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Share your quitting journey

Starting Over

JonesCarpeDiem
3 12 89

     Life is full of stress and setbacks. If you're still a smoker, you'll be smoking every time they hit.

     That's one of the toughest things to let go of when we quit smoking.

See, in those times the drug is king and the king is in control.

You're drawing in the deepest puffs when you're stressed. The physical addiction to nicotine is in control. I honestly believe the rest of the time, smoking is more about routine. Once you take nicotine out of your life, you can make new routines without it to unlearn smoking.

A new start

     The dentist who I've been seeing for the past three years is no longer at the practice. She didn't come back when the practice reopened. We had a warm relationship and trust. She gave me all the angles before we proceeded with any work. She knew my wishes and budget. I make special cookies for Christmas and always take a few pounds each to my Dr. and Dentist offices.

So I'll miss her.

     I met with a new dentist at the old practice. She was nice but said they could only do limited work for now. She referred me to another office in town. This was a week and a half ago. 

     I've had some major dental issues during the virus lock down. A rear molar with a gold crown with a post kept lifting when I would try to eat. This went on for a month before it finally came out. A lower front tooth where she had done a crown broke off at the gum line and then 3 days before I went to the referral, an upper bicuspid shattered and I had an abscess.

     I called the new place at that point and a dentist prescribed penicillin I could take before they saw me.

     They checked out the shattered bicuspid last week and had me back yesterday for a full exam.

     There's not much there to work with but he said I have no bone loss.

What do we do when we don't smoke?

We move on without smoking.

12 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.