Jonny5

you are very welcome Tracey :-) x

Thinking of you Tracey :-) lots of hugs :-) x

I always thought that quitting cigarettes would be the hardest thing to do. Once I had nailed that I realised I could do anything and my confidence grew massively. I found myself reinventing myself and redrawing previously laid boundaries that I had imposed upon my self.

I used to get through a minimum of 40 strong cigarettes per day!!

You will know. It's like an epiphany. You just know. And it's euphoric to say the least. You become completely at peace and transformed into the never again, ex smoker that you prayed to be :-) You have so much joy to look forward to :-)

Thanks for letting me help you Juan :-) to pay it forward nourishes oneself :-)

To give up is to sacrifice. The only giving up I did was on life when I used to smoke.

Experience gives us all an opportunity to learn. It's the smart ones who use that opportunity :-)

All we do is share our thoughts and experiences. The credit for your quit lays with you. You have the power. You always have done :-)

But I hold it open as a warm and welcoming hand to those who seek my help :-)

And so do all of you. Because each and every quit is guaranteed.... It is safe from the outside world. Only the quit owner can destroy it from within, and it is a deliberate choice. And that would be a pretty daft thing to do to your own quit.

We never accidentally slip up and smoke. Relapse happens because we justify smoking and then find the means to do so. The only justification for smoking is to become a smoker, because that's what they do.

To quit smoking, you simply have to stop putting tobacco into paper tubes, burning them, and sucking down the combustion byproducts. So why is it so hard for some of us?... ...because we make it hard by Telling ourselves that we are missing out. We leave percieved positives in our minds, and we miss these perceived positives, we leave doorways open to relapse by allowing ourselves to believe that in certain situations a cigarette will help. You must close all these doors and brick up the doorway. When you truly don't want to smoke anymore your quit will be a non event. It will just be so.

For me, I always wished that I was not addicted to Nicotine, and I alway planned to stop some day, just not that day... The thing that got to me was my young son reading the health warning and crying because it said smoking kills. He asked if it would kill me. I told him that it wouldn't kill me. He asked why it wouldn't?..... I was speechless. He had called me out on my own delusions. He pulled my head out of my cosy sand pit and made me face it head on. I told him it wouldn't kill me because I wasn't going to do it anymore. I planned to quit on new years eve. But woke the following morning (21st Dec 2011) and could not smoke. The protective Father in me could not put one more puff of smoke into my body. I realised that I had just succeeded, that I had quit.

Milton Keynes :-)

after quite a short amount of time you wonder how you used to manage to fit smoking into your busy lives. The perceived initial void soon disappears. I would not be able to fit 40 5 minute smoke breaks into my busy life without missing out on life.... ...and that is something we don't learn until we have quit, smokers miss out on the life that they are living as well as the life that they are killing.

Thankyou :-)

Thankyou :-) I'm glad that you are getting to see the doctor :-) every person's experience is different and I hope that things will even out in your mind too :-) Looking back I think I've been free of symptoms of depression for almost 2 years. So I'm thinking that my quit depression lasted maybe about 6 months. Don't get me wrong, I was vwry positive and happy about my quit. I actually didn't associate the depression with quitting as I was happy about it. I guess the brain chemistry just needed time to catch up with my positive mental attitude :-)

You're welcome :-)

Juan, you are abstaining, meaning that you are resisting doing something that you want to do.... That is always hard, and mostly ends in you feeling hard done by, and then giving in. You must change your mindset to one where you don't want to smoke. Fuel yourself with affirmations about how good life as a healthy man will be, remind yourself of the cancers that smoking cause, there are a plethora of motivators to use. when you don't want to smoke, not smoking is easy :-) I promise you :-)

thanks Suz, and you're so right about reaching that place of realisation, just this January I lost 3 family members in one very sad day, but not once was my quit in danger. PS I'm so glad your husband pulled through :-)

Hi Melody, what you are describing are triggers and autocues, see this thread I posted earlier http://www.quittrain.com/topic/485-understanding-triggers/ :-)

for now, your day by day approach is sensible, and will protect you from getting overwhelmed. As for loosing the fear... that happens all by itself as you prove yourself. Each day of success is proof that you are strong, and that you are winning. Fear is natural and sensible in survival, until you learn that you don't need it any more in order to be safe :-)

I'm not afraid of relapse one single bit. It ain't ever gonna happen. Some of you are. And there's one huge reason for that.... You have not closed the doors on your smoking past and evolved into a never again smoker, you have a lingering belief that smoking does give you some benefits and are abstaining through many methods. Abstainance looks like my quit but it is fundamentally different. There is no reason I would smoke ever and I hate smoke being anywhere near me. I am repulsed by the poisonous stench. Abstainance is going without what you want. You can abstain all your life, but it will never be the same as the true desire to never smoke again, and by definition it is never going to be as comfortable. You must discect your quitting mindset and remove any weaknesses to make it relapse proof. Seriously you have to remove all justifications. Including death of a child. Murder of a spouse. Terrible awful situations that you may face, and you must know that you would not find smoking to be a comfort. Then, like me, you will be forever free. This is the power and strength behind NOPE...it is not just a bashing word from the hardcore ex smoking police, it is the source of their quit strength.

Many years ago I did suffer with depression, and went through counselling to help me. I'm no stranger to the "black dog" as some people call it. when I quit smoking back in December I went through a series of revelations, battles, victories, epiphanies etc etc. I came out of it initially very lost within the world in which I had 'awoken' I was very depressed at times, at other times I felt like the fun had gone, like I had suddenly woken up in a grown up world, a boring world where things go wrong, where people die, where things are real. it was rather unsettling to say the least, it was distressing. I missed my former existence. I eventually emerged from my depression when I realised that nothing had changed, just my perspective. being a smoker requires you to bury your head and wear blinkers, you can't possibly allow yourself to face the horrors of your slow self induced suicide. so I guess what really happened was I grew up. I took a look around with 'awoken' eyes. nothing had changed, the world was the same, the rules had not been changed, people still fall in love, grow old, die, are born, are happy, are sad. it's all the same, except you. is this a bad thing? initially I thought so, initially I thought it was smoking cessation related depression where I would be sad forever. Now, I know it was an inner awakening, an evolution of myself. Now I appreciate things more, now I try harder, now I don't take things for granted. I learned value quitting didn't depress me, it freed me.