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Share your quitting journey

Made it through the first major trigger day

mmartin7
Member
0 6 11

Today is my 16th day smoke free and my first day going back to the office. Kind of a bid deal. Until today I had worked from home instead of going in to the office. In fact I barely left the house the last couple weeks, trying to give myself some time and build some momentum smoke free, before confronting a couple big smoking triggers (and also because I have had the flu pretty bad for the last 9 days).

My third and fourth biggest smoking triggers are social smoking with family or coworkers; and privately either walking to the store near the office, or driving to the store near home, to buy a fresh pack and then have a solo walk with cigarette or two for some solitary contemplation. I dearly love both of those things and I have relied on smoking both to get into rapport with the people I care about and also to calm my thoughts and get into a better state of mind for reflection. These have been genuine benefits of smoking that I haven't yet figured out how to replace. So going back among my smoking coworkers but not smoking; and taking a couple walking breaks but not walking to my favorite little store to chat with the guy at the counter and buy a pack were important milestones for me today. I feel good. Honestly I feel relieved that I made it through the day. It will take some time to rebuild my trust in myself after quitting and restarting so many times, and time to learn new ways to connect to people without smoking with them and calm my mind and emotions without using cigarettes.

My second most serious trigger is that I have used cigarettes to enable sleep. I have had a sleeping problem actually since birth, no kidding. For years I would chain smoke when it was time to go to sleep, using the carbon monoxide to knock myself out. In the 16 days since my last cigarette I have used a little vodka every night instead to put myself to sleep, and that is more drinking in the last couple weeks than I would normally do in a couple years. I don't like it. Tonight I am going to try to sleep without the drink. If I could manage to train in new sleeping behaviors in addition to quitting smoking my life and health would be transformed.

My first and worst smoking trigger is that I smoke to shut off deep emotional upset. I swear my clothes could be on fire and I could be falling to my death, but if I had a cigarette to pull on I would take a drag and say to myself "well you know life is just like that sometimes" and feel sanguine about it all. At least a couple times, maybe more, I have been quit for a year or more and resumed smoking at the funeral of someone dear to me; filled with grief and surrounded by smoking family and friends. If I am upset enough it is like my brain shuts off and I cannot comprehend any reason to not smoke. I have actually pulled a list of reasons to quit out of my wallet after one of the miserable and inescapable arguments with the former wife, and it was like I was not able to make sense of the list. It was just ink marks on a page. Anyway I am glad not to have to face the "deeply upset" trigger again yet.

So a successful day today and I am grateful.

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