Hi, all. It's been a while. Still quit (of course) but missing my Ex friends. I was here virtually every day for the first year of my quit and really often in my second year, and then life kept happening and I stopped coming unless I had a milestone to mark. I've been quit for 8 years now -- and I would like to come here much more often. I know a little something about quitting smoking.
Just a brief recap of the last few months -- In January I lost my sister to pulmonary fibrosis, emphysema and lung cancer and she smoked to the very end. At first I tried to convince her to quit smoking, and she said she'd never tried to quit and she wasn't going to start now. Her choice, but what a loss. Then a week ago I was laid off from the job I loved and was perfect for me. I was getting close to 2 years in that job. That's a loss, too.
At any rate, enough about me. For the real newbies, please remember that when you smoke a cigarette you're just feeding the craving you created when you smoked the last one. That's from the Allen Carr book, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. It made a real impression on me. My previous quits were unsuccessful because I felt deprived. I envied people who could smoke. Now I realize that we smokers had to smoke. When the deprivation mindset changed, my whole attitude changed and quitting became exponentially more doable. Is it easy? Of course not. We had to untangle all the connections we psychologically had created with our lives. Happy? Smoke. Sad? Smoke. Bored? Smoke. Angry? Smoke. Afraid? Smoke. Get in the car? Smoke. Get on the telephone? Smoke. And so on. That untangling takes a while and lots of times it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's very uncomfortable. But believe us when we say it gets better, it gets easier. You will -- if you stick to your quit -- begin to have whole days when you don't think about smoking. Then weeks, months, years. I probably think about smoking once or twice a year. Probably everyone has a period at the beginning of their quit when they think about smoking constantly. One of the beauties of this beautiful community is that yes, you're thinking about smoking constantly, but if you stay close to this site, your thinking about smoking will be positive rather than getting into twisted thinking as your addicted mind starts screaming that you must have a smoke. Well, I'm rambling here, but I do intend to come here regularly, and my old friends know that I never write short blogs!
