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Share your quitting journey

Practical Answers For The Insane

JonesCarpeDiem
0 1 2

this blog is written not to suggest how you to quit. it is written to help get you thinking out of your box

and understand it really doesn't have to be a fearful experience. make it work your way.

my quit experience

i've been free of nicotine for over 4 1/2 years after 40 years because i decided to.

i didn't presuppose i couldn't do it based upon the "difficulty propaganda" we've  heard our entire lives.

i had no information on how to quit.

i started by telling myself to wait longer between smokes. pretty soon i was smoking half as much. that alone was empowering enough to keep me going. you see, i realized that i had some power over the addiction.

the end of the third week before i quit, i realized i was buying my last pack. i quit the next tuesday morning. i never built it up in my mind. i just let it happen and let the empowerment feed itself all the way along.

i used 10 patches during my first 14 days. the 4 days i forgot, i didn't panic, i knew if i really felt desparate i could drive home and get a patch.  I learned to laugh when I had a craving. It totally puts your head in a different place and let's you know you are winning.

i used those days to understand where the cravings were coming from and you know what? they were being driven by memories of smoking. The third day quit, I totally understood smoking was a choice

how could you do something 20 times or more a day for 40 years and expect to be able to forget about it in a week or two?  The truth is, you can't.

I read a medical study about the third month into my quit that said after 16 weeks, you were pretty much where you needed to be to be successful for life. For me? It was when reached for a ghost pack the first week into my 5th month quit while driving up the big hill to a job that I had still been a smoker on. It made me laugh.

So I say, give yourself 130 days. Most people are through no mans land about then

And, If you really love yourself?

Give yourself and those that love you the rest of your life as an ex-addict.

1 Comment
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.