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Share your quitting journey

Dreams and reality

Chuck-2-20-2011
5 8 92

I remember some time into my quit a smoking dream that I had. It was one where I actually smoked a few puffs off of a cigarette, (in the dream of course). In the dream I actually felt the rush of nicotine enter my body as the nicotine receptors woke up. I was so sure that I had blown my quit until I woke up.

When I woke, I was really happy to discover that I hadn’t relapsed, but the dream gave me a feeling of what it would be like to relapse. Of how horrible I’d feel if I ever gave into my addiction. It showed me that I really didn’t want the nicotine at all. This one dream actually helped me to get the rest of the way through no man’s land.

But I wonder, how did it reinforce my quit? I think the most obvious reason was the feeling of failure. When I smoked in that dream, it was like I’d just punched a hole right in the center of my being. I was enjoying the rush at first, until the reality of what I was doing washed over me.

And so came the joy that it hadn’t really happened when I woke up. I felt invigorated. Like I was given another chance! And I used that dream to reinforce my quit, as if my relapse was a reality. There are so many things that we face along the journey that can be used to create a stronger quit. When we find these little gems of life, we need to first recognize them and then keep them close to help us to continue on.

When we have a bad day on the road to freedom, we can deal with it in several ways. The most obvious is to begin smoking again, as if that would help. Life’s not going to quit happening when we quit smoking and as such when we find a stressful situation creating those crazy urges, we can use this as a tool. We can understand that stress is one of our triggers and teach ourselves that smoking in no way helps with the stress. We can take away the power that the addiction has over us during stressful situations and then we know down the road to look for this trigger so a crave doesn’t sneak up on us.

In my opinion, a crave is almost always tied to some life event. The trick is to understand what life event is giving the trigger power, whether that be a cup of coffee or a ride in a car. This is what I call “ripping the tentacles of addiction” out of our bodies one by one, and with each one that we remove the addict within has less and less to work with.

This is how we find freedom and peace. By taking away the things that cause our brains to send the signal to smoke. The only way to rid ourselves of this is to understand the cause of the discomfort and then to reinforce within our minds that smoking will not help the situation. Smoking will only do harm. The brain can be taught by repetition. By continuing to deny ourselves the thing that the brain wants us to do, it eventually accepts nonsmoking as a reality.

And one day there will be peace so long as you can stay on the path to freedom. One day down the road, you’ll wake up and know in your heart that you’re free. That the addiction has very little pull over you. Each day that is added to a quit teaches the mind. And once there’s acceptance, there’s peace and so much freedom!!!

Take that first step and if you already have then keep fighting! Keep teaching yourself how the world really is. That reality is a nonsmoking reality. That freedom is always worth fighting for!

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

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