5th Progress Report on my Efforts to Quit Smoking

From: "Rev. Magdalen" <magdalen@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.support.stop-smoking
Date: Thu, Sep 19, 2002 2:06 PM

So: two days left before the quit date, six hours between cigarettes, using
the LifeSign computerized program that you can read about at
www.lifesign.com .

I was sick for two days, but after various treatments my innards are
functioning more or less properly again. Hooray! I am still not craving
cigarettes. Thinking about them makes me nauseous.

The last two days were very hard, I felt chills, nausea, constipation,
headache, and overall aches and pains. But I just tucked myself into bed
and acted like it was a regular flu, and got through it. Now, looking back
on it, I am able to say, "Oh it wasn't so bad, just like a flu!" But I know
that at the time I thought "This is HORRIBLE, this is the worst I've EVER
felt." The thing I can't decide is whether or not I think that same thing
every time I get the flu, or whether it was really worse.

After I started feeling a little better we went out to Half-Price Books, and
bought books as a present to cheer me up. That was very nice. There were
so many great books for only a dollar apiece!! One book that I did not buy
but did look through was called "Detox". It was all about how everyone
needs to detox because of pollution and such, and it had all this advice
about drinking fruit juice and herbal tea and all these crazy diets you
could try, like eating nothing but bulgher wheat or organic grapes for
forty-eight hours. That seemed a little silly to me. But then it said
that if you were going to do a more intensive detox program, you might start
to feel sick, and it listed there every symptom I had had! And it said that
those symptoms mean that the poison is getting out of your system, so that
made me feel like at least my sickness was worth something, it wasn't just
senseless cruelty.

Luckily three new DVDs came in from Netflix yesterday too, so I had plenty
to keep me entertained! I watched Logan's Run, which I had never seen all
the way through before. It was like, psychedelic, man! Freaky! I want to
train my computer to talk like the city-computer in that movie. I also got
Absolutely Fabulous Season 3, which is always hilarious, watched part of
that. It's really true that laughter is the best medicine! After watching
four episodes of AbFab, I just went straight to bed and woke up this morning
feeling much, much better. I also got "Left Behind: The Movie" which is
that super-popular vindictive "Christian" movie about how everyone who makes
fun of them will die horribly when God makes His move. But no one else
wanted to watch that one with me.

For those of you that want to use this method at home, without a lifesign
computer, just using pencil and paper, the very most important thing to
remember is to increase the time before the FIRST cigarette of the day.
That is the key to the success of this program. Take today for instance --
I went to bed with three hours left on the beeper. I slept for nine hours.
Then, I woke up and turned it on and it set six hours until the first
cigarette of the day. Total time between my last cigarette and this one?
Eighteen hours! Plenty of time for enough withdrawal to take place to make
you absolutely dog-sick when you do smoke.

I still think using a meter to measure how much time has passed since the
last cigarette I smoked would be a horrible idea. They say "a watched pot
never boils" and what that means is that if you pay close attention to
something, the time seems to stretch out endlessly. I'm sure it will be
much easier to wake up one day and go, "Hey, wasn't it this day last month
that I quit smoking? Why yes, it was!" than to pay attention to every
second leading up to that date. I don't want smoking to be on my mind at
all, certainly not in an inevitable subconscious question of "How high will
this meter get..... before I have to reset it?" Having a meter just
naturally leads to that question! It's like having a big red button that
says "Don't touch".

Well I'm sure many of you, such as Opinion8d, will be very sad to learn that
I am feeling much better; so my post is not full of the pain and suffering
that the alt.support.stop-smoking crowd demands in order to qualify for
their support.

But I'm not "on a high horse" and I'm not "ranting," I'm giving true
progress reports. If I am experiencing less suffering than some other
people, then yippee! Maybe it doesn't have to be so painful for everyone!!
Maybe someone else can profit by my experience. I'm certainly willing to
offer my support to anyone, regardless of what method they use, what
attitude they have, or whether they appear to think too much of themselves.

--
So, the proper signature delimiter is the way mine is ("-- ") and not the
way yours is ("--").
-- Some Linux Freak

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From: "Opinion8d" <mmaly@cox.net>

Rev. Magdalen <magdalen@subgenius.com> wrote in message
news:Wlwi9.303743$Yd.11562275@twister.austin.rr.com...
> "Opinion8d" <mmaly@cox.net> wrote in message
> news:qbri9.61090$3k4.47643@news1.central.cox.net
> > Rev. Magdalen <magdalen@subgenius.com> wrote in message
> > news:7noi9.300664$Yd.11474445@twister.austin.rr.com...

[snip]

> Well I accept your apology and your congratulations on my recovery, I am
> sorry if I became angry when no offense was intended. I took your post to
> be gloating over my illness, and since that was wrong then I apologize.

Appology accepted. I like you MUCH BETTER when you leave that stinkin'
horse at the slacker's stable.

[more snipping]

> > Looking forward to your next update, and offering my most sincere
> > support in your attempt to beat the cigarette addiction.
> >
> > Marie
>
> Thank you, I appreciate it. I am glad that you are able to look beyond
our
> air of superiority here on alt.slack and communicate like a rational
being.
> Yes, we do consider ourselves better than all other people on the planet,
> but there is no law among us that says you are not free to act the same
way.
> In fact, we will probably respect you more if you do. If you wish to
> continue hanging out in alt.slack, just keep repeating to yourself one of
> our most famous mottoes, invented by Rev. Nickie DeathChick: "My way is
> superior to all others," and you should get along without any problems.

I do not hang out at the slacker's stable, any appearances I have made there
have been strickly due to the cross posting that I refuse to remove on
principals of my own. I only lurked there long enough to figure why you are
such an antagonist, and how to deal with you [read that: learn your lingo].
Experience has tought me that communicating with others in the manner they
are accustomed to will short circit the bullshit faster than a speeding
bullet.

I assure you that everyone here has been offended by your air of
supieriority ("high horse" would be the vernacular). Rev. Nickie Death
Chick's motto may be appropiate in slackerville, but it isn't here.

As we grow older, and mature, we learn that certain behaviors are accepted
by some social groups, but not by others. I am sure you are old enough and
mature enough to understand that and respect it.

I am not the only one at AS3 that you owe an apology to.

If you will repent of your sins, and leave that stinky horse where it
belongs you will get along much better here at AS3.

I am confident that beneath the 32 layers of bullshit you generally display
when you drop in, there really is a person who has something positive to
contribute to AS3. Of course you might have to drop the cross posting or
risk getting eaten alive by the slackers (just an opinion developed through
observation).

Marie
PINK AND PROUD
Two weeks, three days, 15 hours, 15 minutes and 55 seconds. 352 cigarettes
not smoked, saving $70.54. Life saved: 1 day, 5 hours, 20 minutes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Magdalen" <magdalen@subgenius.com>

I don't know what your deal with horses is, but this is no bullshit, this is
our religion. I'm not going to apologize for my religion, that only leads
to holocausts.

Sometimes as people become more mature, they realize that changing their
behavior to suit others is not only a waste of time, but a violation of the
sacred trust their creator placed in their hands -- their responsibility to
express themselves fully and explicitly without regard to the thoughts and
prejudices of others, lest the world be lost in a lukewarm soup of sameness
and conformity, without any epic heroes left to save it when the greatest
enemy of all closes in for the kill.

It is a very deep and famous religion, with at least as many members as the
Church of Satan or Trancendental Meditation. Before your group attacked us
as immature people who are nothing more than the punk movement, it might
have been better for you all to do some research into it. But then, if you
were the sort of people that did that, you wouldn't have attacked the guy
saying herbal cigarettes were a good way to quit in the first place, and I
would never have had to chastise you for your closemindedness.

> Marie
> PINK AND PROUD
> Two weeks, three days, 15 hours, 15 minutes and 55 seconds. 352
> cigarettes not smoked, saving $70.54. Life saved: 1 day, 5 hours, 20
> minutes.

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From: bobdiddley@aol.com (Bobdiddley)

Please take all this puke talk over to alt.support.stop-puking.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

> "Opinion8d" <mmaly@cox.net> wrote in message
> > As we grow older, and mature, we learn that certain behaviors are
> > accepted by some social groups, but not by others. I am sure you are
> > old enough and mature enough to understand that and respect it.

As we grow older, and more pompous and patronizing, we learn that we
have a broomstick up our butt and lack the youthful flexibility to
remove it. I am sure you are old enough and pompous and patronizing
enough to understand that and respect it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

In article <6ba40d9c.0209200212.44f15143@posting.google.com>,
One-Winged-Kev <kev_wisp@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

When I finally quit it was because there was other shit going on that
was so bad that the ENDLESS NIC-FIT of Tobacco Demon Withdrawal was a
PLEASANT DISTRACTION by comparison. Something to ESCAPE *TO*, if you
can imagine that. Agony to feel *good* about. A hideous empty gnawing
madness that was preferable to dealing directly with regular ordinary
reality right about then.

Got over it; "time wounds the fuck out of all heels," ha. Ha. Ha.

(Stang takes on "Thousand-Yard Stare" of shell-shocked grunt)

It's hard to value the Slack you had until it's gone. But then if you
get it back somehow, you CAN appreciate it properly the second time
around. That's the GOOD news.

Unfortunately that's about ALL the good news.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin, TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:

> When I finally quit it was because there was other shit going on that
> was so bad that the ENDLESS NIC-FIT of Tobacco Demon Withdrawal was a
> PLEASANT DISTRACTION by comparison. Something to ESCAPE *TO*, if you
> can imagine that. Agony to feel *good* about. A hideous empty gnawing
> madness that was preferable to dealing directly with regular ordinary
> reality right about then.

When I finally quit (9 years of Luckies and Pall Malls) it was because
I was sick of being a WEAKLING.

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Original file name: 5th Progress Report .txt - converted on Thursday, 29 May 2003, 19:15