Welcome Ammar DDfree and Trying1231 I have been quit for over 3 years now, thanks to this site. I tried many times to quit on my own and aside from pregnancies, I never stayed quit for very long. I smoked for 47 years except for pregnancies...I got sick, REALLY sick, and that was it. I have not smoked since January of 2014. I told myself that if I could HONESTLY come up with a reason to smoke, that I would smoke...HONESTLY is the key word here, would smoking take away physical pain? Depression? Stress? Anger? If I answered those questions HONESTLY, I knew that nothing ever changed because I smoked. I would smoke FURIOUSLY if I was angry...furiously is the key word there. If I was in pain (I suffer from chronic pain), smoking might distract me for a couple of minutes but it never took the pain away. Smoking does nothing FOR you, it does a lot TO you. It has ravaged my lungs and made my life much more difficult than it would be if I never smoked. I also felt HORRIBLE when people would walk by me and glare at me for smoking...I never smoked inside of my house but it is less and less acceptable to smoke ANYWHERE. Smoking made me look and feel like I was not very smart...I did not want to continue to allow an addiction to rule my life, to tell me what to do and when to do it. I have been on Wellbutrin for years, all of my doctors have told me that when you have chronic pain, it changes the chemical makeup of your brain and antidepressants help pain medications to be more effective. I was on several different ones before I was put on this one, this was the only one that did not make me feel overly sleepy or make my heart pound. Everyone is different and everyone reacts differently to medications. I had already been on Wellbutrin for a long time when I quit smoking so I cannot tell you if it helped. I CAN tell you that being completely honest with myself worked. There were some really challenging times in the beginning, I came here every morning and every night and I read blogs, I commented, I wrote blogs. I took the advice of the elders...I drank a LOT of water to flush the nicotine from my system and I distracted myself when I had craves...then I acknowledged them but I did not give them power by fighting them. I let them come and go and I KNEW they would go. No crave lasts long and no crave ever killed anyone. Can't say the same thing about cigarettes. I had previously tracked my cigarettes and the triggers and I had figured out what I would do INSTEAD of smoking. Jumping jacks, take a shower, brush my teeth, wash my hands, smell a perfume I really liked, play a computer game...anything EXCEPT smoking, that was off the table. Make your commitment and stick with it, come here and ask for help when you need it and remember that there will be good days and bad days and they happen when you smoke too...stick with your quit, value yourself, you will learn so much that you will be astounded. You stuffed your feelings into those cigarettes and now you are going to learn how to deal with your feelings WITHOUT a cloud of smoke. It is a journey, a journey to get to know who you are, who you always were supposed to be.
Again, welcome to EX.
Ellen
