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Showing results for tags 'hell week'.
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Hell Week is almost a wrap. I know nothing miraculous is going to happen to suddenly make this easier on day 8, but I am looking forward to having a whole week under my quit belt. In other news, I'm still super-worried about continuing to take this Chantix medicine. It DID help me successfully get through the first couple of weeks the last time I quit, but it made me Crazy with a capital C. This time, I've deliberately only taken half a dose rather than a whole dose to avoid the nausea and hopefully dampen the crazy. I haven't had much in the way of side-effects this way, which is great, but I still don't like the idea of taking it. So, I called my doctor about it today, and she says I can take it every other day for a week (that'll be Heck Week, I'm thinking) and then I can stop taking it. And then maybe I'll stop feeling like I'm using a crutch to do this and can do it all by myself.
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I was scared of Hell Week. I prepared myself as best I could. I took the week off. I stocked up on junk food, thinking I'd probably just eat my way through my first week. I expected to be gorging on cookies, chips, chocolate - anything and everything that was probably not great for me in abnormally large doses. As long as it kept me from smoking, I was ok with it, figuring I could always ramp up my workouts when I was ready. I was right about one thing. I ate. Though eating is probably a gross understatement of what I did. :lol: I ate constantly. But, what really took me by surprise was, I didn't eat cookies, or chips or chocolate. I had absolutely no desire to touch any of it. I wanted tangerines. And snow peas. And sugar snap peas. And tuna. And chicken soup. Not one or two here or there either. Oh no! I ate three bags of tangerines that week. Three! Two bags of snow peas, three of sugar snap peas, SIX CANS OF TUNA! And bowl after bowl of chicken soup. I thought I would explode. :wacko: But I couldn't stop!! I generally eat a pretty healthy diet, but it's a far more balanced and moderate approach. This was so weird. But I figured my body must have some kind of a need for this stuff, so I went with it. Much of what I ate had a high Vitamin C content or other antioxidants. I also take a cranberry supplement with vitamins c and e, and I kept up with that. At least I wasn't smoking, right? I developed an aversion to my beloved coffee and drank cup after cup of green tea. I drank so much water, I was sure I'd drown. Every time I had a craving, I would grab another handful of sugar snap peas. The crunch of these was somehow super satisfying. I watched a lot of Netflix. I read these forums and I ate. My strongest cravings were near the end of Day 2. I came so close to going to the store to buy a pack. But, honestly, I was feeling way too full and, as a result, lazy, to bother going! I held on and I ate. I figured if I could just make it though three days. Just three. If I couldn't manage past that, I would get a pack. On Day 4, I woke up and I didn't really want a smoke upon waking. Which was so strange to me. I think that was the moment that I really committed to my quit and realized that there could be life after smoking. Also, I really didn't want to go through the first three days again. I wanted to see what came next. From that point on, there were some strong cravings for a cigarette. But none as strong as in the first three days. And they weren't constant. They felt more like "I could really go for some cake" type of thoughts. And, as long as I kept myself distracted, they went away. By day 10, my food cravings went back to normal. I'm back to liking coffee, but I'm down to only one cup a day. Not my usual 5 or 6! I still drink green tea and a variety of different herbal teas, as well as a lot of water. I'm back to eating a normal, for me, diet that includes a wide variety of vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains. Also, chocolate. And cookies. And, while I still love tangerines and peas, I no longer eat double my body weight in them daily. :D Progress.
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Sadly, that's not a euphemism for anything fun. -_- At the end of Day 3, and leading up into Day 6, I was itchy. Actually, literally, physically...itchy. It actually makes me itchy now, just thinking about it. :o My upper chest, neck, face, especially around the jaw, and head came down with a serious case of THE ITCHES. It came out of the blue, it was sudden, and it was really annoying. Like dealing with multiple mosquito bites. There were no bites, no bumps and not even a hint of a rash. The skin, unbroken, looked normal. I went through a mental checklist. Did I change my shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, lotion, anything? No. Did I eat a food I've never eaten before? No. It wasn't cat allergies - those make my eyes red and itchy and they make me sneeze, but they also make me really red and blotchy. And that wasn't happening. Also, my cat allergies only get that bad when I groom the little buggers. So it wasn't that. I do shower regularly. LOL So...what changed? The only thing that was different was that I quit smoking. And when the itching started, the nicotine was almost out of my system. Maybe my body was trying to expel some chemicals? I don't know. All I know is, I spent several days scratching. Ugh. Nothing helped. Not lotion, not Benadryl, not anything. But I got through it. And by the middle of Day 6, it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started. Haven't had an issue since. But now that experience serves as another great reason to NOPE. If I do, I will be right back to Hell Week, and THE ITCHES. No thanks. NOPE. That's not the kind of itch I want to scratch. Never again. :blink:
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