It took me a long time to be smoke free. Even with Chantix. I started smoking when I was 9 years old. Most of the habits and life style I have have been formed during the time that I smoked and to be honest I didn't want to change my habits. I started smoking so young. Anyway, I have been drinking coffee since I was 3 years old. I lived in Louisianna and when you live in the south you drink coffee, so I like coffee and I didn't want to have to stop drinking it. I do alot of things that might "trigger" a craving. The reason it took me so long to quit was because I had to learn how to live my life, the way I like it, with out the cigarette. Thats what I mean when I say re-train my brain. I really didn't want to change anything about my life or the way I lived it except the stupid cigarette. So thats how I handled it. Here's what I did, and it is actually a method suggested within the AA and NA groups...I admitted to myself that I was power-less over the cigarette. In doing that I also realized that I needed to get control of the cigarette. (I am a control freak so this won't apply to everyone). So I took Chantix in order to do that. The Chantix did the weening work for me that I was always powerless to do for myself. I have always maintained control of all substances that have gone into my body...except the cigarette. As I have mentioned many times I am bipolar and apparently according to my psychiatrist it is very unusual for a person with Bipolar not to have had a problem with drugs or alcohol at some point. I never did because I know what that can do to people, in any case I always kept the control and have always backed off and either stopped using it or got help before it was a problem. Thats what I always did. Well not with cigarettes but everything else, and I can tell you I have done pills, drinking, weed, all sorts of stuff. Never coke or crack or anything like that or heroin...must have had my fill in a past life or something. It's the same basic principle though, admitting your powerless and then "detoxing" then behavoir modification. In the end, I became smoke free on April 7th 2008. My mind set is one of...I can't smoke. Other people can and it can't affect me. I have no control over other people's actions or choices, I can only control mine. Now that I have been weened off the substance (cigarette), I can now chose from this point forward whether I remain in control or whether I give the control to the substance. Since I am a control freak I will never let that happen. I will never allow myself to give in to the cigarette again. I will always remain in control...because I am a control freak and I have to...and also because I can't smoke and I don't want to smoke...even when I think I want to I don't want to. The bottum line is that if I give in I will lose the battle, I know myself and the power of the cigarette, I hate it. Other people can smoke around me and what not and it doesn't bother me in the least, thats the truth too because I have re-trained my brain. Thats what needs to happen for someone to truly quit. That goes with any substance. You have to beleive that you don't need it. Smoker, alcoholic,drug addict, you have to beleive in your head that you don't need it. You have to know that it doesn't matter what anyone around you is doing, you don't have to do it. You have a choice. It's your life, don't allow other people's actions to affect your life, or fool you into beleiving that whats works for them or what they do or how they live, is going to be ok for you. It doesn't really work that way. You have to live your life according to what works for you. Truth: if you were to go to an AA meeting and meet a member who had say 10 or 15 years of sobriety and ask them what it was they did to get there they would tell you that you have to change your thinking, you have to OMIT the substance from your life, your thinking, and your being. You have to realize that your life is your life and it's not someone else's. Other's can do it, you cannot. Accept it, embrace it and live without it, whatever it may be. The people who have years of sobriety didn't get there simply by saying to themselves that they will be ok as long as they don't take the first "drink, hit, or line" they may have used that while they were ultimatly changing their thinking, but I can almost guarentee that it's not how they have gotten 10 or 15 or 20 years sober. Your mind learns by repitition, which is why it takes a long time to re-train your brain. But it can be done and must be done in order for you to totally and completely over come your smoking habit!!!
