atp
501 posts
Registered:
31 Dec 2018
11 Sep 2019
in reply to
grannef
Hey grannef,
Congrats on 6 weeks being smoke free, and yes the struggle to keep your quit can be very hard at times.
At this stage you are mostly dealing with the mental side of the addiction - and that is the hard part to get over. You are trying to learn how to be a non-smoker and that takes a lot of effort. It took me months to break the 'habit' feelings - like constantly checking my jacket pockets for smokes before leaving the house. Coffee was another trigger, it took me a lot of effort to get past the feeling of needing a smoke with my coffee.
So lets work on you learning to be a non-smoker. Some things I did was I changed the cup I used for coffee, and I changed the brand of take-out coffee I'd buy. I also cleaned my car and house ot get rid of the stale smoke smell. Going to the doctor for a check helped too - my BP was back to normal at 8 weeks!!!. I started to ride my bike.
The nicotine withdrawal is basically over - you now need to work on evicting that addict from your head. And yes that addict will manifest itself in some pretty good physical symptoms such as anxiety, shortness of breath, sweats, you name it. You just need to take a step back and calm down and breath deep for a few minutes. I used to talk out loud to myself about why my quit matters, it helped me, although I did get a few odd stares in the mall one day.
I took up making steel cut oatmeal in the morning - would take a god half hour of standing over the stove stirring those oats trying to make the perfect oatmeal. In that time I was so focused I didn't think about smoking.