Here's my theory about this whole situation. This is what makes this whole site incredible. We just have a bunch of former smokers helping other smokers quit and stay quit. It's not solely run by nonsmokers or what I like to call white coats. It's not run by a recording or by people that preach and preach about the bad effects of smoking and what it's doing to our health. Trust me, we all know what it does and what it potentially can do. We've all seen the black lung photos on the news and Facebook and everywhere else. We've all had the bad case of bronchitis but managed to smoke our way through it. Why? Because we're addicted to the substance inside of that cigarette. New research was found years ago that smoking is not only a habit. They figured out what alcohol does to a person, but it just took them a tad longer to evolve around smoking.
Cravings, urges, the overwhelming need to smoke truly goes away between 2 weeks to a month depending on how long you smoked. Many years ago they said 3 days to a week. Now new research shows it may take longer. I've seen a lot of blogs lately wondering about how long this will last. Why after so many days or months am I having these cravings still? I've got a very simple answer for that. It's not a craving you're feeling. It's not a physical withdrawal symptom you're experiencing. It is very simply moving through your day-to-day life not doing something. Let's compare that to a very simple task we all used to go through when we wrote checks for everything. Debit cards never existed. A new year rolled around. It took forever to get the hang of writing the new year. Sometimes you just subconsciously wrote out the previous year just out of habit, something you were used to doing over and over for the last 12 months.
Now, let's compare that to smoking. You went through your life every day for the last who knows how long performing the same task every day, lighting up a cigarette. You suffered through the last couple of weeks with the physical symptoms. I know in my case it was tingling of the fingers and hands, difficulty in concentration, receeding gum lines in my mouth or even sores. My body had absolutely no clue what was going on. My brain was still trying to figure out why I wasn't giving it something that I was pouring into my bloodstream for at least 30 to 40 times a day. After the initial withdrawal, I still had that stranglehold on that cigarette thinking IT was what was causing what I was calling cravings after 2 months, 3 months to even 4 months. Those were not cravings. They were simply sparks of memories being conjured up by just living my day-to-day life. I was now creating new memories from my day-to-day life by just not doing one thing, smoking, and my brain was not liking it.
We never really realize how often we do something until we no longer do it. There will be days where memories are more prevalent than other days. It could be just driving down a familiar road and you just unconsciously grab for that pack, because it's something you've always done. There will be days when you wake up and just something is just not right with the world. The first thing you used to do was grab for that pack. Turn your thinking around. When you have “one of those days,” treat yourself to an iced coffee or a special treat somewhere. Think to yourself how wonderful that tastes. That bad start may be simply a dream you had that night. Go to the store and buy yourself a wax melt or some scent you really enjoy. I'll just bet you that that restless feeling disappeared for a while. It may not disappear forever, but it did for that moment in time. Life is but a concept. It's how we perceive it is what's important.................
