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Eight Years Journey to Today, One Day at a Time

maryfreecig
Member
8 14 145
‎10-05-2021 09:48 AM

Today makes 8. I'll always treasure day one knowing now that everything was going to be alright. No matter the ups and downs of life, it really was going to be alright, and so much better than what I had. You guys know me, and you know I lived to smoke. Whether I smoked 19 cigarettes a day, smoked 28, or smoked at people, or for pleasure...I lived to smoke.

And you know by now, even though I didn't start with Ex, that I was shocked, freaked out and highly disturbed at first. 

So now at eight years, I kinda have to cackle at how flipped out I was--the lengths I went to to keep myself in check. The brooding walks through time, payig attention to everyone else just to keep my mind off my old smoker self. Taking pictures of people, places on those upside down walks, then sketching once home, bouncing off the walls, running to the store for candy, gum, suckers, a hot dog. I ran to get away from myself everyday. 

Funny thing, all the substitutions, doings morphed and evolved into better habits of mind and body!!! We so often have to do it the crazy way anyway...after all we puffed for a drug all day long.

I'm so grateful for an Ex family that continues to welcome everyone in to find what they are looking for in a quit.

Until #9 one day at a time, I'll see you in our group. 🙂 🙂 🙂

14 Comments
About the Author
Quitter Version 9.25 Years smober as of January 9, 2023. Age 64. Yeah! Well I made it through some pretty tough quit-smoking tangles, and now am happily smoke free. But the start of my cigarette quit was not glorious. It could have been with some other version of me (maybe my younger self--20 something) taking the journey. But, I had to quit with the version that was available back in 2013. I could not wait until I was entirely sure that I would quit, or until I was entirely happy about quitting. I had to grab the willingness that came out of the blue one day in September of that year and run with it. And so I did. Nicotine addiction is a puzzling addiction. I've heard many say that they just can't stop (some of these folks have serious heart or lung trouble). It isn't the kind of addiction that leaves you plastered as with alcohol or other drugs--so that once you sober up, you realize how overtaken you were by the stuff. Nicotine works different than that. It co-opts your person, while at the same time allowing you to stay conscious and even alert. It's kinda like those science fiction tales in which an alien attaches itself to the spine of an individual...and she has no idea of the danger lurking within. You really discover how you've been preyed upon once you try to quit. Then the evil nature of the alien comes to the forefront making quitting seem like a horror rather than a rescue from horror. Some may argue that the smoker understands the danger. I argue the opposite; most smokers begin smoking by the age of 18, and have hardly had enough life experience to understand what addiction really means, and so they are overtaken by a force far greater than they can understand. By the time the smoker really wants to quit, the addiction has blossomed and grown in a most grotesque way. No one deserves this addiction. Maybe, someday society will finally do the right thing and ban the sale of tobacco, leaving it up to the individual alone to grow, dry and smoke the stuff herself, though never allowed to sell it. I made it--as of today--but how I wish all smokers would find their way to quitting. https://quittinthesmokes.blogspot.com/