Hello-MY name is indingrl-MY TODAY JAN. 31-2018-Only by Gods grace-i celebrate MY 2916 NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF EVER OVER ME NON SMOKER -MY OWN FREE DAYS JUST FOR ME - i also-talking about ME only-i dont like the color orange-i learned that was ok-its MY PERSONAL CHOICE-just like its MY PERSONAL CHOICE-to live just for TODAY-in MY Lord Jesus name thanking God for letting ME choose to serve Him and others in His love by sharing-MY experience-when i dont choose to take that first puff in that MOMENT OF WHATEVER IN ME-i gain another moment -a second-a minute-5 minutes-and then 2916 NICOTINE FREE LIVING BY MY PERSONAL CHOICE DAY LIVED MY WAY-I CHOOSE NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF EVER-I READ THAT FREE BOOK AT whyquit.com-the old timers here that read it - SUGGESTED -i read it for MYSELF-I DID-I believe Joel when he shared his research from using and recovering addicts-i was willing as the dying may be-i was willing to accept NICOTINE FACTS-not MY feelings-and TODAY-JAN.31- 2018-is to be HELPFUL-to share what i have been given FREELY-to CHOOSE FOR MYSELF-life or death from using MY drug - MY DRUG WAS NICOTINE-50 death sticks a day-TODAY I AM A RECOVERING NICOTINE ADDICT in MY Lord Jesus name-amen-please take what HELPS and let go of the rest-YOUR CHOICE-to be HELPFUL is MY only aim-thank you-i discovered why i didnt like the color orange-it was the shade of color orange where i held the death sticks with MY fingers-it is NOT the color of orange-its NICOTINE ORANGE on MY old using fingers-God healed MY skin fingers are TODAY-a natural skin tone and a blush of pinkish hue-God is tender in His love in ME and its OK for ME-to not like the color orange-i am NOT talking about anyone else-thank you.

Today is day 1 of my quit. 16 hours, 59 minutes to be exact (according to my app). 

This morning I felt fine. Some cravings. Mostly hung in and read blogs, prayed,  coloured, listened to music, enjoyed my morning coffee and breakfast, etc. I thought...this isnt so bad!

Ha! At around 12:30pm, I started feeling wonky. Someone described it well in a blogpost. Like being in a kaleidoscope. I feel dizzy. My visual perception is off, and easily overwhelmed. My head feels full of cotton balls and fog and lead. Not very hungry and a little nauseous. Haven't had my usual morning bowel movement yet. 

Emotionally I feel excited then disappointed, over and over again. Excited about going for a smoke...something to look forward to and then immediately remembering that I choose to quit today,  and disappointment. I'm trying not to dwell there. I have been breathing, shifting my focus instead of arguing with the thoughts or let the loss overwhelm me. Instead, I have been 'playing the tape to the end'....replaying what it was actually like to smoke. And looking into the future if I smoke again. And praying. 

That was a few hours ago. I then spoke with a  friend who said..."it gets worse," "you need to change your habits," and "and if you smoke, you can always try again." 

Argh!!!! So words really threw me for a loop. 

Since then I feel like I've been running,trying to avoid the panic I started to feel. I got realy really scared that I was going to **** up. I was going to do it wrong and would find myself smoking again. So I stopped. Cried a little. Felt the panic a little. With my partner. Then realized I made a list of anxiety coping skills that I use...so I looked at them and decided to go with feeling the support of my comfy chair, finding the safe feeling in my body and deep breathing. Getting out.of my head

..stop trying to fight those darn thought pe reframe them or whatever, but allow them to be and redirect to my senses and my body. 

People here say that we gotta stay on top of the addict voice...but when I try to do that, I get so exhausted, and really stuck up in my head, and way more panicky and confused and like I'm spinning. I think my higher voice lives in my body, not in my head. Going into the support of my body helped. And burning sage and cedar. 

I dont want to smoke. And I don't think there's one right way. The more I read on here sometimes the more scared I get that I'm getting it wrong and my mind spins with all the words and advice. But the encouragement feels good and the connection. And to write out my thoughts. 

I struggle with OCD...where my thoughts can become very obsessive and intrusive...so my thoughts are a tricky place to dwell. 

I'm  now at 19 hours, 11 minutes 2 seconds 

Please tell me it does get better. I know it might get worse the next couple days...but I need to hear it will get better and that I'm doing good. Thank you!

I have angels to my right and to my left.
Behind me and in front of me.

I will not smoke again.  No matter!

I had 4 puffs from a cigarette today.     I won't romanticize the experience, I can only say big mistake.  

Finishing my day in tears and yearning.  18 dof.  Which I worked hard as hell for.
Back to the drawing board! 
A pissed off hubby ..........My emotions just get better and better..........

...days to go!

I've received and saved a few really great sayings over the past year, and I've passed some of them along to others. 

That one dubbed me "Amazing Annette" and it still makes me smile stupidly.

This makes me feel strong, even when I know for sure I'm not strong at all.

GREAT visualization of this whole process.

My favorite, because it's Peter Max and it makes me all nostalgic.

And finally...

EYES ON THE PRIZE, PEOPLE!

One little relapse now releases all the dominoes back to Day One again.

The project we were about to start got held up another day by inspections.

I remember in the old days, this would anger me enough to go have a cigarette and calm down. What a joke that was! Why I carried that smoking baggage with me my whole life, I’ll probably never know. I mean over time that baggage gets kind of heavy as we become more enslaved.

In fact, I think I spent way more time thinking about smoking than I did living. All that mental energy wasted on maintaining an addiction. And all that wasted money as well. I remember when I thought I’d quit the moment they went over two dollars a pack. Well, by the time that happened that thought was just a dream. I was so addicted by that point that money didn’t really matter. Big tobacco owned me and for the longest time, I didn’t mind being owned.

Like most smokers, I’d turn off the TV or change the channel when those anti smoking ads started appearing. I mean, I didn’t want to watch some crazy person telling me that I didn’t want to smoke and then trying to scare me into quitting.

No way! I was on top of my game and that game was addiction! I never really saw a need to quit before my final quit attempt. Every now and then I’d just quit for a day or two and then go back to smoking, as if I wanted to verify to myself what quitting would do to my world, but I only got serious three times, the last one being the final time, I think.

And when I analyzed those first two quits, the first thing that always jumped out at me was that I didn’t really want to quit those first two times. And so I knew that I had to find a way to change my thinking. I had to find a way to change my very perception of what I perceived as reality.

I did this through learning and preparation. This is why I took my prep so seriously. Because before when I’d tried to quit and failed, I still loved smoking. I started my learning with the pack tracker and this helped me to identify my triggers. Then I started using separation exercises where I didn’t smoke for several hours a day. I was actually able to learn from this because I treated it more like an experiment where I knew I could still smoke at the end of it.

Also, for each trigger I discovered with the pack tracker, I used separation for that as well by not allowing myself a cigarette for a given amount of time after the normal trigger events. But still, even after all of this, I hadn’t changed my thinking about smoking. I still basically liked to smoke even though I knew it was killing me!

I began to realize that it was more of a need than a like and it was during my preparations that I first came up with my concept of the addict within. The embodiment of my addiction. The thing that I could converse with as it tried to keep me from seeing the realities of freedom. For me, this became a turning point. A time when I could realistically compare my addiction to a life without it.

You see, I’d forgotten what life without addiction was like and as such, I had to imagine that world so that I could compare it to the world that the addict within wanted me to live. This made all of the difference for me because with this new concept, I could finally compare my worlds. And I could ask myself why certain things are certain ways. Sure. All I was really doing was talking to myself but by making my addiction something separate, I could begin to change my perception of it.

I realized that in a way, I was trying to talk my addiction out of wanting to be addicted. And over time, it worked! Soon my entire being was behind the concept of freedom and I didn’t just want to think of freedom. No, I wanted to live it! Soon that became my all consuming thought and by the time I quit, I was excited! I wanted that freedom more than anything I’d ever wanted!

Perhaps for some, the key to a successful quit is simply seeing that addiction for what it really is. The hard part is figuring out how to do that without a clear point of reference. For me it was as simple as seeing my addiction as something that could be reasoned with.

This is why I was able to achieve that one thing that jonescarp told me was the key to success. The laughter! Because of the work I did before hand, I was able to laugh at the urges, making them easier to brush off. And when that wasn’t quite enough, I’d ask the addict within what was wrong and you know what? Every time I asked myself that, the answer was always the same. It wasn’t actually that something was wrong. It was simply that I had changed and it just took my addiction a little longer to accept that . . .

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

Honestly my husband drives me nuts. The stuff he is saying is so mean, then he asks what is wrong? Seriously!
  I want to just run and go smoke!!

He is taking jabs at my body!  That is all I will say and can say at this time  Never did I think I would have these kinds of conversations  with my partner!

I can't even get into it now.  It does hurt deeply and Im in shock over it.

On that note I'm gonna add something funny cuz I cannot write it at this time.

So I'll Just put up a quote that my mind goes to in my free time many days a week.

Random crazy moment.  I feel totally lost right now, with holidays Hubby's issues, me not smoking etc..
Yep Crazy!

On those days before we ever started smoking, we had a perception of our world and how it was supposed to work with us and how we would interact with that world. Our minds were filled with curiosity and yes, a sense of belonging because as a species, we tend to want to stick together. We traverse through life, ever evolving as our minds learn from experience and uses memory to help improve our lives by not making the same mistakes twice.

And then, for some reason we choose to try a substance of the Earth. Perhaps it was that natural curiosity that all us humans have. Perhaps it was because of a perception of maturity or in my case a desire to be cool. Somehow when I was holding that cigarette, it made me feel stronger and more confident for reasons I’ll never really know.

But somewhere along the way we choose to smoke. And with that first cigarette comes the first big lie. You know, the one where we say “one can’t hurt anything, right?” and in reality maybe one didn’t hurt anything. But somehow that one became twenty and then forty and when we reach that point, we begin changing our perception of our world. Our brains begin the creation of receptors and uses this new substance to create a chemical euphoria, and each cigarette causes the mind to create even more of these receptors and as far as the mind is concerned, those changes are perceived as normal simply because of the stimulus we were continuously feeding the mind and body.

The brain itself doesn’t really understand right from wrong, I think. But it does understand euphoria and the feelings of well being that these receptors create everytime we take a drag off of a cigarette which over time changes our perception of everything! Suddenly we find it impossible to be truly happy without a cigarette. In fact, since it is believed that the receptors also release chemicals that dull negative feelings, it makes it really hard to see reality after a while.

I think this also generates the fear we feel when we first decide to quit. We know how we feel when we smoke. But we’ve forgotten what our perception was before we smoked. In essence, we forget what freedom feels like and I think this makes it even harder to quit. We have no reference to compare to and just have to trust that in the end, what we believe to be true if we quit is true.

And then when we do quit, we still get no taste of what that future might bring and it’s so easy to lose sight of the original goal of freedom and remember instead the pleasure that smoking used to bring us. And once that memory comes flooding in, we tend to latch onto it. We want to wake up those receptors so that we can feel what they once offered again. And of course that translates to smoking, or hopefully just the thought of it.

So in reality, the fight is quite real both mentally and physically. This is why our quits are perceived in such a negative light at times. This was why for my quit I’d created Mt. Freedom and the addict within. So I could visualize things in a different light and so that I could understand that my battles weren’t really against the cigarette. No. It was an internal battle against my own perceptions.

Mt. Freedom represented the entire journey from start to finish with the shimmering summit always giving my mind a tangible goal to get to. And I always saw myself dragging the addict within up the mountain with me so that I could keep an eye on him and at times when I really needed to, yell at! I was able to focus all of my anger toward the beast that was screaming inside of me simply by perceiving it as something separate that I could scream at and at times yes, talk to.

I realized that once my perception changed and I could view my addiction as an enemy, it helped me to focus more on what I was gaining rather than what I was losing. And then as the receptors shut down, calming my addictive half, I could once again focus on the future.

Quitting is a process. It takes time. It takes acceptance. It takes a desire to want to see things differently but one thing is certain. Once we can see through the lies of our own making. Once we realize that happiness really doesn’t live inside a modified plant, we begin to calm. And once we begin to calm we can stop living only in the present and look instead to the future that was waiting for us all along.

My hope for you is that you find your own Mt. Freedom. That single thing that keeps you focused on a burning desire for change. On a desire to be free. On a desire to find peace because it’s out there and one day at a time we do find it!

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

Does it Ever End?

That‘s one of the number one questions I’ve seen asked on this site. The short answer is yes, it does. But you know me, I don’t always just give the short answer.

The number one thing that seems hardest for us to grasp when we start this journey is that it takes time. To me, this represents a normal human response. When things are uncomfortable, we want to move on from that discomfort or find a way to stop it.

When our addicted mind begins comparing pros and cons to quitting, we begin to see how hard it’s going to be but we never really know how long we’ll be uncomfortable because every person reacts differently to losing the stimulus of nicotine. I considered myself to be one that had a fairly easy time of it and I think that was because I was ready. I understood well what was going to happen to me and what to do about it when it did. My perception was one of gain and not loss from the first moment that I put out that last cigarette.

Don’t get me wrong, I still had to fight for my freedom just like we all must fight for it. It’s just that I went through the worst of the soul searching that we all must do before I quit and I’d already convinced myself that I wanted to quit. That I wanted freedom more than slavery and that the only way to get there is to get started!

And yes. Like everyone I was curious about how long I was going to feel this discomfort, but I knew I’d done everything in my power to understand it and so when the internal argument began, I’d already had most of those arguments in my head before I quit. And yet they still appeared and yes, at times they annoyed me. So one thing is certain. There’s no way to simply prep your way out of addiction without actually going through the process.

And so, like everyone I at times wondered when it would all end. When I’d feel normal again. When I could rejoin life completely without fear of relapse. And like most, it took some time. I think I had things pretty well in hand in around a month. The discomfort was there but it was so far in the background that it was easily ignored and because of this site I knew that I could embrace that calming of the mind so long as I stayed vigilant and didn’t let the addiction sneak up on me and catch me at a weak moment.

So for me, I’d have to say the answer is that I felt; how should I put it? Back in control of things in a month. Sure, there was more fighting to do but the hardest of it was over in around thirty days. And looking back, I now realize that I was actually feeling gradually better throughout that month. It was just hard to see it while I was living it.

The results of our efforts happen gradually. I don’t remember waking up one day and the discomfort was simply gone. Rather, it was more like an awakening. One day there was just this realization that I was free of my addiction and that there was a day when my addiction felt more like a memory of the past than a real thing that once lived inside of me.

And slowly, I found that I could look back and that was when I realized that I’d really been free for quite some time. My mind just hadn’t accepted it yet. That’s why we call the first week hell week and the second week heck week.

In hell week we must fight the loss of nicotine, or reduction of nicotine if we use NRT’s and deal with the mental aspect of what we’re doing at the same time. Generally in heck week, we’ve managed to fight off the worst of it and as such we actually have time to think about what we’re doing, but the fight is still a difficult one.

We start to question if what we’re doing is really the right thing to be doing, even as we know it is. (The seemingly endless internal argument) Again, this is because our natural human nature wants us to rid ourselves of discomfort even though by the second week, it has lessened in intensity.

For me, there were a lot of discoveries in the third week. My mind had calmed enough to do a little soul searching and I realized that this quit was in my grasp. I began to believe I really was going to make it to that wonderful freedom that I was now dreaming of constantly for you see, that little bit of fear that was still within me was now gone! My future was set and I intended to see it through.

In other words, I’d reached the point of acceptance to my quit. I’d reached that place where I was no longer questioning what I wanted to do. Now, I was getting excited to realize the future that I could see more clearly now. I had at last reached that tipping point where freedom was more important to me than the discomfort and to me, when we reach this point is when the discomfort ends.

So I Guess the answer for me was the day I accepted that I no longer smoked was when it ended and you know what? Thinking back, even that started in the second week! The balls in your court. All you have to do is reach your tipping point, and you will so long as you keep fighting my friends! I look forward to that day when you’re telling me your story of acceptance.

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

I have been on the verge of  perhaps panic attacks or hysteria!  IDK

It's scaring me.

Anyone else? 

I  so want to just bite someone really hard right now!

This addiction is pulling at at my passion and romantic sick thinking that smoking is amazing.

It is so not!  It stinks!  It tastes awful!   It burns my throat!  It makes me wheeze!  It causes me to cough endlessly!

It will kill me slowly!   No worse way to leave this world!

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I've had a busy last weekend, with my Dad's 90th surprise party, it was a huge success.  Monday I went to see my grief councillor.  That girl is old enough to be my daughter, and we have such a great connection and she always makes me feel like a million bucks!!  I have been also busy with friends and family a ton of phone calls.  Some with good news others not so much.  I am trying to be there for everyone!!  I hope I can get myself organized for my trip Dec. 27th and still enjoy the Christmas season even without Brian.  My neighbour called me tonight to invite me out to the legion with her husband and the neighbour who also lost his wife last year at this time.  i usually try and restrict my activities, but I said yes today when she called!!!  It's coming up a New Year soon.  I'm dreading it and looking forward to it at the same time!!  Onward and Upward, life is good, eat it up!!!  Especially without the cigs!!

I am so blessed to know all of you here at EX.  Thank you for your patience and kindness!!

xoxo

Chrissy

Lord,

My husband and I have been put thru the ringer with medical tests.  His vertigo systems...  My scopes, biopsies,  xrays, now another low dose scan..

My lungs are a mess.  And yes, if I could get it passed my lungs I would sneak a dreaded killing, suffocating, cancerous stick of tobacco in my mouth. 

I know better now, it is much to late to keep playing that game. Those days are so over.  But for whoever, needs to know just one more. it wont hurt;  Think again!  It will, It can, and it does!

Sometimes you have to let a learned process, of addictiction and behavior, go every single moment, for the rest of your life. 
 The Good news is: The unlearning behavior  process "Can Not" kill you!!

Writing to myself, and anyone, who wants to know what I'm going thru!! As I schedule more madness in the medical testing world, from toxic waste that I have allowed myself" to put in my body!  

NO MORE!  
I will commit to parenting my mind!
They say when u first start a new rule, it is always hardest in the beginning", and gets  easier as time goes on".   So be it!!

Almost 6 DOF YES! 


Truth!

When we first quit smoking it feels like there’s a storm brewing somewhere kind of off in the distance. And then as the hours pass, the storm becomes more visible, it’s dark imposing clouds looking like they’ll swallow us up. Soon it’s close enough to hear the thunder that goes with the flashing of the lightning. You can feel a sense of foreboding and the air is thick with tension.

And so often, we stare at that storm and feel a kind of fear that it might overtake us and leave us in the darkness, not quite sure of which way to go. But there in the distance is a glimmer of light. Something that seems to have found its way through the storm. Suddenly, we know which way to go, for now the light is guiding us.

Slowly, as we walk toward the light, something begins to take shape and soon we realize that we can see the end of the storm just ahead. But first we have to get there. Carefully, we navigate forward, trying to peer through the darkness into the light that we know is on the other side.

We continue following that single white light and slowly as we walk, the sky turns from black to an ashen grey and now we can see more clearly. Soon we see the wisps of blue sky that we always knew were there, we just couldn’t see them. And now as the light improves even more we begin to pick up the pace for we now understand how to get to the other side and not only that, we know that we intend to get there.

All at once we realize that the sky is clear! We’ve survived the storm that we might not have if it weren’t for that one little light that we grabbed hold of and refused to let go.

This is kind of how I saw my journey to freedom in a nutshell. When we first start out, it feels like the storm is brewing and constantly gaining strength. We sense a kind of foreboding that we might not make it through, but we take what is at first a shaky confidence and turn that confidence into a powerful quit once we understand what is happening to us.

For me, the light signified the wonderful people at EX who guided me through the darkness of addiction, first convincing my that the light was actually there and then nudging me on, into the storm but at the same time, ever closer to the other side. Even when all I could see was a kind of confusing darkness, they were always there for me. All I had to do was listen.

And I did listen and found what would help me most, using that to bolster my confidence and keeping me on track as I slowly found the light that I was sure was always there.

And to be honest, I did find that light that I’d been seeking my whole life and I know that the main thing I did different with this quit was to use the knowledge and power of the many to help bolster me and help propel me to the next level.

Never think you have to face the storm alone. Never for an instant believe that there is no light on the other side of the storm because there is. All you have to do is first face the storm and then find your way through it.

And as the storm builds, look for the light that is knowledge to guide you through. Look for the bread crumbs that so many of us have left along the path for you in the hopes that you won’t get lost.

There’s a kind of power when a group of people choose to band together for a common goal. A means of keeping each other focused and safe from our own minds. A power that is as strong as love for in reality, it is love.

Compassion may be all a person needs at times to succeed. Just to know that others care, even if we’ve never met them face to face. Just to know that when it comes to taking back our freedom from addiction, our hearts beat as one. It doesn’t matter if we’ve been quit for ten minutes or ten years. We all share a kind of wisdom that can only come from common goals, ideas and yes even common fears that we’ve all felt.

As such I just wanted to thank all of those who took my hand and helped to guide me through the storm and make the storm seem so much less scary and also to let you all know that those of us who have found freedom come here for a lot of reasons but the main reason I think is we know what’s on the other side of the storm. We know how wonderful that world is and we want to share that world with all that seek to find it! Keep your eye on the prize of freedom and soon it will be your new reality!

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

When we first decide to quit, it seems like a cute little idea at first that we kind of file into the background. But then as the mind nurtures this thought and starts really thinking that this is indeed what we need to do, a strange thing happens. The long argument with ourselves begins in that very moment.

Sometimes we lose that argument with ourselves. Other times we again file it away for later consideration. But sometimes, we grab hold of the positive and decide that we’re really going to do something positive for ourselves. We’re really going to create a new world. And once again, something strange happens only this time, the mind interprets it as fear. Mind numbing debilitating fear. At least that’s how it was for me.

And this is the reason I knew I’d have to take my quit seriously. My mind was completely consumed by my addiction; the tentacles, like a snake sneaking it’s way into everything that seemed to matter. Into every part of my being.

And I prepped for this so I’d be ready but the bottom line is no amount of prep can take away what we have to do on those first few days. You see, on those days we’ve kind of entered a new world and the problem is the old world doesn’t want to give up on itself.

 When we smoked, the brain would send us impulses that we always interpreted as wanting a cigarette. These are sent because of changes in the brain that smoking caused, creating nicotine receptors These receptors expect a certain thing when they send an impulse and when the mind blocks what we normally do because we’re trying to quit, it creates confusion. And it creates the old familiar discomfort that we’ve all experienced.

Those two things together make it harder to see the positive aspects of what we’re trying to do when we quit. We can easily forget the tools we found and created to help us at first because we now have a different response to those impulses than what the brain used to consider to be “normal”.

And we haven’t yet learned that we’ve changed how we react to those impulses. I always used mental pictures to change my focus for several reasons. I don’t know if this is the same for everyone but for me, when I present a picture to my mind, it kind of gets all parts of it working together.

When we’re feeling negative in nature, sometimes we have to actively try to change it. My favorite method for this was to visualize a quiet place, and I mean really build it in the mind right down to the smallest blade of grass and the shapes of the clouds floating by. There’s something about painting a calm picture for the mind to focus on that just changes everything. And not only that, creating this scene can distract the mind from the hardest moments of our quits.

I know this idea isn’t for everybody. It’s just something that worked for me. The main point I’m trying to make is that because of what the brain does to us when we quit, we have to find a way to focus on the positive and kind of change the brain patterns simply because when losing an addiction it’s too easy to dwell on that addiction at first, blinding us to the actual positive nature of what we’re doing.

We have to find a way to see that THIS change is positive. Another visualization method that I used at weak times was to do a kind of comparison of my future, both smoke free and addicted. When we paint pictures like this, it helps the mind to focus on the picture we want to focus on which is naturally the positive one.

For example, I’d see my future after having quit. I’d see it as a gathering of my loved ones. Children, grandchildren and all the people I care about. In the one picture, I never got around to quitting and I’m sitting there in a wheelchair, oxygen tubes everywhere, my jaw surgically removed because of cancer. My grandchildren looking at me with concern in their eyes. There’s smiles, but they’re all fake smiles hiding the fear that they feel because they love us. And all my mind can see is “Why didn’t I choose a different path. Why did I remain so weak.”

And then the other scenario where I’m standing in the kitchen, helping to prepare a large meal. The smiles are real because there’s no concern from my loved ones of an agonizing death. And my smile is genuine as well. I can see the passion for life and a healthy glint in my eye as I survey all the ones that I loved. And I tell myself, “See what you did? Way back then, all those years ago when you quit, you created this future. You created this new and wonderful world for yourself.”

And even in the worst of times, my mind always gravitated to the positive image. The one we all know we want to see. That’s why I say it’s within us all to quit. That little gem of freedom has always been there. We just buried it away for a while. And I’ll tell you what. Once we unearth that gem it becomes a shimmering banner of freedom that propels us to that positive future that was there all along. We just had to find it and more than that, we had had to want it more than anything else we’ve ever wanted!

Keep fighting my friends! And in those dark moments when we feel the weakest, alway look ahead for that’s where the incredible rewards lie. The balls in your court. Which future will you choose?

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

is the ONLY reason for this DECEMBER SEASON.... please take what HELPS and let go of the rest to be HELPFUL is MY only aim... Thank you... soon and very soon the time will come when EACH individual will be standing before MY Lord Jesus.... EACH individual is responsible for your very OWN CHOICE to believe or not...the consequence is eternal life with God or eternal separation..... Free individual choosing......just like freely choosing to quit using nicotine or not..... EACH individual gets to FREELY CHOOSE.... and gets their own individual... CONSEQUENCE....aint it grand Gods mercy and grace.... Choose wisely ...... Its all up to you!

These are some nicodemon thoughts and good responses to them from a book I read a 9 years ago.  I was amazed at how someone could read my mind!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When it comes to addictive behavior and thought processes, the smoker is right up there with the cocaine or heroine addict. Especially in the early stages of quitting smoking do we tend to crave "Just One". Unfortunately, that is nothing but the mind of the addict rationalizing the next of many fixes. (Excerpted from Patricia Allison's book "Hooked But Not Helpless") Find out why "Just One" can never be an option...

JUNKIE THINKING: "One Puff won't hurt"
RESPONSE: "One puff will always hurt me, and it always will because I'm not a social smoker. One puff and I'll be smoking compulsively again."

*JUNKIE THINKING: "I only want one."
RESPONSE: "I have never wanted only one. In fact, I want 20-30 a day every day. I want them all."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I'll just be a social smoker."
RESPONSE: "I'm a chronic, compulsive smoker, and once I smoke one I'll quickly be thinking about the next one. Social smokers can take it or leave it. That's not me."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I'm doing so well, one won't hurt me now."
RESPONSE: "The only reason I'm doing so well is because I haven't taken the first one. Yet once I do, I won't be doing well anymore. I'll be smoking again."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I'll just stop again."
RESPONSE: "Sounds easy, but who am I trying to kid? Look how long it too me to stop this time. And once I start, how long will it take before I get sick enough to face withdrawal again? In fact, when I'm back in the grip of compulsion, what guarantee do I have that I'll ever be able to stop again?"

JUNKIE THINKING: "If I slip, I'll keep trying."
RESPONSE: "If I think I can get away with one little "slip" now I'll think I can get away with another little "slip" later on."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I need one to get me through this withdrawal."
RESPONSE: "Smoking will not get me through the discomfort of not smoking. It will only get me back to smoking. One puff stops the process of withdrawal and I'll have to go through it all over again."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I miss smoking right now."
RESPONSE: "Of course I miss something I've been doing every day for most of my life. Bud do I miss the chest pain right now? Do I miss the worry, the embarrassment? I'd rather be an ex-smoker with an occasional desire to smoke, than a smoker with a constant desire to stop doing it."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I really need to smoke now, I'm so upset."
RESPONSE: "Smoking is not going to fix anything. I'll still be upset, I'll just be an upset smoker. I never have to have a cigarette. Smoking is not a need; it's a want. Once the crisis is over, I'll be relieved and grateful I'm still not smoking."

JUNKIE THINKING: "I don't care."
RESPONSE: "What is it exactly that I think that I don't care about? Can I truthfully say I don't care about chest pain? I don't care about gagging in the morning? I don't care about lung cancer? No, I care about these things very much. That's why I stopped smoking in the first place."

JUNKIE THINKING: "What difference does it make, anyway?"
RESPONSE: "It makes a difference in the way I breathe, the way my heart beats, the way I feel about myself. It makes a tremendous difference in every aspect of my physical and emotional health."

* this one saved me many times!!

Breathe Deep and stay strong!

Molly

11/20/2009

Please I am talking about me not anyone else......please take what HELPS and let go of the rest..to be HELPFUL is MY only aim......thank you.

I am so grateful and joy filled this is December - 2018.....I am so grateful and joy filled I have to live through this day ONLY.... I am so joy filled that we have HOT water....I am joy filled I was able to exercise...TODAY....I am joy filled I was a very good mom to MY daughter all this past week and I was staying grown up and spiritually mature as WE deal with OUR reality...... her cirrhosis of the liver....l prayed and asked God to teach ME to mind MY own business and enjoy OUR TIME TOGETHER.....we did and it was wonderful....each WE day lived in the PRESENT OF THAT DAY IN HIS LOVE.......NO MATTER WHAT....... by faith in Him in ME and I prayed and asked MY precious Holy Counselor..... to let Him continue to lead and teach ME...... to keep MY SIDE OF THE STREET CLEAN and to take MY OWN INVENTORY EACH DAY......to live in His Spiritual fruits...... as HE gave them to ME..to be really honest with MYSELF and  OBEY MY Holy Comforter...... to let MY daughter be herself....WE grew spiritually TOGETHER and SEPARATE...WE agreed to disagree at times on different subjects and WE agreed on some too...it was nice to be real with each other and to talk from our hearts.....EACH....living separate yet together....cirrhosis of the liver is a tough subject to discuss....YET IT IS POSSIBLE in MY Lord Jesus name and HIS faith in ME......I prayed and ask MY Holy Comforter to lead and speak through ME and to let His fruits grow MORE ABUNDENT IN ME as He chose to give them to ME in the moments of intense grieving in MY MOTHERS HEART......to just sit and cry and give up the old patterns and habits of playing God....Savior....and Holy Spirit junior......I SURRENDERED MY TRYING TO CONTROL AND FIX....I asked and prayed to be completely SURRENDERED TO TRUSTING GOD FOR HIS PLAN FOR OUR MOTHER AND DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP.....for ME to keep trusting and growing to remain OPEN MINDED WITH NO CRITICAL LISTENING whenever MY daughter spoke her.... OWN MIND...WILL AND HEART..... when she said.....I want to drink alcohol...go to work....and go to sleep and drink alcohol...work...sleep...ONLY BY GODS GRACE I KEPT MY BIG MOUTH SHUT and I ask MY Holy Spirit  to hold ME tight and comfort ME...HE did by reminding ME it is written....I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me......by reminding ME........ MY 33 year old daughter can live her OWN LIFE AS SHE CHOOSES....HER LIFE IS  NOT YOURS TO LIVE.....IT IS HERS!!!!  Some moments I was watching her sleep and the yellow skin SEEMED TO GLOW and MY MOTHER EYES filled with tears that burned MY face and HUMBLED MY PRIDE ......I had a lot of mixed emotions and thoughts that I had to sort through and some hard heart resentments and bitterness I confessed and I received Gods forgiveness with no false guilt or condemnation and I CHOSE to make a decision to suffer with her of MY OWN free will and her CHOICES which WE NOW BOTH.....suffer the consequences of HER CHOICE....I remain HOPEFUL and I am remember to ask MY Holy Comforter and Counselor to continue to teach ME to be PURELY MOTIVATED TO BE OF SERVICE TO MY DAUGHTER IN HIS FRUITS OF LOVE- JOY- PEACE- LONG SUFFERING- KINDNESS- GOODNESS-FAITHFULNESS- GENTLENESS AND SELF CONTROL which He gives to ME.....all in MY Lord Jesus name.....I pray and ask to be unafraid to tell her how I feel and what I think as her mom and she as my daughter who needs a NEW LIVER...and to continue to accept she doesn't want to get on that LIVER LIST .......the doctor told her to get on it and where the place was located.....NO ACTION ON MY DAUGHTER PART and I have shown respect and honor to MY daughter's wishes and to leave HER TO DECIDE FOR HERSELF.......IT IS HER LIFE!!!  I thank God for being able to be MYSELF and letting her be herself too.......it was good to communicate with NO FEARS ..... ..and I am joy filled to be forgiven by God and loved by Him to stay in..... ONE DAY-ONE BREATH- ONE MOMENT......LIVE AND LET LIVE.......LET GO AND LET GOD......to be able to kiss MY daughter on each of her cheeks and hug her as she goes off to work second shift and to trust MY Lord Jesus to take care of THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP AND KEEP MY HANDS OFF and to enjoy when WE meet EACH DAY again and to let her sleep ......WE start out watching a movie together but she falls asleep most of the time....I believe the body HEALS ITSELP when you sleep.....I am joy filled to come to the library to use the FREE computers....to BLOG MY MOTHER HEART  EXPERIENCE WITH CIRROHSIS to all who live with family members who are ill  ...... TODAY the news is FYI.... my phone is shut off until further notice.... SO... I will not be on the site as much.....so to the library I come....NO WORRIES.....MY Lord Jesus is not using nicotine to COPE and neither am I......yahoooooooooo...NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF EVER OVER ME AND KNOWING THAT..... THIS TOO SHALL PASS....we have our Lord Jesus and his love and tender mercies to be blessed with a roof over our heads and our health and food and water and heat..God willing the rent will be paid and a car with gas to come to the library to use their FREE computers to visit MY LOVING....UNDERSTANDING....RECOVERING FROM NICOTINE FAMILY....thanks for letting me share MY first day of December / 2018 with you all.