Oslo

My first NOPE !

@intoxicated yoda, @Paul723, @KEL, @nicotine_free, @jillar, @Doreensfree, @Jordan7, @Boo, @johnny5, @Sunnyside, @Gus, @Rozuki Thank you for encouraging and welcoming me with such warmth! After taking some days to read and re-read your comments and all the pinned threads on the forum and blog posts, I now better understand this addiction, the mechanics behind it and how to prevent relapses. I decided to forever quit smoking and after receiveing so much encouragement, I know and really believe this attempt will be succesful! I am happy to hop in the Quit Train and hope I will never leave it! Today, 17 february, marks my first day of freedom in over 8 years.

Hi, I am a 22 years old male from Eastern Europe and I am happy to find this forum and introduce myself, as well as telling a short story of what led me to make the decision to quit smoking. I started smoking ciggarettes when I was 14 years old, by 17 I was a regular one-pack-a-day smoker and been so since. In the last 2 years I started to feel the downsides of this addiction. Everyday I wake up and go throughout the day coughing and having difficulty doing any sort of physical activity, my heart is sometimes skipping beats and my anxiety attacks worsened. Over the last year I had numerous respiratory infections and spent over 40% of my total income on ciggarettes. I feel that smoking is consuming my health, and I am afraid, as I have a history of heart attacks in my family, including my father which died when I was in my teens (he never smoked). In the recent years I have considered quitting smoking, and my doctors also advised me to. I had a lot of failed attempts to quit (that lasted for 2-5 days at best), mainly because I never truly commited to my decision and a strong urge was enough to make me go back to ciggarettes. After all the failed attempts to quit, people close to me have lost any faith that I will ever be succesful, and unfortunately, so did I. The most haunting thought that I have is that my health will worsen to a point of no return, and even though I was aware that by quitting smoking I could've avoided any complication, I continued to smoke. I could never bear with this situation. I fear for the worst if I continue smoking, every passing day, this addiction is affecting me more and more, mentally, physically, financially and socially. I have to quit, I am convinced of this, but I want to have a strong desire to do so, else I fear that I will fail again. I am happy to find this community and I hope that I can get here the support and trust that I can no longer recieve from people close to me after failing them so many times. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.