Hi all - I was a 20 year, pack/day smoker. I quit on April 1, 2009. After a torturous year, and eating my weight in Tic-Tacs, I am still fighting the good fight. I've had good days and bad, good weeks and bad. Heck, even good months and bad months, but I am still hanging tough.
What's funny is, I still have the occasional, but very vivid dream of smoking. Oh, those are so lovely. My subconscious giving into the cravings I so steadfastly deny myself during my waking hours. It's like getting to smoke without cheating. I always feel bad in the dream, like I've let myself down, even as I'm enjoying the dream-cigarette -- and I'm always so happy when I wake up and realize, "Oh, I didn't slip! It was just a dream. Thank god."
The other thing I've noticed over the last year, since I quit smoking, it seems like everyone else on the planet has started smoking. I can't go anywhere without noticing it, smelling it, being intoxicated by it. I live in Los Angeles, and back when I was a smoker, it seemed like I was the only one in the whole city who smoked. I often felt very isolated by my addiction and embarrassed when I had to excuse myself from a dinner conversation to go outside and light up. But now, everywhere I go, it seems I can't escape it. Just today I had to walk through a cloud of it outside of my grocery store. Three men, standing right by the entrance, all of them puffing away.
I recently moved into a new apartment building and there are smokers everywhere here. I have to keep my windows closed all the time. There is a smoker who lives underneath me and two who live across from me. All three chain-smoke on their balconies in the evening and it blows straight into my apartment, driving me mad, both because I hate the smell of it and because I know, deep down, the smoker in me still wants what they have. It's so bad here that I'm actually considering moving. I didn't even think to ask about it when I moved in because the last apartment building I lived in, I was the only smoker!
Anyway, I'm glad I haven't given in. It's been a crazy, hectic year and not one puff! I'm happy that I've managed to keep this promise to myself through all the hard times and all the countless minutes/hours/days of those torturous cravings.
If any long-term quitters around here have some suggestions for beating those urges, I'd love to hear them. Sometimes I think I'll just have to put up with these urges to smoke for the rest of my life. I don't think I'll ever be able to go into a 7-11 again. Hahah!
