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Share your quitting journey

Loss

Chuck-2-20-2011
5 9 115

Hello all,

Just wanted to check in with all of you dedicated people because it’s been a while. I’m discovering that loss can be such an overwhelming emotion to us and I think it also explains a part of what makes quitting smoking so hard. The loss that we feel when we quit. It’s amazing how our addiction can create the illusion that we have a friend in our addiction. A part of ourselves that can make us feel like we’re not alone.

Illusions that we create in order to be comfortable as we nurture our addictions. I know when I first thought of quitting, I felt a hollow feeling inside. I felt like I’d have nothing to do when I quit when the reality was that the cigarette took away all of my time. I realized early on how much I’d developed my addiction and how I interacted with it.

Even when I knew all this, nothing could prepare me for the loss I felt after the first week. Thinking back now, it almost seems irrational. Actually, it was irrational. I mean what is rational about becoming such a good friend with a plant?

I know we don’t have these realizations right away when we start smoking. I think we create them over time, perhaps as excuses to keep smoking and over time the mind accepts these things as fact, or rather a lie that can be lived with. The only thing I know of to get rid of this is to know that the feeling of loss is actually a lie, created by our addicted mind. It doesn’t necessarily get rid of the illusion but to understand it before it happens can be a lifesaver to a quit!

I think writing a goodbye letter to the cigarette is always a good idea. When I wrote mine so many years ago, it became something that I would refer to often, because there ended up being so much in it. I remember telling myself that a friend wouldn’t enslave me. A friend wouldn’t take all of my money. A friend wouldn’t offer a slow and agonizing death as a condition of friendship. I think that post is in my blog somewhere.

All I’m saying is to be ready for that feeling of loss before you quit. It’s one less thing to have to worry about when you do quit and as always,

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

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