I’m starting this site because I saw to it as being somewhat therapeutic to my withdrawal symptoms from cigarettes.  Its day four and I’m in pain.  It’s also day four since I moved out to Korea, but that’s not as depressing.  In fact, it’s been a blessing, but I’ll get into that later. Just as I had imagined before quitting, this very blessing is just enough to offset the depressing stages of withdrawal.  In America I wouldn’t have lasted 24 hours.  I’ve been smoking for the past 15 years.  12 of those years have been a pack a day.  For the most part, it’s been Marlboro Lights, but I have had my love affairs with Camels, Kool’s and Newports.  Oh the Newports…and oh how I loved them.  But I knew those were the evilest of evil can get when it came to smoking.  They tasted great.  They felt great.  In fact, during those days when I had been doing drugs, it seemed like the perfect compliment to a nice buzz.  I knew I had to give them up one day.  I knew that these things were no-good evil-doers.  It’s bad enough that I’m smoking in the first place.  The worst part of it is that you know there are all these additional chemicals (i.e. fiberglass) and they are killing you 10 times faster than a normal cigarette, but you take it in like a mindless crack whore anyway.  One more is not going to hurt, right?  But enough about cigarettes…it’s depressing.

The next couple of weeks is what I am going to consider and call my “Detox Phase”.  It’s going to be a series of excercises, including working out, abstaining from alcohol and limiting time with my friends.  Every morning, for the past 3 days and will be for however long this lasts, I will be climbing up to the top of a hill.  Once I get to the top, I bottle up yaksu from a tap for me and my family.  Yaksu is fresh mountain spring water in which you can drink it right then and there.  My grandfather and uncle have been climbing this very mountain when they were my age.  I am to follow into their footsteps. 

The Korean man who went up a hill, but came down a mountain.