Boo

Oh! (again)

Oh! Stick power...activate!

Welcome aboard Jackie. It looks like you are starting this quit with the right mindset and attitude. That sets you up for success going forward. With time your morning routine will feel perfectly normal without cigarettes. It's just a matter of creating new habits and letting the old ways fade away. What's new today will become routine with repetition. Congratulations on setting yourself free from cigarettes and we look forward to getting to know you better. Enjoy the ride.

Not sure when this happened, but there are videos by The Beatles on YouTube that haven't been deleted, blocked, or muted here in America.

3 Hey, how's it going?

NOPE!

To the best of my knowledge, the Pet Shop Boys are the only people to record a synthpop version of a country music standard...

5

Addiction and denial, you can't have one without the other. Even when the wages of smoking are put in front of smokers in bold print and color photographs, the smoker will make excuses for their "friend" the cigarette. The hopelessness of knowing that you're killing yourself but soldiering on largely due to unwarranted fears of changing course is the most bleak emotion found in the haze of cigarette smoke.

I need a bit of the good ol' rock music to light a fire under my ass this morning...

6 On the one hand, it sucks that I'm going on four-hours of sleep today. On the other hand, that National Championship game was worth staying up late for. Instant classic.

And perhaps the ultimate irony of smoking: I started smoking cigarettes in part to show what an independent man I was and ended up becoming a slave to the damn things.

NOPE!

5

6

9 Come on everybody, let's all do the 10 dance...

Thank you kindly Doreen. I'm gonna have that "10 Dance" song in my head the rest of the day now. What to say that I haven't already said...10 months ago, I had a great amount of doubt and trepidation about my quit. I obsessed about cigarettes most of the day. Now I have full confidence in my quit and rarely have any thoughts about smoking. When the odd thought springs to mind, it is quickly brushed away. It has only been ten-months, but I feel years removed from smoking. It's just something I used to do that really has no bearing on my day-to-day life now. Make a spot on the lido deck for me, I'm coming in hot.

NOPE!

During the early days of my quit, there were moments when a switch was flipped and the process of quitting started making more sense. Reading the following passage written by Allen Carr was one of those pivotal moments... "The only reason you or any other smoker needs or wants a cigarette is to try to get rid of the feeling of nicotine withdrawal. But it is only smokers who suffer from nicotine withdrawal. Non-smokers do not. So all you are trying to do whenever you light a cigarette is feel like a non-smoker!" It seems obvious now, but at the time that reversal of thinking felt revolutionary.

11 Good morning Doreen.

NOPE!

And he knows how to use it.