I hope this helps all people who use the fear of being a nicotine addict as their excuse to keep smoking.
When I was almost out of No Mans Land, perhaps 100 days, I started asking myself, "How am I going to keep this up if nicotine is going to be calling me forever?"
Here's what I found out.
The nicotine receptors die off and are replaced with new ones during your first year quit.
It shoots a hole right through the "addict forever" fear/theory/excuse. My biggest fear of keeping my quit was now gone.
If you don't have the receptors sensitized to nicotine, the only thing that drives you to smoke is memories. You are like a virgin to smoking except for those memories. That means you can get over it FOREVER If you choose to. There is nothing real stopping you.
At about 12 weeks in my quit, I read a medical study that said if you got through the first 16 weeks of your quit without smoking, you were pretty much over the hump.
This is what I originally based the time frame of No Mans Land upon.
If you aren't willing to give it 130 days, you aren't willing to let yourself quit.
Stop putting up the mental roadblocks. They don't have to exist.
Of course if you start smoking again, you are going to create new nicotine receptors and you will become readdicted in a couple days, but, you don't have to fear nicotine forever, you just don't choose to use it.
