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My how time flies. There was a time when I thought I would never quit and now here I am at 7 years quit. Counting my years prior to starting, I’m at about 40% of my life as a non-smoker!

Congratulations @Wayne045 on 7 years quit, isn't it awesome?! I hope you have a great day and celebrate!

Yaaaa.... Massive Congratulations to our Lovely Bunny Jillar . 7 years Smoke Free.. Thank you for being by my side to keep me on the straight and narrow Lol. Big Hugs xx

A huge THANK YOU to all who have served, my family and I honor you and are very thankful for your sacrifice!

Congratulations Jillar

Congratulations on the 7 year quit Jillar!

What!!! Congratulations!!!

Congratulations, Jillar!!!! Lucky number 7!! You deserve all the rabbit treats today!

@jillar Congratulations to you also. We both came to the conclusion that we'd smoked long enough on the same day. @johnny5 Feels good with Tom Hanks cheering me on.

Wow 7 years very well done, congrats! https://giphy.com/clips/theoffice-the-office-peacock-tv-show-G96zgIcQn1L2xpmdxi

Congratulations on 7 years smoke free, Wayne, Awesome accomplishment.

Congratulations on 7 years quit. This is an awesome accomplishment. Thanks for helping me and everyone else navigate the bumpy road of addiction. You personally, along with Doreen and few others helped in the early stages of my quit.

Congratulations on your 7 year quit @jillar! Thank you so very much for being here and helping myself and others on our own journeys. You are awesome!

BIG CONGRATS to you @jillar! Thank you for all the help you have been to me and all you do for everyone here on the train. You are very much appreciated.

Congratulations on your 7 years of freedom!!! Thanks so much for all that you do to support us on the Train.

Congratulations on 7 years smoke free, @jillar Thank you for all you do to continue to pay it forward helping others with their quits. I hope you celebrate big!

G’day NOPE .....Not One Puff Ever.... (replace Ever with Min,Hour, Day as required).

Oh man you poor thing, I'll think positive thoughts for you that you'll feel better and not gave to evacuate. Good job staying smoke free ☺

Happy 7th anniversary!!

I had to figure it out too, @overcome! LOL

Red - White - Blue yeah!

Thank you for that, I was thinking I screwed it up. Have to try and figure out how to add them now .............. apologies in advance of messed up threads while I try to figure it out.

Congratulations Wayne.. 7 years smoke free is very impressive..

Congratulations Wayne on your 7th year smoke free! You are awesome!

Hmmm, you're right. It could be their site. I usually just Google the image I'm looking for and then use the insert image from URL option in other media at the bottom right

This is for all my fallen brothers- Thank you for paying the ultimate price for freedom.

Ladybug Posted April 9, 2014 I have no idea where I got this from, but it's in my quit diary and I thought I share it with you guys! As to silencing the inner voice: The secret is a repeated conscious choice. If you draw a saw across a log one time, you may make a scratch in the bar. If you draw it across the log a few more times you may scratch the surface of the wood. If you keep drawing the saw across the same place on the log, the scratch will get deeper, until it becomes a cut, then a groove.... If you keep on drawing the saw across the log, beyond counting the number of times, eventually you'll draw it clear through to the other side. Every morning you get up and consciously choose not to smoke today, you're drawing the saw across the log....keep doing that...and you'll reach the other side. Keep sawing!!! Link to original post: https://www.quittrain.com/topic/429-how-to-silence-the-inner-voice/

NOPE

nope

Omg gf when it rains it pours!!! Sorry for all you’re going through! That’s cray! But oh my gosh golly gee gf 22 days!!!! You’re ROCKING IT!!

Awww man! When it hits the fan it hits the fan! I feel so bad for you. I sure hope you get over the shingles soon. And I do hope that y’all don’t have to evacuate.

DAY 22 Still going strong. Have shingles and the worst pain in the world.not even thinking of smoking but ingesting edibles 24/7 to try and dull the pain. It’s shitty today - well really the last few days - can’t sit, can’t sleep but I haven’t smoked! oh and we also have forest fires so waiting to see if we have to evacuate! Give me strength.

Congrats Wayne!!

NOPE!

Yep I got now.

@overcome, after looking on the support forum for invision it appears that giphy got sold and they banned the old keys that worked the gifs so that's why it's no longer working. Glad to know it's not just our forum I never even noticed it was on the text toolbar until a few months ago lol. I have just always used the Other Media option.

G’day NOPE .....Not One Puff Ever.... (replace Ever with Min,Hour, Day as required).

NOPE!

NOPE

NOPE!

You’re exactly right - how can we have just wasted so much money? He is aware of the cost but I am not mentioning a word to him - I know he is happy that I have quit and supports me, but he’s not there yet! I’m sure he’s not too far away from making his own decision!

I started smoking when I was in my early teens and continued off and on for the next 28 years. During that period there were a couple of quits which lasted several years. My last major attempt at quitting smoking was in 2005 in which I was able to stay smoke-free for just under 6 years. In 2011, I made the decision to throw my quit away one evening when I was in a stressful situation and decided that smoking a cigarette would relax me. When I took my first puff that evening I felt like I was home. I wondered why I had even quit smoking at all in the first place. I thought I enjoyed it and even thought to myself that smoking was the greatest thing on earth. I had no regrets, only satisfaction. I didn’t know a single thing about nicotine addiction and ignorantly believed all the lies. I was a junkie. No, not some junkie out on the street begging and stealing to feed my addiction but rather a well dressed professional with a wife and three wonderful children. But make no mistake about it, I was a junkie just the same in need of a fix of nicotine to make everything better. This one cigarette woke up my nicotine addiction and I continued to smoke for ~2 years. In early December 2012 I went to see my Dr. about something unrelated and before I left I decided to mention that I wanted to quit smoking but enjoyed it too much. I told him that I could quit if I really wanted to, I just didn’t want to. I told him that I wanted to quit smoking for my family because they meant everything to me and I knew that the cigarettes would eventually catch up with me if I didn’t quit for good. In a nutshell, he told me I was full of shit. He told me that my family wasn’t the most important thing in my life, cigarettes were. He also went on to tell me that I was an addict to which I laughed and said “you’re telling me that I’m an addict because I’m smoking tobacco? It’s not like I’m shooting heroin or snorting cocaine.” He chuckled to himself and said “you’re the exact definition of an addict and the only reason why you’re not out on the streets stealing to feed your addiction is because cigarettes are legal.” I was mad as I sat there. How could this man say these things to me? I really do enjoy smoking. I sat and I listened. He gave me a prescription for Wellbutrin XL to help me quit smoking. I told him that I didn’t need any medication to quit smoking and he informed me that I had been smoking for nearly 28 years with several failed attempts at quitting and whatever I was doing was not working. After about 5 days the medication started to work to the point that after 2 or 3 pulls on a cigarette, I would get sick to my stomach and be on the verge of puking. Still, I lit one cigarette after another hoping that the nausea would not last, but it did and finally on December 17, 2012, I decided that I had enough and quit. This time I stayed nicotine free for 9 months and was sure I would never smoke again. I spent hour after hour, day after day reading everything I could about nicotine addiction. I watched the documentaries about the evil tobacco companies (which are on this website and very good I might add), joined a support group online and was sure I had all the answers to staying quit for good. But as things go, I relapsed again in September 2013 because of one reason; I still believed that the cigarette had something to offer me. After all of the reading and learning about nicotine addiction, none of it mattered because somewhere in the back of my mind I still believed in the cigarette. Thankfully, my relapse was short-lived and lasted only 1 week and 1 pack of cigarettes. What a shame it was to light the first of some 20 odd cigarettes after being smoke-free for ~9 months. Those 9 months prior that I speak of, although smoke-free, I was still believing somewhere in the back of my mind that cigarettes could offer me something because of my triumphant reunion with them nearly two years prior. It was all a big lie perpetuated by me. When I bought that pack in October I thought it would help. After reading Allen Carr’s book several times and being proactive for so many months, who was I kidding? The only thing I got from it was emptiness. It was at this moment and 19 cigarettes later that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that cigarettes could not do a damn thing for me. It took a one week relapse for me to 100% believe that no matter what happens in life, no matter how crappy I feel, cigarettes will not do anything. With each and every cigarette I analyzed how I felt. From the very first pull on that cigarette I was ultra aware of how I was feeling. I remembered Allen Carr. I remembered the lies. I remembered all the former smokers in the support group. I recalled all I had read about this addiction. I was still waiting for the enjoyment because I thought it really existed. Not only did I not get one bit of enjoyment from any of it, but I also found out the hard way that there isn’t a single thing enjoyable about smoking. It wasn’t until I truly understood that I got nothing from smoking that I willingly put the cigarettes down without any medication and without a second thought. However, close to the end of that week of smoking I could feel the addiction coming on strong. Had I not chosen to quit smoking on October 7th, 2013, I feel that I would have fallen back into a full blown nicotine addiction and smoking 30-40 cigarettes per day as that was my usual routine. I was probably just a few cigarettes away from this happening and it was scary to relive those feelings of being physically and mentally addicted to smoking constantly needing to feed the throngs of nicotine withdrawal. This is not a place that I ever want to revisit. If you think that you enjoy smoking or that is somehow relaxes you, then you still think that smoking cigarettes can still offer you something of benefit. This is romanticizing the cigarette, also known as junkie thinking, whether you want to believe it or not. Leaving this door open is dangerous because something will happen along the way that will allow the addiction to creep in and when you least expect it, you’ve relapsed. If you think that you enjoyed anything about smoking it means that you’re depriving yourself or giving up something that you enjoy when you quit smoking. The worst case scenario is a relapse and the next worse thing is a constant battle. Someone once used drugs and sex was as an analogy to quitting smoking. This is false and cannot be compared because sex and drugs such as heroin, are enjoyable the first time they are tried. The first time many heroin users shoot up they loved it. How many of us loved our first cigarette? None. Smoking is not enjoyable and so long as you believe that it is or was, you’re only making staying quit much harder than it needs to be. Actually, quitting smoking can be enjoyable if you’re able to focus on your body and how it’s repairing itself. Your lungs. Your skin. Your teeth. The newly learned discipline that you’ve used because you never thought you could quit smoking, much less even wanted to quit. Lastly, a relapse doesn’t happen without first romancing or allowing junkie thinking to creep in. No situation, as bad as it may be, will force you to smoke unless you’re still believing that you can get something from the cigarette. Quitting smoking takes no action, only non-action. Don’t ever take another puff. Remember “N.O.P.E.” each and every day and make it a priority over life and all of it’s ups and downs. Never smoke again. Not one puff, ever (N.O.P.E.). Copied from MarylandQuitters About Me