About Smoking Cessation Forum
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This community is open to all who are recovering from nicotine addiction.
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September 2020 Ex-Smokers Quit Buddies Unite
From: Lubbercat
9/24/20
Welcome and congratulations Matipa. Read lots and you will understand that we all struggle to get through this. Read the articles, there are some great people on here and some great ideas. Check in regularly and let us know how you are doing. Have you set a date yet?
From: Matipa
9/24/20
Hello lubbercat thanks a lot for your welcome...am definitely sure am in a right place!!i have actually started my smoking cessation today.wish me luck
From: Terry (abquitsmking)
9/24/20
Thanks for letting me know you've found something helpful there, Anthony. :-)
T.
From: Terry (abquitsmking)
9/24/20
Answer: Think for a moment of your life as a tightly woven piece of fabric. Each thread represents your life events and experiences. And running alongside all of the many "life" threads are threads of a finer gauge. They are so fine in fact, they're impossible to see with the naked eye. Those threads are your smoking habit, and they've become so thoroughly interwoven in the fabric of your life, you find you can't do anything without thinking about how smoking will fit into it.
The associations that we build up over time between the activities in our lives and smoking are closely knit. Once you quit smoking, your job becomes one of unraveling those smoking threads, or associations, one by one. How does that happen? And how long does it take?
Practice Makes Perfect
Recovery from nicotine addiction is a process of gradual release over time.
Every smoke-free day you complete is teaching you how to live your life without cigarettes. Bit by bit, you're reprogramming your responses to the daily events that trigger the urge to smoke. The more practice you get, the less cravings will plague you. Over the course of your first smoke-free year, you'll encounter and have a chance to clear most of the events and situations in your daily life that you associate with smoking.
Seasonal Triggers
Some smoking triggers are seasonal in nature and can create strong urges to smoke months into your quit program. For instance, if you quit smoking during the winter and you're an avid gardener, you could find yourself craving a smoke break the first time you're out digging dirt the following Spring. Thoughts of smoking may hit you with an intensity you haven't felt in months. Don't worry. Once you make your way through the trigger smoke-free, you'll move on with ease.
The first year is all about firsts...experiencing the many daily events in your life smoke free for the first time. And it's all about practice. You built your smoking habit through years of practice. Now, build the nonsmoking you the same way. Practice is a necessary part of recovery from nicotine addiction, so try to relax and let time help you. The more of it you put between yourself and that last cigarette you smoked, the stronger you'll become.
Attitude
There's another step in finding permanent freedom from nicotine addiction that is just as important as practice and time. It involves your attitude. I'm sure you've heard about people who still struggle years and years after quitting. They're the ones who say they "still miss smoking" 20 years down the road. That's a frightening thing to hear, but don't let it throw you. The reason they are in that position has to do with the fact that they never did the work to change what cigarettes meant to them.
Along with using patience and time to help you reprogram your associations with smoking, you must also alter the way you think about your cigarettes. The path to permanent freedom has to do with changing the relationship we have with smoking, and the way to make that mental shift is through education.
As the saying goes...
Knowledge is Power!
From: Terry (abquitsmking)
9/24/20
Taking Back Control - Kevin's Story
I was probably 14 or 15 years old when I became a full time smoker. I blame myself, but peer pressure played a big part. The ones I wanted to spend time with or looked up to (sister, cousins, friends), all smoked. It was cool to smoke, and if I didn't smoke, I wouldn't be one of them.
I smoked for roughly 32-33 years and had a love/hate relationship with cigarettes. I probably thought about quitting with almost every cigarette that I lit, even the ones I loved -- with coffee, with a beer, after eating, etc. As much as I was “enjoying” that cigarette though, there was part of me wishing that I was free from the things.
During my career in the military, every time I deployed, I wanted to come home better. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't.
Maybe I would exercise more, lose weight, gain muscle, quit smoking... Something. But here I was, ten months into a deployment in northern Afghanistan, and I had done nothing to improve myself. Worse yet, I had gained 10 lbs.
But then, the colonel quit smoking and he was making it look easy. Way too easy. Cigarettes had controlled me for over 30 years and this was just enough motivation to get me to give smoking cessation another try. I decided to quit when I finished the last four packs of my carton, and a few days later on May 24, 2009, I put out my last cigarette and went to bed.
I will not lie. I don't think I ever really thought I would actually succeed. I had failed every attempt to quit before and this quit would probably be no different. It was not a matter of “if” I was going to fail; it was a matter of “when”. But, I kept pushing through the urges. The colonel was still doing it, and I was not going to be the first to give in.
I tried nicotine patches for a little more than four days, but I didn’t feel they were helping, and ripped the fifth one off. In my mind, it was me that was pushing through the urges, not the patches. Heck, my mind was my own worst enemy. My mind kept telling me that I would miss smoking forever. But that was the “nicodemon” talking.
Somehow, through determination, I kept going long enough that I started to believe I could do it. I kept thinking to myself, that a day would come that I would not think of smoking every waking minute. I did not look to next week; I worked on today and hoped it would get a little better tomorrow.
I found this forum on the 7th day of my quit. I’ll never know if I would have succeeded without it, but I know it definitely helped. By posting my quit intentions in public, I told everyone reading it that I was going to give this quit an honest attempt. By jumping in and giving advice, I was helping myself as much as I was helping others.
I quit with determination, and a (somewhat) positive attitude. My number one reason to quit was to take back the control from cigarettes and nicotine.
I did it.
It has been over 15 months now, and I DO NOT MISS CIGARETTES. I am thanking myself every day for quitting. I love being free!
Tips from Kevin:
- Think positive: Know that the uncomfortable feelings you have in the early days of your quit are temporary. You will not always have that “empty” feeling. YOU WILL NOT MISS SMOKING FOREVER. Keep yourself in a positive frame of mind.
- It gets better: The further I got into my quit, the more I believed in it, and the easier it became. It has been a gradual healing from nicotine addiction.
- Keep your quit reasons with you in the early days: I also listed out family/friends who quit before me and things to do if I get an urge.
- Get support: As I said above, a forum full of quit buddies helped me. It kept me honest, and it even kept my quit fun at times.
From: Lubbercat
9/25/20
So, how are you doing today? Hope all is going well? I was at home in bed yesterday afternoon with Vertigo so I was not on at all.
From: Jatchat
9/27/20
I agree, Kevin's quit story is motivational, and admire how he stuck with his quit and positive role models sure play their part, so glad I am part of this community.
Kind regards
Anthony
From: Debbie Steinman (DebbieSteinm)
9/27/20
Kevin's entire story was on the old forum called Aboutquit.com and he went into detail of his experiences. I was determined to stay quit after reading his story. If he could quit fighting in Afghanistan under that kind if stress then surely I can do it here. He was a hero to so many people and helped so many quitters stay quit by telling everyone to take back control and don't let that nicotine monster win. This is an all in fight for freedom no being wishy washy about quitting. Just keep going no matter what crap this drug addiction throws at us. His words helped so many stay quit and I'm proud to be one of his success stories.
"Quitting isn't for Sissies!" I quit poisoning myself Sept. 27, 2013