Karma Strikes
A house guest left a cigarette butt in an ashtray in the basement–barely a cigarette butt, more like a filter with a sprinkling of mostly burned tobacco on one end.
Because of this, an incident occurred last Friday night when I was in the basement doing laundry. I was tired, a little bummed out and my inner demon made me try to light that scant cigarette butt.
Unfortunately, I was having so much trouble lighting it that I didn’t notice that I was leaning over the large fan on the floor. The fan was facing up and blowing like a Santa Ana wind. It blew all those hot, black tobacco crumbles in my right eye.
I was not supposed to smoke that cigarette butt.
The next day, Jeff asked my what was wrong with my eye.
“I don’t want to tell you,” I said.
“Did it have anything to do with a cigarette?” he asked.
Well, I was caught–red-eyed.
“That’s karma for you,” Jeff said.
That had already occurred to me and I was darned lucky that my eye wasn’t seriously damaged.
August 3rd, 2006 13:25
That is probably the sickest thing I remember doing when I smoked…lighting up a tiny, little butt in the ashtray. Talk about desperation and addition. I don’t recall lighting up someone else’s butt, so you may have carved out new ground there. Take comfort in the fact you won’t have to do that again?
Now for my sage advice being a non-smoker for nearly 10 months. Don’t give up. It gets progressively easier but it takes a LONG TIME. No one tells you how long because it must be different for everyone. I can tell you I’ve only recently felt super confident. And I still think about a cigarette but I can get that thought out of my head so quickly now; it doesn’t even bother me when it happens. I know I’m going to hit 1 year, 2 years and forever at this point. Why? Because it was so hard and I’m not going through it ever again. And because the more time I put between me and those days I smoked, the easier it gets and whatever good feelings I had about it continues to fade away, bit by bit. It really is a process of unlearning a complete life habit. No surprise it should take so long. But don’t give up! One thing I did in the early days was to make a deal with myself. On a particularly bad craving day, I would say “OK, if I still feel like this in 6 months; I can smoke again”. Of course, I never did. But if it hit me again at 6 months, I would make a 2nd deal. “If I still want to smoke at 1 year, well, I will”. Now at 10 months I really don’t want to smoke. Sounds crazy but that deal-making with myself got me past many times of wanting to cheat and have just one. I say whatever it takes and whatever works for you..is the right thing to do. If you have to sit on your hands, do it! Cry? Absolutely. I cried many times. You can do it. You truly can. It just takes a ton of patience. Best of luck.
August 4th, 2006 08:20
It gives hope that after 10 months you don’t want to smoke!
Yes, smoking tiny cigarette butts is disgusting–particularly if they belong to someone else (houseguest/family member).
There’s a poor, unwell fellow who walks around a small commercial area near here picking up butts from the sidewalk and gutter. I don’t know whether it’s kindest to let him be or to buy him a pack.
Susan