cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Share your quitting journey

Alternatives 64/90

PastTense
Member
7 5 100

I have been exploring what it means to be a serial quitter and what it takes to finally get to a final quit. A real quit. A quit where, you know, there is an actual cessation of smoking.

I have had until just recently, a series of … what do I even call them? Not “fake quits” because I truly do not want to be a smoker. But they certainly weren’t honest quits, either.  Let’s call them “Alternative Quits”; certainly not genuine, but at least I could say I was trying.

For purposes of this discussion, the defining characteristic of an alternative quit is the reward smoke. A reward smoke is the easiest, sneakiest way of justifying a break in your quit. I have done this a hundred times; get to some milestone in my quit and convince myself I had earned a reward and that reward was a cigarette.

I think many of my alt-quits started as genuine quits. I thought somehow if I started the quit, I would develop an obsession to finish the quit. I don’t know what magic I thought would happen, but I assumed that a force bigger than me was necessary. Maybe that’s what willpower is. I never got it; whatever it is. I had to step up every day and re-establish my goal to be a non-smoker. The Blue Fairy was never going to tap me over the head and turn an alt-quit into a real quit, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy.

Twenty-five days and counting, this is for reals.

Keep the quit

PT

5 Comments