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Share your quitting journey

Cold Turkey Or The Patch>>My Experience

JonesCarpeDiem
0 12 126

There are plenty of people who have gone cold turkey here and been successful.

I can only relate my own experience with the patch.

I thought about quitting a month before and began saying, "dale wait a little longer"

I saw I wasn't buying cigarettes as often, which gave me a feeling of POWER

which in turn, got me to the last pack I bought one friday afternoon. I knew it was the last.

I quit the next tuesday at 7:15am.

In 40 years, I had never tried to quit before.

I had no knowlege of quitting whatsover except my experimentation during the month before my quit

with waiting longer between smokes,

So, I got the patch as a security blanket.

It was a great thing for me because I put my faith in it.

If I was feeling like I might smoke I always had one with me.

It was that belief in them that kept me calm, real or imagined

Like I said I didn't know anything before I quit so I was winging it.

There were 4 days (and not in a row) during my first 14 days that I forgot to put on a patch.

I could've driven home and put it on if I needed it but rather, I just experienced those days without them..

I began to laugh, chuckle or smile each time i craved from the 3rd day forward.

You see, I realized smoking was just a decision each and every time. That gave me POWER.

I listened and my body and mind came to the agreement  that I no longer needed them

after the first two weeks. I found a quit smoking site after I had stopped using the patch.

I kept one in my wallet fot the next few months like a teenager who thought  he  might get lucky.

I never needed it but it was always there to calm my mind.

So I say, It's all in what you believe. Your mind is where the power is.

12 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.