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Every time you cheat and have a smoke, focus on what you have just told us. Catch a whiff of that chemical butane as you flick your Bic. Let that smoke get in your nostrils and face and hair as you light the end of the cigarette. Savor that harsh, dry smoke as it poisons you from within. Don't hold in any coughs, but let them out in full fury; feel the phlegm dislodged from the innermost passageways of your lungs. Smell your fingers and bug out on that smokey odor. Smell your shirt. Think about how your hair smells. Now take another drag...
In other words, don't intellectualize it. Make it visceral. Feel it.
Then, after smoke break, look at the mess in the ashtray and how ugly it is. And mull over how cancer cells form and how emphysema is like a slow strangulation until you can no longer breathe at all... Don't forget to add up the cost too, not only of those tax machines called cartons and packs, but also the cost of lighters, loss of productivity (6 10-minute ciggy breaks at work cost the company a whole hour of wasted time), missed work due to lingering colds...
Then, when you are not smoking, take a moment to fill your lungs with good clean air. Feel that freshness, and think about how that's really what you were trying to get from those cigarettes in the first place. Take a little walk, and enjoy feeling unencumbered by a cigarette. Look at all the happy people not smoking, and feel at one with them. Enjoy the sunshine and soak up some vitamin D.
If you fall off the wagon again, go back to the beginning and repeat.
You know how unhealthy it is, but you need your body to feel it. Now that you are starting to feel it, keep on feelin'.
I quit smoking back in 2005... doc's orders... wouldn't do surgery unless I quit. I have been an artist my entire life and smoking was just something that "came with the territory" I thought. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do artwork without a cigarette in my hand. The Chantix worked like a charm for me (other than the sex dreams featuring Trump, Snoop Dogg and Santa Claus, not even kidding. Disturbing.)
If I hadn't quit back then, let me tell ya, I'd quit now. My husband goes in for chemo every two weeks and I see the people sitting in those big chairs with poison being pumped into them. It's awful. It's hellish. And a LOT of them are smokers or former smokers. You just can't get away with smoking for years without it affecting your body. It's a rude wake up call. I think of all the years I thought, "Meh, won't happen to me." Why wouldn't it happen to me? What makes me so "special?" Nothing. It's denial.
The best thing you could do for yourself is to quit now. After I quit, I realized how anchored I'd been to the stupid things! I was always worrying about when I could have a smoke. I wasn't in charge of my life. (And I still do artwork. I save money not buying smokes, too.)
I quit five years ago. There's a guy not far away who does the ear thing, and however that worked, I quit that day after 35 years of Newports.
It is so good to be a non-smoker, but I understand what you're saying about associating smoking with good times. I sometimes hang with an old friend who still smokes, and she smokes inside her house. She has friends that smoke, and so one day a few months ago we all sat around having drinks and talking and laughing while four out of six of us there smoked liked chimneys. It was so much fun even though I reeked like cigs when I left and I probably breathed in a pack's worth.
The only time I felt a real craving to have a cig since I quit was when I had a beach house vacation last year. I was in North Carolina, and I saw a sign at a gas station for Newports for $5.01. FIVE BUCKS. I thought about getting a pack so I could have one each day with my coffee on the deck overlooking the ocean at sunrise and then a couple with my wine on the deck at sunset, and then just be done when I went home, but I knew in my heart it wouldn't work out that way.
This November it will be 13 years since I quit a 55 year habit. I quit because I was facing a heart valve replacement surgery and an 11" incision down the center of my chest didn't sound like it would take well to a 20 minute coughing fit every morning. Other than having to smoke onstage in a play I haven't fallen off the wagon this time.
But years ago, in the middle of a quit, I was on vacation in Maryland and I, like you, thought longingly of a smoke with my morning coffee and the post-prandial cigarette. So, being weak-willed and hooked on nicotine (which no non-smoker alive will ever know the depth of that addiction) I bought the pack. Alas, the vacation ended but the smoking didn't. Took years before I attempted another quit. That one didn't end well either. But this last one is well-established and though I sometimes crave some ephemeral something, I don't see myself starting up again. Stay tuned. lol
I wonder IF a lot of smokers came from families of parents etc. who smoked. I have a friend who quit about 30 yrs ago, she just turned 80 and lives with asthma and Emphysema and says she's the longest living person in her family...one other living sister is dying from cancer and still smokes. My parents did NOT smoke nor brother or sister.
Heheh, thanks... I got your message asking if I had smoked. It's something I struggle with sometimes, but I find that thinking this way gets me back on the straight and narrow. Others' results may vary, but I figure trying it can't hurt more than the cigarettes do.
The auricular therapy took away the physical craving, but the psychological craving took a little longer. He gave us a mantra to say every day, and told us to change our way of thinking when we see others smoking. Instead of envying them, think, "oh those poor bastards".
I DID feel as though I lost my best friend the first week or two. It was a real sadness. People sit there with their fingers up their asses asking why kids smoke when they know it's bad for them. Being accepted, being part of a group, that desire is stronger then worrying about something killing you in the far-off future. I was a too-tall, homely girl who was shy and socially awkward, and I wasn't acceptable to the regular kids, but that group that smoked in the woods behind the school let me in, and if it took learning how to inhale a cigarette and not choke, I was going to do it. Kids want friends and acceptance. Smoking brings friends and acceptance, or at least it did in the 1970s. It's not rocket science to know why kids start smoking.
The reasons people start smoking are as many and varied as there are people who smoke. My late hubs was a professional athlete and didn't smoke until he was in the Navy. Some people start because it gets them accepted into a group - even if the group isn't the one you really want to join; the one that doesn't want to let you in. Some of us started because our parents smoked and it was easy to filch a couple of cigarettes from their packs with an added bonus that they couldn't smell it on us because they had their own stink to deal with.
I am not one of those dreaded ex-smokers who preach redemption to every smoker they see. It does no good to preach because I sat through the same sermons countless times to no effect, they have to figure it out for themselves.
I wonder IF a lot of smokers came from families of parents etc. who smoked. I have a friend who quit about 30 yrs ago, she just turned 80 and lives with asthma and Emphysema and says she's the longest living person in her family...one other living sister is dying from cancer and still smokes. My parents did NOT smoke nor brother or sister.
My parents were both heavy smokers. My sister hates smoking and was very vocal about it. I started smoking off and on when I was about 14-15. I remember my dad yelling at me (while holding a cigarette in his hand... do as I say, not as I DO!) My husband and I both smoked when our son was young and he's a nonsmoker. He hates it, too, thankfully. My husband quit smoking when he was diagnosed with cancer. (I'd nagged him for years to do it. Nagging doesn't work at all, unfortunately!)
There was a large study that concluded many non smokers, would do better and feel better, if they smoked. An example would be the angry man who is always pissed off in traffic and flips people off. If he smoked, it may help him to be more relaxed and not be an ....hole.
There was a large study that concluded many non smokers, would do better and feel better, if they smoked. An example would be the angry man who is always pissed off in traffic and flips people off. If he smoked, it may help him to be more relaxed and not be an ....hole.
Oh stupid studies, everyone has a study. Everyone is PAID by someone to do these studies. There is SO MUCH we can do to calm down and be peaceful rather than smoking cigs. I can still see doctors in the early yrs of TV, doing cig ads. And people die and die from that deadly stuff.
Now they are saying more and more car accidents are due to texting...and I'm sure enough from lighting up.
The best study is your MIND, use it. I mean all of us.
Last edited by jaminhealth; 06-24-2017 at 11:59 AM..
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