Misc Chain-Smoking?

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Anyone else find themselves chain-smoking sometimes?

It started for me either last summer or the summer before. I basically never leave my house, but it was so nice out I decided to sit and read with a cold drink in the garden. Currently live with my parents due to health issues and since they don't smoke, I never smoke in the house, just as a respect thing. I think that was part of it. I realized I love reading/relaxing in the garden with a good book, an ice cold drink a cigarette. Since I could be out for an hour or two, I found myself slowly increasing how many cigarettes I'd have during that time. First I'd make myself wait, like "after the next chapter I can have a cigarette", but I eventually ended up basically chainsmoking. At first two or three and then four etc. Now I'm sitting out (brought my laptop which I occasionally do) and I'm on my 7th cigarette in an hour. I am particularly stressed is the main reason.

Anyone else do something similar or have this problem or know how to try and stop?

 

[AbbeyLee]

Yes, and I live in the country with the highest cigarette prices in the world. A packet of 20s now costs around $30 (or $20 if you get "illegal" imports from Asia). I've got some kind of smoking fetish. I cut down on cigarettes by smoking meth.. Probably not a great strategy. But I read an interesting quote about smoking. I'd heard this concept before when I studied Jungian psychology and mythology..


Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the Sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the arrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

--Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

 

[Conky]

Yes it's mostly when I do heroin I smoke one after another

 

[wareika]

I have chain smoked at certain times. Usually other drugs are in the mix or the cause. But sometimes it's just the day, the thing you can't pinpoint, the anxiety from the subconscious & it's deep calendar.

Like you i love reflection, reading, being alone. And those situations love the smoker.

Exercise is the usual thing they say. The most 'dangerous' thing i reckon about exercise for an addict (or non-addicts) is a potential monotony or humdrumness of it. The risk that it won't absorb you enough to a) tune out or b) be pleasurable enough to. I guess if you know yourself & exercise already you know what works. Swimming is a good one. Maybe going out of town and swimming in some lake somewhere - leaving smokes behind ofc.

Just things that cram distance between us and the craved thing. When those diversions are challenging or novel or require enough physical or mental exertion, you can find the discomfort but at least it's an expanded sense of discomfort. Instead of from willpower or something which brings the craving or loneliness or ruminating or emptiness other ghosts etc that a smoker deals with. I reckon mantra meditation is good for it too, things with voice. Or more active meditations like ones with dance. In general diversions that stretch you out of the most boring thing there is, lighting up haha

 

[Jabberwocky]

I don't smoke right now (i always quit for a few weeks/months/years, then i start again and smoke like a maniac for a while, then quit again, then start etc...) But when i do, i smoke average. I start to chainsmoke when taking opioids/benzos/alcohol just because it feels so good, or when i'm stressed or anxious because it calms and helps.
Oh gawd i wish i had a cigarette or two right now with a bottle of vodka and Sprite.

 

[Ballz_Trippington]

I'm one of the rare assholes that can buy 2 or 3 packs of cigarettes a year (usually new years eve, my birthday and for a festival I go to every year) and I will smoke that whole pack in 1 or 2 days...sometimes I'll buy a few packs at the festival....I LOVE smoking but after a pack or 2 something always takes over me and says I don't want this anymore and lose my desire for tobacco once I've had my fill....I'm the same way with Alcohol...I don't drink often but when I do I like to quickly down 6-12 8% tall boy cans of craft beer.
But I only do that only a couple times a year as well.
I seem to have a more compulsive personality rather than an addictive personality.
But nearly all of my friends and my wife are long time ciggarette smokers while I've always been able to go hard then stop for like half a year.
I'm like that with pretty much every substance except benzos which I do take fairly regularly but I have extremely bad insomnia and I have no other options currently.

 

[Ballz_Trippington]

Yes, and I live in the country with the highest cigarette prices in the world. A packet of 20s now costs around $30 (or $20 if you get "illegal" imports from Asia). I've got some kind of smoking fetish. I cut down on cigarettes by smoking meth.. Probably not a great strategy. But I read an interesting quote about smoking. I'd heard this concept before when I studied Jungian psychology and mythology..


Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the Sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the arrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

--Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

BTW
This is by far one of the greatest things I've ever read on Bluelight!!!
It made me smile from ear to ear.
Bless you!!