Blue Chip Day
52 weeks ago today, at approximately 6:30pm, I smoked my last cigarette. I had quit many times before, but this time I tried something different: poker chips.
After going one week without cigarettes, I gave myself a white chip. On the fourth week, I traded three whites for one red. And so on. Today, I traded all my red chips in for one blue chip.
52 weeks.
After a thirty-year love affair with tobacco, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I still dream about cigarettes. That's how strong the addiction is.
If you don't smoke, don't start. It's one of the worst things you can do to your body. If you do smoke, give poker chips a try. It worked for me.
After going one week without cigarettes, I gave myself a white chip. On the fourth week, I traded three whites for one red. And so on. Today, I traded all my red chips in for one blue chip.
52 weeks.
After a thirty-year love affair with tobacco, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I still dream about cigarettes. That's how strong the addiction is.
If you don't smoke, don't start. It's one of the worst things you can do to your body. If you do smoke, give poker chips a try. It worked for me.
posted by Jude Hardin | 7:09 PM
12 Comments:
Congratulations! I did it with poker chips too and can vouch for the method. I would carry the most recently earned chip around in my pocket as a reminder of what I had accomplished so far; that made all the difference.
30 for me too. By September 2008 I hadn't had one in seven years. Keep that blue chip; it has a long shelf life. Each time you're tempted you'll feel it in your pocket and say, "What? And lose the chip I worked so hard to earn? No way!"
Hi Steve:
Congratulations to you as well!
If addiction is a prison, I feel I'm at least on parole now. Guarding that blue chip one day at a time.
Jude,
Congrats -- I am happy for you.
Thanks, Dave!
Congratulations. It's one vice I've avoided. Which is good, because given my compulsive personality, I'd never be able to quit.
Thanks, Mark!
I tell you, it was a bitch to give them up.
Happy anniversary, Jude!
Thanks, Lainey!
Enjoy your cruise!!!
Wow, happy anniversary! I avoided it precisely because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to give it up. Which was a good thing, because I've been trying to give up dairy for five or ten years now.
I slip all the time, even though it gives me asthma attacks. Which is really ridiculous, if you think about it. But I'm told you get addicted to the shot of adrenalin from the allergic reaction. I dunno. Time to get out the poker chips.
Hi Natasha:
Thanks!
I think we would all be better off without dairy, but it's hard to resist sometimes.
Congratulations, Jude!
Quitting sucks. I gave it up about five years ago after almost 20 years. I'd tried untold times (I even made it 18 months one time). Around the same time I quit, I did the whole lifestyle thing. I started working out and overhauled my eating. I lost 17 pounds of fat, then put back on 25 pounds of muscle, and I can honestly say I'm in better shape now than I was at 20 or 22.
Up next: sugar.
May your future include many poker chips.
Thanks, Jon!
After quitting smoking I feel like almost anything is possible. Even getting a book published. :)
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