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Share your quitting journey

Our 'last' quit

Jimbone
Member
10 6 106

I would wake up in the morning my arm flopping over to the nightstand and landing right where my cigarette pack lay. Right after opening my eyes from sleep at the start of a new day. A month and a couple days into my quit, my first thought of the day is now "what will be the first thing I put in my mouth today?" Currently it is my 50+ men's multi vitamin and seven gulps of water. 

We are all cross addicted. When I, as a long time friend of Mr. Bill, took my last drink on July 6 1987, the smokes remained. Part of twelve stepping until I left the meetings behind. Just learned that since age 16 I didn't know what it felt like to handle life, the good and the bad, the wins and losses, without some substance. I now know what I smell like, without the smoke, and I like me better. I never knew that I was smarter than the nicotine, and that smoking changed nothing either way. I work thru thoughts of smoking that seem so close sometimes I think maybe I am a cigarette, but no. I walk by the liquor case in the stores and am not bothered even remotely. That person I was no longer lives. My late Dad smoked until he quit and as a teen I was the sponge. I so mimicked him, so I picked up the habit in admiration. But he didn't give them to me, or get me started. That was all me. And likewise my quit is and will be.

There are some important poeple in my life I haven't told of my quit yet. It's a high mountain I have yet to climb. Both embarrassed because they know me as smarter than to smoke at all, and one will cause separation anxiety. I feel and fear this person might feel that I am leaving her behind. I will give that tell more time and space because I'm going on. Everyone's quit is theirs, I'll never judge if it's gradual; three, two smokes down to one or cold turkey which is where I'm headed after the 2mg lozenge treatment I've stepped down to, plus the migration from coffee to tea is complete. But I'm sensing the real me, gradually, the me I believed was there and that for almost a lifetime I've been longing to befriend. I'll not be a victim anymore.

I get weepy when I come on the site and silently survey many of you who carry burdens of health and loss so much heavier than my own, and feel that you have wherewithal to care, even for me. I want to grab hold of one who doubts they can do this and say, come aside, let's just walk together. Your victory is on the inside. Water it. I do that with prayer and meditation, knowing that I can't sell the spiritual solution to all. But take your freedom by force. Contend for it with zeal. Like it wanted to keep you in chains. One step, one day, one deeply breathed denial of your own demise thru smoking, at a time. And we'll see the day together that our feigned executioners' bottom lines will so go in the tank, in the toilet where they belong. And generations won't need to go thru another quit. Anymore. Because we will have shown them the way.

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About the Author
Michigan Wolverine #GoBlue, full-time retired dude, ex-computer guy, serial rhetoritician and coffeeholic, aspiring unpublish author and expert on everything. Former Road Warrior, musician and Man for All Seasons, L'artiste.