Nine Years! It's hard to believe, but yes, I am celebrating my anniversary of quitting (actually, I quit at 7 p.m. on December 31, 2014, but I consider New Year's Day my first full day of not smoking, hence my true anniversary). What I'm noticing, however, is that while I remembered this quit anniversary, I didn't anxiously anticipate it. It's kind of like the difference between running a marathon, where the finish line is the goal, and running for the pleasure of it. (Bad analogy -- for me there would NEVER be pleasure in running, and the mere thought of a marathon . . .). Nonetheless, if you had told me on New Year's day 2015 that I would be looking back from this distance, I wouldn't have believed you. My goal at that time was to get through the first day. And the first week, and the first month, and I couldn't even see to the end of the first year. All I can say is that Allen Carr's book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking gave me the right attitude about quitting, and the love and support of this community helped me every single step of the way. I had to do the hard work of staying quit, but I'm not really sure I would be celebrating this anniversary if I hadn't had the beautiful arms of EX around me.
A word to the newbies who see this and think "she must know something I don't know." Not true. I was right exactly where you are now. I saw posts from long-time-quitters and simply couldn't identify with them. But know these things:
1. You can do this.
2. Work every day on your attitude toward quitting. Attitude is everything. If you are feeling deprived, believe me, I understand. Every quit I tried prior to 12/1/15 failed because I believed I was missing something important and necessary to my well being! Allen Carr's book dispelled that subversive notion. There is no greater threat to a successful quit than the feeling of deprivation. When I grasped that, I gained a perspective that allowed me to move through the difficulty of quitting.
3. Craves won't kill you. One of the things I experienced in those earlier quits was fear of a big crave. When I had them I felt I would die unless I smoked. (Let me pause here for a moment and contemplate that sentence. Wow.) I pretty much couldn't not think about smoking. The transcript of my thoughts in the prior quits was "I want to smoke, I want to smoke, I want to smoke, I want to smoke - oh look, there's a squirrel - I want to smoke I want to smoke . . .) It felt like torture. But again, I was obsessing because I felt so deprived.
4. You will have good days and bad days. Yes, I was well-prepared for this quit. Yes, I had phenomenal support. Yes, I was known as the happy quitter nine years ago. But I still had some really awful days. Not too many, thank heaven, but there were days that I wondered if I would get through them. I'm particularly thinking of day 43, when something upsetting happened at work. I posted "I went out to take a walk in the 2 degree wind-chill, and I'm a little better now, but if I've ever been vulnerable in this last 44 days this is IT. I do not want to smoke but every fiber of my being is straining for that cigarette. Instead of getting in my car and going to 7-11 for a pack I decided to blog. I'm sitting tight." There were other challenging days, when all I could do was not move. The best advice I got regarding craves was to just think of it as a wave, It will crest and then subside, and you just have to get through it.
5. The time will pass whether you quit or not. The days will pass. You came to EX because you don't want to be a smoker anymore. The next year will pass, and all you have to do is not smoke.
6. Finally, know you will always have a little addicted person in your brain who is very opportunistic. Certain emotions, certain situations will cause that little lady to whisper in my year that I want a cigarette. Wait, what? I've been quit for 9 years now and that still happens? Not often. Maybe 3 times in this past year, especially when I was laid off and had to spend 6 months finding a new job. It's not hard to tell that addict to go back to sleep, but even in a long-term quit it can happen. The good news about this is the longer you are quit the more precious it becomes.
So thank you all for being here, even when I pop in to celebrate an anniversary. I love you, EX.
