I am a nicotine addict!
Didn’t we all hate having to say that? Didn’t we all feel a great burden lifted when we did say it & mean it? But that’s what we all have to do if we want a successful quit. I listened to my wife for a very long time telling me that I had a problem with smoking. I laughed. Problem, I wasn’t hurting anyone or in trouble with the law. What was she talking about? I worked & paid my bills & supported my family.
September 30th 2004 I was feeling very bad physically & we were gonna be on a 15 hour flight to China very soon. That morning I had finally come to the realization that I was gonna die very soon if I didn’t quit. Who was gonna help my wife raise those two beautiful daughters? Was I too late? I went on line & found a support group. I read & posted & smoked & tried to quit all day looking for the one thing that would do it for me. No matter what I read I wasn’t ready to admit that I was an addict. About 7:00 that evening I went outside for a smoke after dinner. As I was smoking my cigarette & wondering when I would be through I checked my pack & noticed I had “ONLY†9 left. A normal person would have said hey I’m good to go. Not me. My reaction was to immediately go into panic mode & try to make a decision to go to the store for more or risk running out by morning. That’s when it hit me that my wife had been right. I’ve got a problem. I AM A NICOTINE ADDICT! I was wasting money, wasting time & wasting my life away. Those 9 cigarettes were crushed & went in the toilet. All ashtrays were thrown away. I made apologies to my wife for my selfish attitude & the time I had stolen from my family.
The next morning I went back to the support group & made a sincere commitment to them that I wasn’t going to try to quit, I was going to quit. I wanted to be held accountable. The one thing that did it for me…I didn’t worry about that trip to China & I didn’t try to think about staying quit for the rest of my life. I just lived in the moment. I was making a choice every few minutes that I would not light up. I did that with a lot of help from friends like you that I think the world of. Pretty soon all those minutes turned into hours turned into days turned into weeks turned into months turned into years.
Today, October 1, 2008 marks 4 years of living a smoke free life.
4 years, 7 hours, 22 minutes and 50 seconds...51...52...53...54...
