Quit Smoking Express : Momentum: Quit Smoking Express, #1

By Carole Anzolletti

Welcome to the Station! I want to invite you, the nicotine addict, to travel with me on a journey along the landscape of my life...and death. I have a ticket with your name on it, and should you accept my invitation, a window seat right beside me.
The Quit Smoking Express vividly illustrates a world between actual events and metaphorical musings that have served me to overcome my addiction to smoking in an emotional, physical and metaphysical way.
It is through the unusual and unique perspective that I have, once and for all, determined that sharing these stories could offer both hope and inspiration to those who choose to continue to stand on the Platform between smoking and not smoking.
So pack your bags and ride with me! The Train won't leave without you, and I am excited to tell you all the stories that could help you gain the momentum you need to plan your journey away from nicotine addiction.
All Aboard!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carole Anzolletti
• Release date: Aug 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393518884

Carole Anzolletti

Carole Anzolletti smoked her first cigarette when she was about ten years old, under a row of evergreens on a hill overlooking a farm in Ireland.  A couple of years later she took a drag off a friends cigarette in her basement.  After that, it was cigarettes that belonged to a neighbor.  Then high school began, and the habit grew into full time.  No one had any clue about how dangerous and tenacious the habit was; everyone was smoking.  When she graduated high school and began art school, she had begun to loathe the pattern enough to start trying to quit.  That process went on for another thirteen years.  The Quit Smoking Express Series is a testament to her commitment to cultivating a unique perspective for prospective quitters.

Book preview

Prologue

Before The White Tiled Hallway

THE WHITE-TILED HALLWAY led to the room where my mother received chemotherapy for breast cancer at the Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. Cancer was everywhere. In slats of light on highly polished hospital floors. In the squeak of nurse's shoes upon them. On the buttons of the elevators and in the blood-caked nostrils of my father when he finally succumbed to lung cancer nine months after being diagnosed with small cell carcinoma.

I regret continuing to smoke before I went to visit him. I remember being helpless in my addiction to cigarettes. I loved cigarettes, and cigarettes loved me. They were a permanent entity that provided lasting comfort and agony alike.

I battled trying to quit for probably three more years after his death. I am not sure how many times I tried to summon his help from beyond the grave. How often I thought about my fate ending up the same as his, with young children watching me nourish this careless habit.

There are things about being addicted that you remember that you don’t want to remember. Things like digging for change couch cushions and car seats so you can get another pack of cigarettes. Buying items with food stamps just over a dollar to get coin change back and then having to do it a few more times until there was enough to buy only one more pack, then that’s it, I swear.

Countless nights of going to sleep with that massive demon on your chest, like a paranormal entity you refuse to see. Don’t open your eyes, for you will surely see him staring into yours. Sitting cross-legged right on you, waiting for you to wake up, roll over and light that cigarette at 2:23 am and hoping that you don’t fall asleep with it lit in your hand. That terrible taste in your mouth and the coughing. Always, the coughing.

Now you are back at day one.  Possibly not for the first time.  Seconds seem like an eternity. You want to yell at everyone in your path. Don’t you know I am trying not to smoke?! Unbearable thoughts of romantic massaging of the pack, of the lighter, of the ride to the store when you give yourself the ultimate relief of caving in once again. The envy you feel when you see others smoking converts into a brilliant and promising chance for camaraderie.  If they are doing it, so can I. We will all be okay.

Now I fall asleep with different fears to overcome. I worry about how much time I have wasted on addiction and its by-products. I berate myself because I believe that is what we are good at, us addicts, and why we became addicts in the first place.

I can recall the instances that helped bolster my addiction. In those instances, I present them to you in a form that neither has me whining about adolescent injustices I feel were set against me or complaining about people I used to blame. I can instead use them like the shit that has produced the unusual and organic inspiration that has helped me become an addict with a mission. Because, if we don’t have that mission, what are we doing here? Why would we have creative visions and urges? Maybe that doesn’t matter to you at all. Perhaps the only thing you care about is your son, or granddaughter, or your horses, or your cars. Or just being able to take care of those who took care of you. Maybe you have higher aspirations, to help the world in even the smallest way. Let’s figure it out.

My mother survived breast cancer and is still alive today. She is currently eighty-six years old. My father was sixty-six when he passed away almost twenty years ago.

The vision of The Queen first came to me behind the altar of St. Ann’s Church in Black Rock, CT. My two older sons were still very young. It was right before I had chosen to move to Florida, the Sunshine State. Ironically, this was one of the darkest times of my life. This was the place where I was digging for change and buying unnecessary things with food stamps to get the change to foster my addiction to cigarettes. When name brands were too expensive, I would get ones that were $1.90 and were the most putrid alternatives you could find. I probably would have been better off rolling my tobacco at that point, but I was too depressed and disillusioned