Reversing the cycle of addiction :
written a few months after my quit .
As I was coming home from a work out at the gym yesterday , I thought about how 3 years ago I could barely breathe, and here I am today, doing a full 2 hours excersise , not turning blue or passing out from lack of oxygen . I went from 3 inhalers and a nebulizer , and a probable diagnosis of copd to a rescue inhaler for asthma . Wow ! Quitting smoking can change all that !!! From blackened lungs to pink , healthy, breathable lungs ! I remembered my fingernails and fingers ; index and middle fingers , both hands, right and left , yellow from Nicotene and Tar. Then, I remembered , a disgusting brownish yellow, as the years of smoking continued , and hiding my hands from plain sight of others. The whites of my eyes had even taken on the hue of a sickly yellow . I thought of the smoke I inhaled all those years running through my blood, clogging blood vessels ,arteries and veins like blackened soot in a fireplace chimney . That beautiful red blood that gives life , I had taken for granted , and disrespected . I remembered my mother with gangrene in her feet , blackened with greenish rot; Amputation was next ; and my father who died of emphysema and heart failure . I thought of the lungs and heart I was fatally destroying by my smoking . Yes, I know, this is graphic, but, it it was reality . I denied everything and smoking was making me sick > Why did I deny it for so long ? , because quitting was hard and I was scared . I was scared to smoke and scared of failure if I tried to quit .
10 years 133 days
Maki
You can do it , you are doing it . One day at a time . One foot in front of the other .
You Got This Quit!
