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Share your quitting journey

Here I go once again

samantha42
Member
0 5 4

Well here I go once again…I only say this because I know that I need to do it but I also know that it can consume a lot of my time of which I do not currently have at the moment. I feel like I am having to make a choice between losing weight and quitting smoking and getting my business up and running, which I have already spent about $2ooo.oo on. The other day I figured out that my weight has bearing on quitting smoking. What I mean by this is that there have been several quit attempts that I have made and have gone back to smoking because I have a tendency to get down on myself. It was like I couldn’t manage to keep a positive outlook on quitting when my weight began jumping up. Now, I am stuck at a crossroads because I am fixing to get off this wretched graveyard shift like within the next couple of weeks. Admittingly, I have been using the excuse  that I can’t quit in dealing with an all male work environment and I smoke to stay awake. Well, recently I have had a break through with earning my place in my work environment. It was a stressful situation, of which, I smoked myself through it but I stood up for myself and that is not an easy thing for me to do. Once I move over to swings I will be sleeping at night and I am hopeful that I won’t wake up every two or three hours and will be more rested. I am also not looking forward to the 100 plus degree weather. It is impossible to work in that heat and breathe. I will also say that once I move over to swings most of the work related drama should go away as it is related to those that I work with on graveyards. I know that if I tell Scott or Tom that I am quitting that they will be supportive and will not judge me for slipping.  Tom is the guy that I will share the same shift with and he is an ex-smoker who had started again and quit again. Tom and I have talked about how difficult it was to quit the first time and how much more difficult it was to quit the second time around. Scott does not smoke and as far as I know never has but his wife does and has tried to quit several times of which he has witnessed his wife going through it. He has also been supportive of me the last time that I have tried to quit.

 

I am fearful of failing again and I suppose that it is a huge reason why I have not tried again in so long. I am also not sure how to go about quitting again. I have used the counteract the trigger method, the timing method, the cutting down method, nicotine patches and gum methods and Chantix. Out of all these methods the one that was the most successful was the Chantix. It worked for me because I knew that it wouldn’t make a difference if I did smoke a cigarette while I was on Chantix. That it blocked my neuro receptors from receiving that pleasurable feeling when I smoked. So, every time I had a trigger I would tell myself that it wouldn’t give me what I was craving and moved on. I quit for 6 weeks, or thereabouts, but I stopped taking the medication because I had heard that it caused heart problems. I am a high anxiety driven type of personality. Half the time I feel like I am having a heart attack or trying to stoke out. I was put on Xanax to help ward off those panic attacks but I had to stop taking the Xanax because it made me sleepy and I already have a very difficult time staying awake at work all night long. After I had already quit taking the Chantix and Xanax I had talked to my doctor about Chantix causing heart problems and she looked at me like she had no clue as to what I was talking about. I should have done my homework before I stopped taking it I suppose but I am not going to beat myself up over this. Now I just need to figure out if I want to go back to this same method of quitting or try something else. It is like trying to fit a huge puzzle together and no matter how hard you try some of the pieces just won’t fit together.

 

I also have many reasons to quit smoking. I now have a granddaughter, my adult daughter has gotten addicted to the nasty habit (of course I feel responsible for this), my youngest daughter I have caught with cigarettes several times (I also feel responsible for this), my husband smokes as well and I am fearful that he won’t quit unless I do and he will end up with emphysema like his own father and grandfather, my father has heart problems and emphysema, I can’t breathe, it makes me lethargic and I have plenty of other things that I want to use my energy on rather than cigarettes, I could use the money to finish remodeling my house and my business (found out that in the 28 years that I have smoked I could have paid my house off and that doesn’t include what my husband spends for his smoking addiction), it doesn’t help in dealing with my anxiety issues because it causes anxiety, I realized that it stinks worse than the industrial plant that I work at from my past quits, it is time consuming which I do not have the luxury of affording the loss of time, I feel responsible for my brother starting back after years of having quit. Okay that’s enough…so I have several reasons to quit smoking. Now, how do I go about it and why is it so damned difficult???

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