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Share your quitting journey

Smoking is no longer a consideration for me.

JonesCarpeDiem
1 9 17

It takes time to get there.

I smoked for 40 years.

I didn't quit for my health. I never considered the monetary cost.

I was a "considerate of others" smoker. I didn't smoke in the house or the car. Went around my job sites with a coffee can once a week to clean up all the butts outside.

What I've learned after nearly 8 years quit is many people won't succeed because they had a reason to quit. The perceived need to smoke and the addiction to nicotine often becomes more powerful than the reason.

People who succeed do so because they decide to quit and are willing to not smoke when they would have until they unlearn amoking and it is no longer the first thing they think of many times a day.

In the beginning of your quit much of the time is spent thinking of smoking and of not smoking.

I would suggest that where you want to be is living without the smoking or not smoking thoughts.

Anyone can do it but it takes time because we smoked for a long time.

Will you give yourself the opportunity to succeed and allow the time it takes or will you give up on yourself and talk yourself into smoking?

9 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.