DenaliBlues

Hi @Kate18. Thanks for sharing what’s going on with you. Apart from the symptoms you are having, it sounds really tough to be worried about what they might mean. Good for you for guarding your quit while you go through that uncertainty. That’s motivating for me. Enjoy your cider, too! Reading your post makes me realize that I have struggled a lot with self-soothing. Hard to say whether that was one of the reasons I started smoking in the first place, or whether my trouble self-soothing was actually a byproduct of the smoking, itself. (Because even >1 pack a day was not "enough." The nicotine crowded out everything else, even though "ahhh" was just a crappy disappointing illusion that always slipped away.) It will be interesting to see if quitting eventually changes that for me? Maybe when I hit the 2+ year mark like you I will know more! Anyway, take good care and keep us posted.

Rather, try eloping.

Me, too, @JudiMD - I hit my month anniversary on March 10 also. So impressed that you've made it after 64 years! Hope you are healing okay from your surgery.

Hi, @Sunshine. We can do this!

Gigantic yetis! Yikes!

Yodeling causes deafness.

That's great, @Kdad!

Doh - just realized I got so excited that I skipped like 500 numbers! I can actually count. Well, mostly. Let's try this again...

Me too @Boo. This addiction gave me selective hearing... and selective caring. I know the risks, I know the science, it just didn't motivate me, figured everybody has to go one way or another. Part of what started to melt that ice was thinking about what my health problems would do to others. I lost my father after a very long illness (unrelated to smoking, but very sad) and the toll it took on my family was terrible. Do I want my partner to have to go through that heartbreak? Leave her wiped out financially and emotionally? And incur the anger and resentments of it being preventable? NOPE. I am grudgingly coming to accept that smoking is not a purely personal choice. It ultimately affects people around me, people I care about. It's a hard mindset to change after so many decades. I'm really sorry about your friend, Boo. But thanks for sharing this story.

Y'know when you put your sweatpants thru the dryer then the waist drawstring comes out and you have to figure out how the heck to push the string back in through that fiendishly small hole? 3. That

Thanks, everyone! Yep, the first month of my quit went surprisingly quickly. Except for those interminable crazy craving moments that lasted forever… but I’m trying not to dwell on those today. Your support, stories and general company are making this Very Hard Thing easier. Quitting is serious business, but your humor helps, too. (Warning to other newcomers: Explore the games lounge at your own risk, and only when you are alone. I simultaneously startled my mate, scattered the cats and snorted soda outa my nose having a LOL moment the other night.) Anyway, thanks to all for saving me a seat on the Train and lending me a hand to climb on board.

@Kdad, in those first days of my quit, I could not conceive of a day or a week - let alone a life - of not smoking. I had to break it down. My only job was to make it through the next 5 minutes. Then I started again, with the next 5 minutes. All damn day! That - plus doing some truly bonkers things to distract myself and stay busy - got me through. To my utter astonishment, I was alive at the end of that first day, and I hadn't smoked. I thought my head was going to explode, I thought my insides would fly apart, I thought my legs wouldn't stop shaking, I thought the craving would drive me insane. None of that happened. I made it through. I did not smoke that day. Or the next. Or the next. 29 days into my quit, I feel sort of halfway human again. We know what this is like, how hard it is. We also know it's possible. We're here for you.

Wow, @Boo six years! You're showing me that it's not just theoretically possible to quit... it's ACTUALLY possible to quit, and to get happier and more whole as a result. That gives me hope, and helps me trust in the messy process. Congrats and thanks!

Might be fun to make little tiny paper sailboats and use a blow dryer to... 9. Propel them gaily across the water in a kiddie pool.

Way to go with week #1 @JustinHoot99! Sounds like you are building a lot of "quit muscles" alongside your other muscles... every crave conquered is another rep. For me, milestones don't seem to trigger cravings, but as time passes the craves are packing a harder punch. Perhaps my addiction is going through its death throes - there's a nice thought. I'm on day 26, just 2 days away from the 4 week/month mark. And today its as if the addicted part of my brain knows that the little annoying garden-variety-wanna-smoke itches it's been trying have not gotten it a fix, so now it's having a furious tantrum and hurling major craves at me instead. But NOPE. Another recovery program I once participated in has a mantra: "First it gets better, then it gets worse, THEN it gets different." Gonna ride this train to Different!

This is, perhaps, an odd one: Not rattling as I walk down a hiking/birding trail. I used to always keep a hardpack of smokes in the right leg pocket of my cargo pants. Because the pack was usually half-gone, it used to rattle with every step I took. In the same pocket, also used to carry a black rubber film cannister for my butts, so that I didn't leave them lying around on trail. And of course they rattled, too. I now see so much wrong with this picture: being fastidious about not leaving butts on the ground while totally ignoring the smoke I put inside me... being literally a walking ashtray. Rattle. Rattle. Rattle. Nope, not this year! I look forward to hearing what the world sounds like.

5. Speed up how quickly joint compound sets when repairing drywall. Why do I (sadly) know this? See #3.

3. Defrost frozen water pipes. @jillar, stickers come off with blow dryers? Do tell...

I’m on day 24 of my quit and have reached what maybe feels a new phase. I’m learning to recognize and manage the ordinary craves that arrive in random waves throughout the day… mostly by keeping my mind/hands occupied, checking something off of my Mini Honey-Do list, doing wall push-ups, etc. Such cravings have certainly not gone away. But they have become more familiar, less debilitating. What’s new, though, is the size of the urges that wallop me when I encounter a major trigger. Their intensity is wholly different. Visceral. It doesn’t feel like I “want” to smoke, it feels like I’ve GOT to smoke. That is false, of course, coming from the addiction. But it still feels real. I am grinding through these times because I want to protect this quit. N.O.P.E. But Holy Buckets, Batman… it feels like my coping mechanisms are outgunned. Clearly, I need to get a better grip on my triggers. Plus I need a stock of additional coping tactics, things I can do when my usual list isn’t enough. What drove me to the brink in the past week were: SEEING MY MOTHER: Love her to pieces. But she pushes every button I’ve got. Last time I saw her I allowed myself to use one lozenge. Which I am otherwise not doing, since I need to stop using nicotine as a stress response. But a lozenge was a far better choice than stopping on the way home to chain smoke. I also rewarded myself with hot Indian curry takeout afterwards. Figured it was okay to set my head on fire in a whole different way… WRITING: Writing for work and smoking are nearly inseparable for me. I’ve made it through some small projects since I quit, but it was like swimming through molasses or running through sand, and the end-result was barely intelligible. Sadly, I have a massive writing project looming ahead this week. And there’s only so much curry a girl can eat... I need a plan. I’ve purchased some minty air straws to try. And I’ve been hoarding bubble wrap (the kind that pops really loud) for emergencies. In the spirit of not going this alone, I thought I would crowdsource this issue with fellow Train travelers. What are/were your worst triggers? And what do you do to amp up your toolkit to get through those moments? As a newcomer still, I'm grateful for all the different experiences and the hope (and chuckles) I'm finding here. Denali Blues