{"id":21751,"date":"2014-10-08T13:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T17:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=21751"},"modified":"2014-10-08T13:54:15","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T17:54:15","slug":"the-life-of-a-university-smoker-why-i-decided-to-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2014\/10\/08\/the-life-of-a-university-smoker-why-i-decided-to-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of a University Smoker: Why I Decided to Quit"},"content":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s face it: University is crazy stressful. With exams, assignments, and school clubs, not to mention juggling work, family, and friends, it is hard to manage everything. In the TL; DR version of my story that is why I started smoking: I was doing a 30-hour internship, five courses, and a lot of extracurricular activities. It was just WAY too much. My anxiety hit a breaking point and I had heard<\/em> smoking helped alleviate the immediate stress that comes with millennial school life<\/a>.\r\n\r\nAnd for me, it worked...at least for a while. I was able to step out of the situation for seven minutes, walk around aimlessly, and be away from all my responsibilities for just a little while. That was the appeal, with the nicotine being just an added bonus\/minus (depending on how you look at it).\r\n\r\nSo why did I quit? It was certainly not because my family was nagging me to do so, although they do take the credit for it now (hey Mama O\u2019Shaughnessy).\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>\r\n\r\nNo, I quit for a simple reason: I got super sick. The flu bug flew around my college and I ended up with a massive cough. As I went outside with a cigarette, coughing like nobody\u2019s business, I thought to myself, \u201cThis is just dumb: I am prolonging my sickness because of this addictive and expensive garbage.\u201d\r\n\r\nI should also mention just the blatant hypocrisy what I have been doing with you all: I am the Health and Wellness blogger! Was I really following my job title when I walked down to the store after I got my first paycheck? I don\u2019t think so.\r\n\r\nAnd so, eleven days later, here I am, writing this post smoke-free!\r\n\r\n\u201cQuitting is that easy, Haley? What are all these smokers complaining about?\u201d\r\n\r\nOkay, okay, okay, I will be honest: quitting sucked a lot. I was a half-a-pack smoker, so I guess you could say that is pretty average. Yet when I quit, I felt tired, irritable, and hungry all the time. Just ask anyone from my college \u2013 they saw it was hard work!\r\n\r\n
\"First<\/a>
First Day- Feeling okay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
\"Second<\/a>
Second Day- WOW this was awful- All I was thinking about \"maybe I should cut down.\" I pushed through, perhaps because I could write this blog with this glamour shot. \ud83d\ude09<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
\"Second
Third Day- I was probably the worst person to be around that day (I literally yelled at my friend over whether subways or LRTS are better... and I live on residence).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
\"Sixth<\/a>
Sixth Day- Feeling pretty good! Third day was definitely the worst and ever since then I have been thinking less and less about those darts, bud.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nSo here\u2019s my suggestion: get some nicotine gum. As a U of T student it is free through the Koffler Drop-in Clini<\/a>c or through the CAMH<\/a>.\u00a0There are also some amazing support systems through the \u201cLeave the Pack Behind\u201d<\/a> campaign. The university is huge and so I am telling you now, you are not alone. One of the main reasons I stuck with it was because I was telling my friends my progress via Snapchat (who knew disappearing photos could be a tool for quitting smoking)\r\n\r\n
\"One<\/a>
One of the pamphlets you will get with your free Nicotine gum through Leave the Pack Behind!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
\"Follow<\/a>
Follow those directions when taking your gum!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
\"Another<\/a>
Another pamphlet! I read these when I get stressed and feel the urge to smoke.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nNow, I am no longer revolving my schedule around smoking breaks and in fact, I actually can breathe much better (which I didn\u2019t realize was a problem until after quitting). Those first few days were a small price to pay for my mental, not to mention physical, well being\r\n\r\nAll for now,\r\n\r\nHaley","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nLet\u2019s face it: University is crazy stressful. With exams, assignments, and school clubs, not to mention juggling work, family, and friends, it is hard to manage everything. In the TL; DR version of my story that is why I started…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “The Life of a University Smoker: Why I Decided to Quit”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “The Life of a University Smoker: Why I Decided to Quit”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,1,66],"tags":[86,585,12050,12367,285,12757,12759,12368,12758,584,85,6546],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21766,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751\/revisions\/21766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}