Tomorrow morning at about 8 30 will be the end of day 53 and the beginning of day 54. This is just a quick log of how i got started and what I've done to stay quit this long. I'm still balancing on a razor edge and the war ain't won yet but I'm still in the fight hoping this may help someone else get started. First thing I did before I quit was to switch brands of cigarettes. I don't care what anyone says, I don't believe they are all the same and trying to quit off of anything by Philip Morris was completely impossible for me. In fact, my first quit attempts from smoking Marlboro Lights had me lighting back up within 11 hours max. Even with the NRT patches I couldn't make it past noon. I remember putting that patch on at 6 30 am and by 11 00 i would be trying to recharge that sucker with a cigarette. Then I switched to American Spirit. I went from a pack a day to half a pack a day in less than a week. I wasn't even trying to cut back just the urge wasn't there as much. Then I started listening to sleep hypnosis videos at night. After about 6 months I had to make a drive of about 18 hours and I was out of cigs so I decided to see how long I could go without smoking since driving is my worst trigger. I made it the whole way. I bought a pack during the trip but didn't smoke any of them until I got back home. Well that turned out to be the last pack I bought and when they were done so was I. In the meantime, I keep listening to the sleep hypnosis, do breathing exercises to fight cravings. I still go out for a smoke like i used to i just walk around the driveway for 10 minutes instead of lighting up. I play a lot of golf. On the downside I do eat a lot and sleep is still hard to come by. And when the craving gets really bad I do EFT tapping. Now I would never let anyone see me do that goofy looking shit but i swear it makes unbearable cravings tolerable. sometimes it works better than others...what's that saying...40 percent of the time it works everytime....but if you stick with it long enough it will either reduce the craving or wear your arm out to the point you couldn't lift a cigarette up to your lips even if you had one. Either way i call that a win. The last thing was to get some outside support for those unexpected symptoms. Whatever is happening to me has happened to somebody else. What I don't want happening to me is emphysema. I know there is a plethora of other conditions i could get but that is the one that scares the hell out of me. So there is a quick run down of how I got here. It was the Readers Digest version so if you're thinking it sounds pretty simple it was, it just wasn't easy. If you got questions or answers I'm open to either. In the meantime, if you are reading this and want to quit but can't bring yourself to it yet, at least switch brands. It could end up being the first step of many to a successful quit.