El Bandito

Great work!

Enjoy every day Evelyn! You are doing just fine.

Welcome Batgirl. You are in the right place. Tell us a little - when did you quit? how long did you smoke for?....

Congrats today - AND tomorrow... Great work Jess.

Great work Jackie! Well done. Onwards and onwards.

Great work Gabby! Well done

Tyme - you are right. You can do this. Actually - you have. :) Life can be stressful (although in fairness, very few of us are having to outrun Sabre tooth tigers anymore to survive - oh wait - you're in Canada; are you a bear-wrestler?) - sorry I digress - Life can be stressful, but take a moment from your stressful day Tyme - and just choose to be content for a moment. Say out loud "I quit smoking. And you know? I am glad I did" Do that every day. You have done an amazing thing Tyme. Well done.

One - each quit is intensely personal and there is no right or wrong. I respect that. However - the line above encapsulates for me the difference between an Easy quit and a hard quit. I take my hat off to people who quit something that they genuinely enjoyed. That is the triumph of willpower over the desire for gratification. I could not do it. In relative terms, my quit is easier - because I became aware that I did not enjoy a cigarette, never had enjoyed a cigarette and never will enjoy a cigarette. This realisation is what made the quit possible for me. This is the Allen Carr EasyWay approach - not some flash of genius from me. The only genuine benefit that I received from a cigarette was the relief of a craving for nicotine caused by the last cigarette. Sure - I attached lots of meaning to smoking - "Hmmmmm..lovely dinner, now a cigarette and I am complete", "Hmmmm..I need to think - I know a cigarette will help", "Phew, what a day! I deserve a cold beer and a cigarette". None of those are REAL benefits - they are meanings that I attached to smoking. Ingesting a poisonous cloud of smoke NEVER actually helped me think (it removed the distraction of my brain craving nicotine), it NEVER helped me relax (actually it was a stimulant). I do not stay quit because smoking is bad for me, I stay quit because smoking NEVER did anything good for me. I just wish that it had not taken me 30 years to work out the con.

Good work Rob. Rewards, and realistic appraisal of how you are actually feeling can only cement the truth. Everything is better AFTER you quit.

Morning Rob NOPE

Happy Birthday!

Every little hour of not smoking takes you closer to 'content'. Every crave that you overcome - takes you closer to 'content'. Every celebration thread - is you getting closer to 'content'. I followed plenty of people telling me that "it will get better" - "its easy" - all the time thinking "WHAT??????" "WHEN?????" It gets better. It's easy. Feel like having a cigarette? Why? You quit. You don't smoke cigarettes anymore. Move on. That's not so tough now is it? You can do this. You can. I did. Jesus. The village idiot did.

Its those Bloody Marys... enough to collapse anyones lung. Keep marching Jess :D

You quit smoking. You can do ANYTHING! PS. Please send Bakon a naked selfie PPS (I do my best for you Porky)

Great work Dors!

5

Great work! Congratulations Laura.

I found it encouraging when people reached back to me - and assured me that what I was feeling was normal, and would resolve itself. I find it serves to remind me when I reach back to people. Accountability - I did not want to let my friends down. I did not want to feel that I had weakened another's quit by quitting my quit. and...I'm scared of my Quit Buddy

NOPE

No pain, no gain One! Keep marching. When all else fails - Brute force and ignorance works.

Life without Bakon is just..... Vegetarian.

Picked the shortest month. Smart.

Restless. It's human. There are MILLIONS of websites, blogs, videos and books out there on living in the moment. As smokers, we absolutely used smoking to distract from this and therefore created a false association between smoking and relief from restlessness. Increasingly, I am realising that the restlessness is a prompt to advance, to move, to do something.

15k? Serious stuff. Great work Rowly!

Have to say - exhausting. I had to do multiple shots of those wiggles... I'm going to give up acting and dancing....