Day 19.... Check it out peeps!!!!

[nsd_user663_54559]

Like a bad penny or a moth to the flame (not sure which?) here I am hahaha !!! Couldn't very well stay away that long could I? I hope all my fellow quitters are hanging in there. Not really struggling with it too much these days thankfully. Wow here we are day 19, freakin awesome isn't it :eek:

I never would have believed in the first four days that I would still be smoke free but look how good we are all doing, it seems a bit surreal at times.

I believe it was somewhere around day 12 or 14 that I began to really struggle. I just could not seem to stop thinking about cigarettes, it felt like literally every 10 minutes or so and I was on here every waking second and it was beginning to become a vicious circle for me. I had to try my own little experiment..... I decided to take a few days away from here because I wanted to see if just getting away from everything to do with "cigarettes and the whole subject of "smoking" would be helpful or detrimental to my quit. To my surprise (I can only speak for me of course) I feel like that was exactly what I needed. For me.... spending so much time reading about, talking about, posting about smoking was keeping me from moving away from it. I hope that makes sense to some of you. :confused: IDK it just seemed that I was spending too much time thinking about how I was going to keep from smoking forever and not enough time living as a non smoker.

Now I am feeling so much better and I just don't give smoking that much of my time or attention. It creeps in now and again but it is much easier to push through it and move forward. I suppose this is a part of the process we go through as our mindset begins to evolve from that of smoker to non-smoker. There is one thing I am learning for sure.....Life is a lot less complicated when you're not constantly living it around a ridiculously stupid habit that effects every aspect of your planning process every single day.

All this said...... The beauty of this forum is that you can always come here and find something to lift you up and keep you going, give you something to try or to think about, share an experience, a win or a lose. It's just all good stuff and I hope that if one of you is struggling as I was, maybe some of my kooky methods or ramblings throughout the past couple of weeks will be of some help to you. Worst case, you will definitely laugh I'm sure..

Sometimes we have to step away from a problem to get a proper focus on it and for me this past week it was exactly what I needed.

I really appreciate all the messages and just the fact that y'all were looking for me.... I may disappear for a bit but I will always check back in because I really want to know that you all are still sticking with it. Besides the new folks starting out will need our help as well and if there is a newbie reading this, believe me it gets soooo much better and if I can do it you can too!!

Peace xo

~S

[nsd_user663_54562]

there you are!!!

Good to see you back hun xxx :)

[nsd_user663_54514]

Totally agree...

Sherri I totally agree...

As you can possibly tell from my low post count, I don't make a habit of coming here everyday.

I used to relisten to bits on the audio book of the easy way... then one day it dawned on me that I was still making time for cigarettes by listening about smoking, reading about smoking etc... When, as you so rightly say, I should have been spending the time being a non smoker.

The thought of smoking still creeps in time to time. And I totally agree, this forum does amazing things to remind me about why I've quit and what I would be going back to. Reminds me that at day 20, I could hope to get day 40, 60... 100 whatever and that the benefits will keep coming and the money I have saved will keep growing... you get the idea.

Let's keep going and see when our paths cross again...

[nsd_user663_54524]

Great to hear you are still smoke free......life is a lot better without them.......

[nsd_user663_54510]

very bad day yesterday, life full of problems at the moment, I was really tested and soooooo tempted to have a ciggy to help me "think" I very very nearly fell for it. Then as the nico demon was telling the usual rubish one wont hurt, you will be able to sort things out if you have one, lots of posts from this forum started to overtake the nico demon. So I took myself off to bed with a glass of water and a straw, I didnt sleep much but kept sipping my water and taking deep breaths and got through the night. Today has been a little better, I think I have dropped down a level on my patches a little early but hope im over the worst now and I am so glad I stuck it out. The problems are still there but I believe now that a cig wont change anything .