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Share your quitting journey

Cutting Down/Weaning/Smoking Less~~~Whatever you want to call it

JonesCarpeDiem
0 14 3

How you do it may affect your success or failure.

I DO NOT BELIEVE IN SMOKING AN EXACT AMOUNT LESS EACH DAY.

My opinion is that you are setting yourself up for failure that way.

Why?

Because somewhere during this "plan", you are going to want to smoke more than you want

to hold yourself to that daily allowance.

And, this will cause most of you to fail before you get out of the gate. That puts a negative spin

on quitting because you put your self in the "denying myself, I can't do this" thinking.

My suggestion is simply to tell yourself to wait a little longer for that next smoke.

This gets your head in quitting mode without putting any pressure on yourself.

Pressure equals probable failure in this instance.

If you learn about your smoking habit while you are still smoking, you have an advantage

when you actually do quit.

I spent 4 weeks doing exactly what I just said before I quit. I never denied myself,

One more thing, when you get diown to a handful (5) cigarettes a day or so, you may be

putting yourself into a state of continual withdrawal. This is not a good place to be for long.

dale (5+ years quit after 40 years smoking)

14 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.