intoxicated yoda

congrats @overcome. you deserve this Win. See you on the lido deck soon.

congrats on 7 years quit and thank you for all the support you provide.

@LeapOfFaith I had to do all sorts or mental gymnastics to get myself to quit. Ultimately I ended up originally committing to not buying anymore. I think that short circuited the fear I had about quitting. Switching brands may have played a part too. In any case, the universe is telling you it's time to put them down or else you wouldn't be here. You can do it on your terms or let the universe decide for you. It will be much easier to choose to quit than to be taught the harsh lessons from the universe. Good luck LOF.

that is awesome @Brioski you should be super proud of yourself. you are doing fantastic.

congratulations @Katgirlon the anniversary and the engagement.

hold the line @Brioski . This will test the limits of your will. No need to apologize because you are having a tough day. That's what we are here for, those tough days. In the meantime, don't put anything in your mouth and light it on fire.

@Brioski understand what you are fighting and understand that you are always in control. The tobacco industry chemically programmed you to crave their product. Now you have to mentally reprogram yourself to not crave their product. You are not flawed because you quit and now fell like hell. I was hating myself, the world and everyone in it for quite a few months after I quit. I think most people do which is why so few of us succeed. So what you are going through can be considered normal give the circumstance. Stay focused on the goal and stay in control.. It's ok to crave, that's part of the process. Acknowledge it and try to move on. Don't give it life. I walked it off most of the time. Sounds way to simple I know but it worked. Me walking down the road cussing at the world like a crazy homeless guy got me through. Find your quirk and use it to your advantage. Love yourself enough to see it through.

congrats @Brioski 2 months is a mighty fine start. you are doing great.

I feel ya on the digestion thing. That is actually what spurred me to join this forum. If you read my earliest post you'll see that I literally was full of shit. LOL. But the way they were able to take something that was probably about as addictive as weed (which I could smoke or not smoke at will and never had a crave for it) and turn it into something that is so subtle and yet so hard to give up is almost admirable. We are a genius lot even if some of us are evil asf. Anyway, glad the NRT worked for you and @Gus.

I have always wondered why the success rate for smoking cessation with NRT was so abysmally low. If nicotine was truly the addictive component then NRT should have a super high rate of efficacy. I've known people who used the patch (me included) and would be desperately trying to recharge it by mid afternoon with a Marlboro Light. I tried the gums as well with similarly spectacular fails. Then a few days ago I ran across a video, which I will link below that described a whole different mechanism of addiction regarding cigarettes. It may not be 100% accurate but it certainly makes a lot more sense to me than the current narrative surrounding cigarette addiction. And please understand, I'm NOT posting this to use as an excuse to keep smoking, on the contrary, it makes quitting cigarettes more important than ever and getting a better understanding of the true enemy and why the path is so difficult and traumatic may help firm up our resolve to stay quit. So what is the real culprit? Surprise, it's not tobacco or nicotine. At least not by themselves, but rather an additive called pyrazines that are added to the tobacco. According to a study put out in 2015 based on the tobacco industries own research, " substantial evidence exists to suggest that nicotine's reinforcing effects alone are not sufficient to account for the intense addictive properties of tobacco smoking and the high relapse rates among smokers after quitting even when provided nicotine in forms other than tobacco." It was also noted that nicotine had a very limited ability to induce self administration in animals. So according to this paper nicotine by itself has a very low potential to induce an addiction. However, with addition of certain pyrazines along with a few other chemicals, and by a few I mean hundreds, they found they could make the nicotine highly addictive. Personally I don't think that nicotine is the culprit at all. I think it's most likely the pyrazines and/or the other hundreds of chemicals and the smoking population were the lab rats in the 50's thru the mid 80's as they refined the formulas. I remember going out to the bars in my younger days and having young attractive females approach me to take a survey and get a free pack of smokes. I was to drunk and stupid to realize I was part of someone else's science experiment. Anyway, if you are struggling to quit, remember that you aren't fighting a natural substance. You are up against a highly weaponized product meant to keep you imprisoned in an addiction that is so subtle when you feed it's hard to see but so relentless when you don't that it is almost unbearable. Don't buy into the 3 days to beat the physical withdrawal. That probably is true for nicotine by itself but that is not what we are fighting. The best case scenario is we are fighting a weaponized version of it and the worst case scenario is it isn't the nicotine at all. We don't know what they've done to it but we do know they push the nicotine replacement therapy as a way to quit so that could be a tell. And I don't know about anyone else but that shit never did anything for me. Quitting is a war so be prepared to fight for your life. The good news is that you have the ultimate weapon if you choose to use it, and be ready to use it a lot. That weapon is that you are always in control. You control when you choose to acknowledge the crave and when to ignore it. You are in control when you choose to maintain the quit or cave to the crave. The physical withdrawal lasted months for me and it was relentless. I still have little skirmishes from time to time but I don't dare entertain the thought of testing those waters. There is a chemical cocktail in todays cigarettes with the addictive power of heroine and getting out of that trap at all is a miracle. Below are links to the video and the paper. Take it for what it's worth. Don't let these unscrupulous bastards beat you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941150/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/QjCmLeoyrcDh/

congrats @Dianne. 2 years is an awesome quit. good job.

welcome back @darcydon't torture yourself over what could have been. be grateful for the experiences and keep moving forward. what you did yesterday creates today and what you do today will create tomorrow. focusing on creating great tomorrows will keep you on the train. you can do this.

@darcyI know how bad it is right now for you but you can do it. I was seriously hating life for 8 to 10 months I think. I couldn't understand why it kept getting worse when it should have been getting better. Everything you are feeling is real but it will pass. you are being reborn as a nonsmoker and these are the labor pains. Love yourself enough to see it through. you won't regret it

big congrats @Mac#23 you were one of the constants here during my tough early days. much respect to you

congrats @darcy you are doing it.

Well done @Brioskigetting through that first month is so important. You will start getting your life back soon enough. For now, staying quit is the priority and you are doing a stellar job. Sending you some good vibes.

@Angeleeki believe that anything that alters the brain chemistry and thus alters ones perception of reality will ultimately cause either depression or anxiety. Whether it be from smoking tobacco, weed, eating sugar or even mushrooms, the result of the brain trying to regain its normal chemical balance as those stimulants wear off can cause long term changes in the neurological pathways. To see a report from someone such as yourself of long term depression being fully gone gives me hope of recovering back to a mental state of never having smoked. Were you ever clinically diagnosed with depression? Sorry if I'm being to nosy but this is a topic I find fascinating.

congrats on the 2nd anniversary of your quit @Gus so happy to see you reach those milestones. I hope you had a wonderful day and may I always be 5 months behind you.

happy quitaversary @Boo. blessings to you and your family.

congrat @overcome it's always a pleasure to see a fellow quitter succeed. hope you had a wonderful day.

@Brioski i got along pretty well until I was about 6 weeks in and then everything went to hell and stayed that way for months. couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't stop eating, couldn't poo, drank enough water to float a battleship and got cramps in the damnedest places you could imagine and I put on 40 lbs in 4 months. Long story short, my experience is that no matter how bad it gets it will get worse and then it gets better and then your addiction is cured...kind of. ok, maybe not cured but the memory of the blistering hell I went through will be stuck in my mind for a long long time. anyway, good luck and stay the course. it is so worth it.

@darcy congrats on your first month quit. that is a huge accomplishment. sorry to be so late so I'll congratulate you on 1 month and 9 days. you are doing fantastic

congrats Jordan7. that's how you quit and stay quit.

Congrats @DenaliBlues not sure how I missed your big day though. Anyhoo...it's always nice to see a quitter win!! these might not be the right monkees for this occasion.

yep, quitting isn't glamourous fer sure. you don't quit because it's easy though. you quit because it's necessary.