aurora
94 posts
Registered:
08 Mar 2018
21 Nov 2020
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It has been awhile since I had been on this forum.
I quit on March 5, 2018 and I never believed that I would be writing that I am celebrating day 992 in my quit journey.
The key for me has been NOPE - Not One Puff Ever! I learned that from Treepeo on this site, and it has been a code breaker for me.
In the early days, I was on the forum often. As supportive as everyone in my life is (or isn't) of my quit, the people on this site are here on any given day. If they were not there in real time, I could read past posts.
I started smoking at 13 and smoked for decades. My first quit attempt was at 16 years old.
How many times did I try to quit? I don't know....it was at least 20 and I had really lost a lot of confidence in my ability to quit.
I vowed to quit many times. My 40th birthday, or when I had a concerning nodule in my lung that was found to be benign so I continued to smoke, or as a New Year's resolution, or because I was pregnant, or because I had dental surgery, or because I had nowhere left to smoke but outside in the cold, etc.
the past quit took me one year to prepare to quit, and I blew past every single quit date. I wasn't ready. I could not do it. It was a really bad time with so much stress at work, or with parenting, or whatever the tough stuff was that I was dealing with at the time.
Through this quit, I am persevering through the pandemic, through family deaths, through parenting struggles, and through aging.
I have no magic to share. There was a blizzard, I had a closet full of NRT because I had been preparing for a year, and I had no smokes and I decided that was it. The days that followed were difficult. Crippling headaches, irritability, fatigue and also disrupted sleep. And some really challenging cravings.
I drank water, used natural remedies to help with stress, got a dog, started walking more, did a mindfulness class, AVOIDED a lot - liquor, cannabis, smokers, going outside to just hang out, going to places where people would be smoking,
I celebrated my FREEDOM and my extra dollars! I celebrated my health and healing! Telling myself - I am going on this holiday and am able to get a really nice hotel room with my savings from quitting smoking.
This did not happen all at once, it happened over time, one moment at a time, one day at a time, as I was ready to take on something else.
Keep going, keep coming back here, keep loving yourself.
I have gained so much as a result of quitting I cannot imagine going back.