Leaderboard

Hour 1-9: easy.... I was asleep through this part. Hour 10: 8AM I woke up and had the usual morning craving when I took my dog out for a walk, I actually went around the block instead of sitting on the step to have a smoke. Hour 12: 10AM cravings getting a little more intense now, but I read alot of information online about nicotine and what it really actually does to your body. Hour 15: 1pm Had to go to the school for a program planning session, I had major road rage on the way there, so I stopped and got some food and ended up eatting more then normal which scared me a little, but then thought I had not eatten anything at all today. Hour 17: 3pm Went to work right after my program planning session, I got there a full hour before I was scheduled to start, I was feeling pretty exhausted so I took a catnap in my car. Hour 24: Through work I was absolutely fine, my exhaustion went away, I was left with a pretty minor headache...... When I left work I was hit with a massive craving..... if I closed my eyes I saw the little purple monster behind my eyelids playing with my nervous system begging for me to feed him. every time I came upon a gas station he would send his signals through my brain as hard as he could to cause me to stop and buy cigarettes, but I screamed louder reciting my nope pledge until he shut up. That was the most exhausting drive home ever.

Good job figuring out what will work FOR YOU. Nobody else matters in this instance. Personally, I am of the school of thought that using a "cigarette substitute" only delays part of the reprogramming of your brain to learn to live without cigarettes and the motions of smoking cigarettes however, having said that, you need to figure out what works FOR YOU. A couple of suggestions: Plastic Straw cut to about the length of a cig. stuff it with a little cotton or something so there's some drag resistance. Use that as a replacement cig. and smoke at will. Some people just smoke a pretend cigarette as an imaginary object. Putting your index and middle fingers to your mouth then breathing in and exhaling. Same idea as above but even less work. The same principal applies to the 2 above suggestions and that is - beep breathing. What you are really doing is a repetition of controlled, deep breathing. Inhale - hold & exhale then, repeat. You can do that without using any pretend cig. That's what I found helped me over some of my more anxious moments in my early Quit. R.