Today is 50 days I've not smoked or used any NRT. While in happy to be at 50 days I'm not ecstatic I still feel vulnerable to my own emotions. The reason is because my last day was 250 days quit when I started smoking again in an emotional outburst In fact I've had many quit start have gone 4 to 8 months. I've just not been able to stay quit for more than 8 months before sabotaging myself and starting up again. This is over the last twenty years. So my goal this time is to protect my quit no matter what and get to that ninth month. I'm doing two things different this time which I hope will help me stay the course .First, I am aware of my biggest triggers which have torpedoed my last few quits. With that knowledge, I have set up an plan on how to respond in this situations. When I get into that emotional 'who gives a crap anymore I'm just gonna smoke' mindset I have planned and promised to do the following and in this order : drive to the gym and get in the treadmill an run for an hour no matter how hard or crap I feel After that if I still feel the urge to smoke, I'm gonna go and get a massage After that, if I still wanna smoke, I'll call a good friend who doesn't smoke and go invite him to have a great meal together, on me - and no alcohol. Well, this worked last time I had an emotional outburst around day 30. And I drove off and was headed towards the convenient store and in a total rage of frustration and stresd. I got those feelings of wanting to smoke to solve my problems or cope with them or whatever. As I got closer I remembered my plan. I debated with myself ,go through with the plan or just smoke .I decided to at least just drive to the gym. When I got there I parked in the lot between the entrance and a Walgreens. I sat there in the car arguing with myself to follow through with the plan or just go to Walgreens and smoke. I decided to just go and start running and then smoke after if I still wanted to. I got on the treadmill an started running. I was in a rage still, going through all the stories in my mind as to what the problems were. I was running slowly and looking at myself in the reflection of the tv monitor in the treadmill. I kept running. After about 20 minutes, things started coming into perspective. I started to chill out. I started to consider alternative explanations. I started to think of alternative responses I started thinking about tomorrow and how this problem would probably just pass and I would still be in the and situation or worse if I smoked. I realized what was going on and knew I had to not smoke. That I didn't want to even. After running for 45 minutes I felt pretty calm. I decided to do some weight lifting to release some endorphins and maybe even get positive feelings going It worked. I felt great and after showering went to work and had a productive day.everything turned out fine. I was real proud of myself and knew what I need to do going forward when I get in that mood. I have a plan for handling that trigger. I felt stronger.
The second thing I'm doing differently is posting to this community. This is only my second post, but I'm giving it a try to see if the social support helps. I don't really talk about it with friends and family too much because frankly they either think I quit years ago or they are tired of hearing that I quit and then see me smoke again. My colleagues at work don't know I ever smoked either cus it is something I hid from them and don't want to reveal for many reasons. So I'm trying this out. Thanks to all of you who responded to my first post, by the way. It was nice to see that others were there to hear what I had to say.
