sgt.barney

Au contraire: You ... and ONLY YOU are in control. You are in FULL control of your smoking status. You CHOOSE to smoke OR You CHOOSE to remain quit You. It is a conscious, willful decision that lies only with you. YOU and no one but YOU, When you can acknowledge this without making excuses ... only then will you be successful at quitting. Stay in contol, my man. EZPZ

Hey Doc - <This> hurts ... Doc: "Stop doing <this> ..." You don't need NRT. You don't need Patches. You don't need Lozenges. You don't need Chantix/Champix. You just need to lay off the Nicotine. You know what you have to "look forward to" ? A long life free of those pesky things (heart-disease, stroke, lung cancer, emphyzema, COPD, gum disease <the list goes on and on and on - take your pick (NOT LIMITED TO ONE-AND-ONY-ONE CHOICE ! (Enter as often as you like!) )) - you can look forward to HUGELY reduced risk(s) of all-of-the-above. There's your reward. This ain't Rocket Surgery, y'know? You know what you need to do. Stop making excuses and hedging and just do it. Do it. EZPZ

You are a non-smoker. You know what to do. The rest, from here, is easy peasy. EZPZ

Because you are an addict. Nothing more. Nothing less. Craves can happen ANY time. How do you think folks with years ... decades, even ... relapse? Either you are committed to quitting or you are not. If you are committed, craves come and craves go. If you are not ... you remain a smoker. Which are you? EZPZ

Don't be stupid. You regret them all. You are simply unwilling/unable to admit such. When you can finally acknowledge this, you will be free and quit. Until then, you will remain a slave. EZPZ

EZPZ

Sarge is gonna have to assume that The Juan has given up again. <sigh...> EZPZ

You ARE the addict. (as is Sarge) (as are all of us) It is fantasy to try and separate ourselves from what we are. EZPZ

Where you hiding, Juan? EZPZ

Sarge assures you: If you can't be honest ... you can't be quit. "Dignity" or not. EZPZ. And so ... you understand ... EZPZ.

The car crash was incidental / inconsequential to your relapse. You were already looking for an excuse to smoke ... and you found it. EZPZ

Where you been, Juan?

Mind over Matter ==> If you don't mind ... it don't matter. EZPZ

No you're not Juan. You think you have a hard time but you don't. Just imagine: twice weekly Chemo treatment ... breathing from a tube up your nose fed by some Oxygen concentrator. An hour or so baking your internal organs under the Radiation Emitter. Wasting away on a Terminal Diagnosis with mere months to live.. That's a hard time. A. Real. Hard. Time. This? This is nothing. NOTHING. EZPZ

ALL of them. The Sarge has NOT SMOKED every last cigarette manufactured, world wide, since he quit. Each and every one. Everywhere. ALL of them. EZPZ

The FIRST PLACE to start is to both understand AND acknowledge that the above is a lie. "I had to smoke". No. You did not have to. You wanted to. If you can't start there - complete honesty. Drop the excuses. Drop the lies. If you can't start there you have no hope. You will never be successful as long as you type and think things like the above drivel. EZPZ.

Randomly tossed the rest of the pack out the window on the commute home from work ( go ahead - arrest Sarge ... he littered ... ) and haven't looked back since. Unplanned. Unforseen randomness. Sarge admits to thinking about it for months prior (due to a bad Doc Visit (High blood pressure, high cholesterol, pre-diabetic - ( all the metabolic and health/lifestyle bullshit we're free to change but rarely do)), but it just sorta ... happened ... completely at random one otherwise un-noteworthy day on the ride home from work. It's been 8 years. It'll be a lifetime to go ... EZPZ

The Hardest Part, barre none, is deciding: "It's Time To Quit ==> NOW " ... All the rest is pretty easy. EZPZ

Because : Addiction. Duh ?!? <boggle> It's kinda the WholeIssue™ with this thing, right? EZPZ

What the ****, Juan? EZPZ

Sarge would suggest you stop looking for an external "cause" to blame It was you that "caused" you to have a smoke. You and only you. You wanted a smoke ... so you had one. Why did you want one? Because you are an addict. Nothing more. Nothing less. You. EZPZ

Two groups of people tell The Big Fat Lie: Successful Quitters: Boy that was THE HARDEST THING I ever did. I'll never do that again ... Failed Quitter: Shit, that was TOO DAMNED HARD. I'll never make it. Don't believe 'em, folks. Quitting is as easy or as hard as you choose to make it. It is, indeed, a choice. You can choose to embrace The Suck and be happy about it ... ... or you can fight it the whole way and live a life of difficult misery. The Suckage Level is gonna be high at times for all of us. It's what makes us addicts. The Big Choice is in how we react and keep drivin' on to The Goal. We can make it easy on ourselves. We can make it hard on ourselves. It's as easy or as hard as we make it. EZPZ

American Association of Retired Persons. Yes.

Yeah ... first "The Letter" from AARP for Sarge's official "Too Old For This Shit Discount Card" came earlier in the week ... Now this from Phillip Morris ... EZPZ