Two years....More than seven hundred days..... Not touching a cigarette...Feels strange and unbelievable. Have a lot of mixed feelings and am finding it hard to articulate the emotion.
This has probably been the single-most difficult personal struggle that I have gone through in my adult life- to kick the nasty addiction to nicotine.
It all started more than four-and-a-half years ago when one fine January morning I resolved to kick the addiction that kept me in its clutches for about two decades. In the first two-and-a-half years, although I kept my quit for long periods of time, kept relapsing regularly, about seven- eight times. When I first came to this site in June'09, I had again started a quit which always seem to go well until suddenly, inexplicably I start romancing the smoke. I relapsed in September'09 for a couple of weeks and then somehow my resolve to quit grew stronger.
I had used this site to put up regular posts on a monthly basis to keep track of my progress and also to keep strengthening my resolve to stay quit - with time somehow our early motivations and reasons for starting the quit seem to fade from memory unless we keep revisiting them. Also there is this feedback from fellow travellers which nourishes our motivation.
Now when I go over all the blog posts that I have made in this 2 1/2 years, I have a truthful snapshot of the progress of my thinking. And a sense of quiet satisfaction that I have succeeded in simplifying my life by staying away from nicotine.
The very fact that I have not blogged for the past five months means that the thoughts of smoking no longer assail me with any notable frequency. I have come to a stage where someone smoking in my presence has become irritating for me.
I do not know whether 2 years of smobriety has given me any right to pontificate to others in the early phase of the quit struggle. But the lessons are crystal clear: there is absolutely no justification for the existence of nicotine in our lives. A smokefree life is a happy, healthy, stable and sane life. I wish all those who come to this site with a resolve to banish nicotine from their lives, all the very best. This is a life-altering, life-enhancing choice.
Never Take Another Puff.
