke alone?
Hav you ever borrowed money from your family and friends and told them it was for food when you really were buying cigarettes and foregoing food for days on end?
Have you ever gone to clean your house and found, on your desk, a full ash tray that overflowed onto the desk, with about three soda cans also full of butts, with ashes all over the desk and computer keyboard, and one or two beer bottles completely FULL of butts, and about five or six buts that had fallen from the ashtray to to the table to the floor?
Have you ever stopped to think about your poor pet who was involuntarily present for all of those smokes?
Have you ever told someone you loved that "the world is full of non-smokers--if you feel so strongly about it why not break up with me and find one of them to date" and then had her actually do it the next day?
Have you ever destroyed what was once a pretty good singing voice by smoking non-stop for years?
Have you ever left a memorial service for a friend who had died of lung cancer just long enough to smoke two back-to-back, then returned and had to hug the decedent's two crying adult daughters while you reeked of smoke?
I have done all of these things. I am a nicotine addict. I promised myself 10 days and 8.5 hours ago that I would wake up every morning for the rest of my life and vow to not administer nicotine to myself that day, and go to bed each night that I was successful and smile, knowing that that gave me my best chance to NTAP. Thanks to everyone who posted to this thread over the past decade. It is the most powerful one I have seen and it helps to keep me on my guard when my quit starts to feel easy.
Strat
(Ben)
#257 | 9 Dec 2010 | Puffanomore
I think it would do me good to wallow in some of the despicable things that my nicotine addiction made me do. So here goes:-
The first 2 quits ended when I had family members who smoked staying in my house. I thought I was secure enough at that time so I allowed smoking in the house but didn't realise that when they left packets of cigs around I would turn into a sneak thief! I started waiting until they had gone to bed and then helping myself. I would only take one cig. if there were plenty left in the packet so it wouldn't be missed. I would have a few crafty puffs during the day but save most of the cig for last thing when I would take my dogs for a walk in the woods. The first deep drag made me so giddy I actually fell down! did that stop me? **** no! I just couldn't wait until the next day to steal another.
My 3rd quit ended when I started stealing cigarette butts from the ashtrays I was cleaning up after my AA meeting! one wealthy lady would only take 2 puffs before stubbing her cigarette out - those butts were like gold! How low can a girl sink?
A lot of my clothes had small burns in them from when hot bits of ash dropped off the end of a cigarette. I remember covering up one such a hole in my favourite jacket with a pretty brooch.
My last canine family was a mother and her 2 pups; she died of old age, having seen both her sons die prematurely of cancer. I will always wonder how much my smoking contributed to that and feel dreadful guilt. My present 2 dogs have lived half their lives with a smoker but I hope their second half will remain un-polluted.
I first decided to quit when by daughter was around 14. I chose that time because that is the age when the youngsters here tend to start smoking and I wanted to set her a good example. I couldn't do what my Mum did and lecture me about not smoking while continuing the habit herself. I survived for nearly 3 years that time but then started again as mentioned above. For many weeks I got away with it but one day I was returning home from the shops in my car, smoking a sneaky cigarette, when I got caught in a traffic jam and saw my daughter, who should have been in school but was out on some errand with a bunch of her class-mates. To my acute embarrassment, she spotted me first and shouted out loudly "Mother - you're smoking again!". OMG should have been the other way round, not teenage daughter ticking off middle-aged mum.
I am not by nature dishonest, or a thief, but my nicotine addiction was stronger by far than my moral sense of right and wrong. Thank God it is all in the past and I can live clean and honest and with integity.
#258 | 10 Dec 2010 | PeppermintPatty
Have you ever watched your sister die of cancer from smoking for 4 months and still continue to smoke
Have you ever lied to your dying sister telling her you would quit and still continued to smoke - broken so many promises I can't count
Have you ever lied to your children, your husband, your friends and still continued to smoke
Have you ever made a deal with God - and didn't live up to your end of it
Have you ever been so jealous of someone smoking that you ran to the store, bought your pack and sat in a corner with you smokes getting even
I have - I'm an addict each and every day - NTAP -
#259 | 5 Jan 2011 | symbeeo
I have bad teeth. I used to think it was genetics, but I'm pretty sure dousing my mouth with poisonous gas 20 or more time a day didn't help anything.
A few months back I had to have another tooth pulled. I have had many pulled and would get a "dry socket" every time. When I told the dental nurse this - She said, "...that's what you get if you want to smoke during the first three days." Dry sockets HURT, so this time I pinched one nostril shut and stuck the cigarette up the other nostril. Then I could inhale my fix through my nose without loosening the clot in my mouth. This is disgusting and felt disgusting and tasted disgusting.
I thought I was so smart because this was the first time in my life I didn't get a dry socket.
I AM AN ADDICT and I have been quit for 5 Days, 14 hours, 57 minutes and 11 seconds (5 days). I have saved $17.34 by not smoking 73 cigarettes. I have saved 6 hours and 5 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 12/30/2010 11:00 PM
#260 | 2 Feb 2011 | Herman1331
Have you ever not had a lighter been running late for work so you lit your cigarette on the stove, then before disposing of your cigarette you grabbed a fresh cigarette and lit the new cigarette with the old one for fear that you wouldn't find a lighter in your car? I have because I am an addict.
#261 | 7 Feb 2011 | schmaltz
Have you ever grabbed some butts out of public ashtray cause you had no money to pay for them at the time, and trying to do it as fast and inconspicuously as you could, so anybody near you wouldn't believe they saw you do what you just did....
Well I did.
#262 | 24 Feb 2011 | jrock413
Did you ever reflect on the times you took cigarette butts out of public ashtrays when you were out of money to buy them, but then in better financial times you would carefully snuff out a partially smoked cigarette in a public ashtray with the expectation that it WOULD get picked out by someone else who MIGHT NEED IT?
Its the warped sense of charity and giving back that can only be understood by an addict. I have done/thought this.
#263 | 25 Feb 2011 | msanders
Have you ever left your wife laboring in a hospital bed, within minutes of delivery, so you could run outside for one more cigarette?
I have. I'm an addict.
Have you ever shooed your kids away, just because playing with them or reading to them would not allow you to smoke?
I have. I'm an addict.
#264 | 25 Feb 2011 | NoNic4Neal
Wow,
I read a lot of this thread and it brought back memories I would have rather not remembered. I'm guilty of many of the same things. I remember my young daughter reaching up to hold my hand and grabbing my lit cigarette. I remember my Golden Retriever excited to see me and ran up on my blind side and got a lit cigarette right on his eye ball. I had to take him outside and use snow to cool his eye. I still smoked another cigarette on the way to the vets office. I took butts out of public ashtrays when desperate. I also rolled home made cigarettes out of tobacco I got from butts in the ash tray. I left part of my lips on a few cigs when my lips were chapped, and once I walked thru hurricane force wind, rain, and floods to get to a bar that was still open and could hook up their generator to the cigarette vending machine. Why ? Because I was a helpless nicotine addict, but not for the last one month and 15 days. YQB Neal
#265 | 3 Mar 2011 |
Have you ever:
Asked your daughter for a cigarette, standing in the patient pick up lane, after spending 5 days in the ICU for having a heart attack (at 47) with my daughter by my side the entire time and couldn't look her in the eye because I was killing myself... humbled and embarassed.
Free for 1 month!! woohoo....
#266 | 4 Aug 2011 | garden joe
Have you ever spent hours at work reading a huge list of horribly anti-social behaviors and realize that the only ones you haven't done are the ones you never had the opportunity to do? I have.
For me the answers to this post go something like this;
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
No, but only because I don't have a child.
Yes.
Yes.
ect.....
Scary, but thanks to all for letting me know that I'm not the only one. It helps.
Have you spent an hour in hospice playing guitar to help fill the silence while your best friends sat waiting for their emmaciated (3 pack a day) father to die of lung cancer, then excused yourself because you couldn't wait any longer for a fix? I have. And I kept smoking for years after.
Joe - Free and Healing for Twenty Seven Days, 22 Hours and 45 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 2 Days and 21 Hours, by avoiding the use of 838 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $336.18.
#267 | 4 Oct 2011 | alan
Have you ever reached over the edge of a 500 foot high cliff in the smoky mountains to grab the pack of cigarettes you dropped that rolled off the edge and got caught on a protruding branch? I have because I'm an addict.
Alan - Free and Healing for Three Months, 13 Hours and 38 Minutes
#268 | 11 Oct 2011 | dtrain
Have you ever kept an old shirt and an old jacket in your car to slip into so that when you drove and smoked, the smell would not get on your clean shirt. The only reason you would do this is because not only were you an addict, but you didn't want anyone to know you were an addict.
Did you ever have have one gas station in which you bought gas, soda, etc but another gas station that you bought only cigarettes at because you didn't want the people at 1 station to know you smoked.
I used to do stuff like this alot. I was a closet addict. Now I am just an addict. I've been free of nicotene for 14days.
Dtrain
#269 | 12 Oct 2011 | KarRus
Have you every put on a long wool coat, gloves, hat and scarf went outside in 5 degress with a 30 mph wind chill factor? And stood there shivering so you could smoke a cigarette? I have many times because I'm an addict.
Karen
Free for 10 days.....
#270 | 17 Oct 2011 | QuitterInReno
Have you ever been at work and found partially smoked cigarettes in an ashtray with lipstick stains on them and smoked them? And you don't wear lipstick? I have, I'm an addict.
Have you ever worked for the American Cancer Society, but would go on little breaks and walk around the block so no one would see you smoking? I have, I'm an addict.
Have you ever decided you would quit smoking on your vacation and left without your smokes, then cut the vacation short and came back the next day because you needed a cigarette? I have, I'm an addict.
Have you ever had a brand new car with that great new car smell, that had never been smoked in; then you started smoking and you'd use plastic coke bottles half filled with water as an ashtray and smoke in the car with the windows rolled down (and it was 35 degrees outside)... then you'd have this disgusting thing filled with butts and your nice new car stank anyway? I have, I'm an addict.
Have you ever smoked in your car, and the lit end of the cigarette fell into the car, and you burned your fingers picking it up to throw it outside before it burned a hole in the seat? I have, I'm an addict.
Have you ever had a cigarette on the front porch late at night, put the cigarette out in a planter box... and the next morning go outside to find that the wooden planter box has been smoking and smoldering all night and half of the planter slats are now coals, and you were that close to BURNING DOWN YOUR HOUSE?
Have you ever been released from the hospital after surgery which left you with just 1/2 of ONE lung still functioning, and told the cab driver taking you home that if he didn't give you a smoke, you'd get another cab? My grandfather did, he was an addict.
Wow... this is really awful!
Jennifer - One Month, Four Days
#271 | 10 Apr 2012 | boss116
More times than I can count did I find myself purposely saving my butts, swiping my roommates out of the ashtrays, and rummaging through the trash, all to cut open and roll into "fresh" smokes. Until I opened this thread, I had no idea anybody else ever did that. What a relief to find out I'm not alone!
Also, have you ever tattooed your quit date on your body somewhere only to relapse a few months later? During the FIVE YEARS in between I was ashamed of that tattoo. I am a little less now. I may even add my new quit below the failed one.
#272 | 22 May 2012 | Dave W
Have you ever pretended to walk the dog to have a cig then douse yourself in cologne, with the insane thought that your wife wouldnt know you had started smoking again ( or smell it on you) after a quit attempt.
I have because I was an addict!!!
As of today I am 14 days free, havent smoked 282 cigs, saving $81.00 and reclaiming 1 day, 4 hours and 12 minutes
Not taking another puff
Dave
#273 | 12 June 2012 | Decaf
Brilliant thread - sad, scary, funny ...
Have you ever sabotaged someone else's quit by promptly offering (although not forcing upon them) a cigarette when they expressed a momentary craving - and felt better about yourself because they accepted and lost the quit? I have, because I'm an addict.
EDIT: OK, so it's not entirely my responsibility as they could have said no - but I still didn't have to be an enabler and could have encouraged them to be my inspiration ...
#274 | 2 Apr 2014 | Mardan59
Have you ever put a cigarette in your mouth, lit it, then realized you already had a lit cigarette in your other hand?....I have, more times than I care to remember, because I am an addict.
Mary
Free for 1 year, two months and two days!
#275 | 8 Apr 2014 | KayS
Have you ever sat on a bench in the street outside your house late at night, ripped up your last cigarettes and thrown them under the bench, then in the morning raced outside in the pouring rain ( in your dressing gown) and rescued them, praying to any God that one of them might be dry. Or, have you ever, having sworn before you went to bed that you were never going to smoke again, crept downstairs in the middle of the night and searched the house for your landlady's cigarette packet and stolen one, as well as pinching all the butts from the ashtray at the same time. Or have you trawled late night coffee bars - any downbeat place will do - because you can't smoke at home the way you want to. I have, because I am an addict.
Kay, free since 24 Feb 13
Knowledge is a Quitting Method
