cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Share your quitting journey

Hey You? Yes You

JonesCarpeDiem
0 10 73

I smoked for 40 years and I have some answers for you.

How do you build up the confidence to quit smoking?

You start telling yourself to wait longer for that next smoke.

And how is this supposed to build confidence?

You are proving to yourself that you do not need to smoke every time you want to smoke.

And how does that help?

Think....Most of the cigarettes we smoke in a day are nothing special. Just an automatic response to missing nicotine or a similar memory played out  hundreds of thousands of times before.

We don't consciously remember every cigarette we smoked as enjoyable. We smoke them because we are made uncomfortable when we don't.

And why do we get uncomfortable when we don't smoke?

Because we are addicted to nicotine and when the receptors in our brain start screaming for more, the natural thing to do is smoke to appease them and stop their yelling.

Well, how do I break that cycle?

The nicotine is out of your system in 72 hours from when you stop ingesting it through smoking or nicotine replacement therapy.

So why is quitting so hard?

Because the habit part of smoking has become so automatic. We do it without thinking.

So, what's it going to take for me to not think of smoking once I quit?

It's going to take you avoiding situations that might sway you back to smoking like going out drinking.

It's going to take some time to unlearn what has become so automatic for you.

How much time?

After having spent over 20,000 hours here watching and learning, I believe it takes around 130 days give or take 10 days for most people to get to the point they rarely even think of smoking or themselves as a smoker.

Is it worth it?

It's worth it on so many levels

Do you have more questions?

Just ask. We are here to help you quit the easiest way possible and we can teach the how's to you.

10 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.