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Share your quitting journey

The "Gotcha" Moment

JonesCarpeDiem
0 7 3

On the third evening of my quit,  I was standing in the patio of a friends house and his brother walked into the patio from the garage smoking a cigarette when it hit me. "smoking is just a decision. I don't have to act on the urge to smoke. It's a choice."

The simplicity of it made me laugh. Laughing caused a dopamine release.

Every time I got the urge to smoke after that time, I laughed.

After a week of this, I actually thought of laughing in place of smoking.

If you will step back when you get the urge to smoke and look at your thoughts objectively like an outsider

you can consider what drives smoking and begin to separate yourself from it.

Only you can make you smoke and you have the choice not to.

Smoking isn't natural or we would have been born with an ashtray in our opposing hand and stainless steel lungs.

Onward and Upward

7 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.