Just incase you ever get the urge for a cigarette. I wrote this awhile back to help myself in times of temptation.
I hope it helps you.
Do you feel like there is something missing?
Change your way of looking at it. You're not losing anything, you are gaining soooo much! Your health, your money and a sense of achievement that only we understand - people who have never smoked would have no idea how difficult this is and people who continue to smoke feel guilty about their own habits and sometimes don’t want us to quit. But what are you losing by stopping? Really - nothing. Smoking does nothing for you. The only thing a cigarette gives you is the desire to have another cigarette.
Just one won’t hurt, I’ll go back to quitting tomorrow!
Think about it...... If you have a cigarette, are you telling me that you won't try to quit again? You know you'll try to quit again like all of us serial quitters. We all wish we could be free, so we try try try again. Be strong and don't give in or you'll have to go through it all over again and I'm sure that you don't want to be struggling to quit for the rest of your life. Wanting is better than having - if you lapse and have that cigarette you will feel like shit. You know this is true. You will not only feel sick and dizzy and short of breath, your heart will race and you will stink. But after the short term effects wear off all you feel is guilt and a sense of depression that u have wasted all your efforts to date. And of course the bloody killer is that you will want to have another cigarette. And you probably will. If you keep trying to climb to the top of that mountain and ignore how much you ache, when you get to the top, it will be easy to walk down the other side. If you let go now, you'll fall all the way back down to the bottom and will have to start all over again, and you'll keep feeling that aching again and again until you reach that peak when you don't have to struggle anymore.
I'm speaking to people who have not smoked for months/years and they still say how hard it is to not smoke - once a smoker always a smoker I am told!
When people hear stories of people still thinking of cigarettes years after they quit, they worry that they will crave cigarettes for the rest of their life the same way as when they first quit. I personally don't think you'll ever not think about it as you'll always going to remember what it was like to smoke and the feeling you got from it. The only way to never think or not crave a cigarette is to of never smoked in the first place. The thoughts become so infrequent that the only reasons we’ll think about cigarettes is because we’re thinking 'Oh I haven't thought about cigarettes for a while' (I see a lot of you scratching your heads!) And of course when we’re on the forum it is hard not to think about it, but that’s in a good way because we’re thinking 'I'm glad I'm not smoking anymore!'.
I’m feeling stressed
We managed to deal with stressful situations before we smoked (even though most of us were probably in our early teens when we started) and non smokers deal with stress everyday without smoking, so how does a cigarette relieve stress.
It helps me relax
One ****ogy that springs to mind was that of wearing shoes that are too tight all evening. By the end of the night, your feet are killing you. You are so relieved to take off those shoes and your feet feel so good. However, if you had not put those shoes on in the first place, you would not have sore feet. In the same manner, smoking does not relax or calm you down – smoking merely relieves the situation that smoking created in the first place – the need for nicotine.
Not a single puff
Because we used to be proper smokers (not casual or social smokers) if we want to stay smoke free then we have to accept we can NEVER EVER EVER have another drag on a fag - not even one. Ever. If we do we probably will end up smoking full time again because we are on the top of a very slippery slope.
Remember this from last time? just as you think it can't get any worse you turn a corner! Just promise yourself another 24 hours, you deserve that much after all you have done to get here. If in 24 hours nothing changed, then reassess your quit, bear in mind, whatever you do, you will always be on the road to wanting to quit, the rest is up to you.
I have been quit for 1 Year, 6 Months, 2 Weeks, 1 Day, 10 hours, 59 minutes and 1 second (565 days). I have saved £1,088.50 by not smoking 8,481 cigarettes. I have saved 4 Weeks, 1 Day, 10 hours and 45 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 01/07/2007 00:00
Quit..for the final time
The best time to quit
