I feel very stupid

[Biscuit]

So my quit date is in approximately 2 weeks. As I am preparing am I suppose to be attempting to be smoke free? Very silly question I'm sure, I thought we went full board on that quit date. I think I missed something. 

[gregp136]

You missed nothing.  I set my date, and used it to educate myself, but also to get excited.  By the night before my quit date, and when I had my last cigarette at 11:14PM, I was eager to make it my last.  I was so happy I was done!  Yes, keep doing what you are doing!

[Chuck-2-20-2011]

In my opinion, when a person is preparing to quit, the objective is to learn the addiction to make sure one isn't blindsided on the actual quit date. During my preparations, I used my cigarette tracker and a trigger tracker to cut down and more importantly, to learn my addiction. I also did what I called "practice quits" where I quit for several hours, sometimes almost the whole day, just to get a feel for what I was going to be in for.

  I think the cutting down helped as well. After all, getting used to a new world can be vital when one must enter that new world. To me, it was easier to quit an addiction where I smoked five cigarettes a day then it would have been had I still been smoking thirty cigarettes a day. But then, that's just my opinion.

 The most important thing is that you don't give up on the quit. Keep learning, and on that quit date, put out that last cigarette and you'll be good! Learn all that you can! This is the time to do it.

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

Chuck

[dwwms]

I'd only add one thing - I found it helpful to not only track my smokes, what the trigger was, practice delaying smokes, but also to think about how much I really enjoyed it, and how did it honestly make me feel?

I've found this helpful since I quit because sometimes you think you want one and how good it would make you feel and then you realize - it really didn't make you feel that good! All it did was satisfy the addiction!

Doug

[YoungAtHeart]

There is NEVER a stupid question - so no worries!

Everybody is different.  Personally, I could not delay very well leading up to my quit date (they recommend you delay each one a bit to prove that just because you want one, you don't have to smoke it),   But - it had me thinking about that next one ALL the time.  You can find more information here under "My Quit Plan" in the upper right corner.

Nancy

[donpauli]

By delaying your smokes before quitting you'll get the idea about how it's going to feel and what you can expect when you hit your quit day. Knowledge is power, no surprises will help you over a tough spot. 

[shashort]

Nope didn't miss anything.  You actually quit on your quit date. Right now you are learning what nicotine does to your body and brain. I tracked my cigarettes and followed my quit plan  in far right corner.  I wrote down when I likely smoked and the routine smokes like smoking with coffee, or smoking when you first get up and going to bed.  Then change the routine up is the idea so when you wake up and no smokes it creates less of a panic.For example I instantly smoked as soon as I got in my car. In my first week of preparing I made my car nonsmoking. Kind of like practice runs for the real date. Prepare read and learn to prepare for your big quit.

[JonesCarpeDiem]

I didn't set a date until I had proven to myself that I didn't need to smoke just because I had an urge to smoke.

It took 4 weeks to get there and I had no information to go by.

I did it by simply telling myself to wait a little longer. I never denied myself. No stress. No pressure. I wasn't focused on smoking or quitting smoking.

The behavior change got me off autopilot.

That's the key.

[elvan]

Hi there, I didn't do the delay thing because I had prepared, I had tracked cigarettes and made a list of triggers and rated them according to how strong they were.  Once I identified my strongest triggers, I planned for what to do instead of smoking.  I also started to ask myself SERIOUSLY what the cigarette I was smoking was doing for me...was it relieving stress?  was it handling anger?  was it taking away physical or emotional pain? was it making ANYTHING better?  I got really sick in January of 2014 and my quit came to me...I was too sick to smoke, too sick to breathe.  I started to think about all of those cigarettes and triggers and I decided that I was done and that if I could answer the question HONESTLY to myself that a cigarette was really going to fix something, to change something...to do something FOR me instead of just TO me, I would just throw in the towel and I would smoke.  I asked that question of myself many times over and I was NEVER able to honestly say that smoking would make anything better because the truth was that it never did.  I have been smoke free for over three years and I have had lots of challenges during that time but I have been able to celebrate every day as another day WON!

Stay close to the site, ask questions, vent when you need to, cry when you need to, know that no matter what, we are here to help in any way that we can. Welcome!

Ellen

[Giulia]

Yes on your quit date you go FULL BORE.  Your prep is all about gearing up to your quit date.  How you go about that is - YOUR choice.  If tracking triggers and cutting down works for  you - great!   I was a cold turkey quitter, knew nothing about nicotine addiction, didn't even consider NRTs.  Wasn't about to spend an equal amount of money on a substitute when I preferred the real thing.  Are you supposed to be attempting to be smoke free?  To my mind what we're attempting to do during our preparation is to educate ourselves about the addiction, become aware of our triggers and get our heads into the right mindset to accomplish the task at hand.  

As you can read from the various responses - cutting down, delaying worked for some.  For others (like myself and youngatheart) it made us think MORE about cigarettes than normal.  The more you read and the more you experiment, the more you'll come to the understanding of what YOU need in order to accomplish this task.  YOU, after all, know yourself better than anybody else.