EX Community

I'm no stranger to quitting smoking. I quit back in 2003 with the help of an online forum similar to this one, and I remained quit for 11 years. Then, during a particularly difficult time in my life, I made the tragic mistake of thinking I could have "just one" cigarette. Just one was all it took. Within weeks, I was back to smoking a pack a day. I would try for 4 years to quit, stopping for as long as 6 months to a year before starting again. Then, at the end of 2018, I'd had enough. I decided it was time to quit for good, but in order to do that, I needed to figure out what I'd been doing wrong in my previous attempts. After some soul searching, I figured it out: I needed to take smoking off the table and stop romancing the cigarette for good. You see, I never really changed my attitude about smoking. I thought it was something I missed. In the deep recesses of my addict brain I still thought of smoking as an "option"--an option for dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, weight, etc. A small voice inside my head whispered that I could always return to the habit if life ever got too hard. So while I didn't battle the constant cravings during those 11 years I was quit, my inner addict still lived on the hope that one day something would send me running back to the habit. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. So what makes this quit different? Now I know without a doubt that smoking doesn't solve problems. It only creates new ones. I have taken smoking off the table and declared once and for all that it is not an option for me.