cpk

One year and three days. :party2: Gee, it seems like it was one year just a minute ago! :girl_blum: Pretty cool you are advancing towards two years now. :wink3: I'm honored to be watching you in this journey, and also inspired. :wub: Thanks, Marti Ms. Smarty! :tender:

It's hard work to quit. I have had some great highs...but it's hard work to stay vigilant. Everything is being rewired. One thing I read in a book on changing habits is that it's hard to change more than one thing at a time. I was eating healthy before I quit, but that's harder to keep up with 100% right now. I've added exercise but moderately. What I don't like is the rapid mood changes. I'm with you there. I can get very irritable very quickly. Have a short fuse. I have to watch my behavior. It's like babysitting a toddler, and who would want to do that 24/7? When i get a lot of tension I have to move around. Getting up and moving around seems to decrease the tension. Someone wrote on one of my threads, "Embrace the Suck," and saying that to myself has actually helped. Keep it simple, I guess. Brave and honest post. Thank you! :tender:

I like films before cell phones, but in those films everyone is smoking!

Day 7! That's ONE WEEK! Hell week done and dusted. BIG CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Big time celebration sans smokes. Bakon (has he nicknamed you Elton???) says treat yourself to something nice because "the quit is hard work and needs to be paid" --- I'm nearing 6 weeks and have no recollection of Day 7. I think I was holed up in my spare bedroom watching back-to-back DVD's, eating large bowls of angel hair pasta, drinking cold hibiscus tea, and sucking on a binky, as everyone here knows. (Think in Liverpool they're called dummies?) --- but in my defense I also think we were having back-to-back raging snow storms. Whatever you do, do it to excess...after all, you're being sensible in quitting smoking, so how much else do you really need to be sensible about this weekend? :preved: :umnik2:

When is Sherlock gonna do the sticky quit? OR Does it bother other quitters to watch smoking in movies? In the BBC Sherlock he goes from wearing three nico patches at a time to occasionally smoking with his brother Mycroft. He never seems to enjoy it when he smokes but still ~ he is a smoker. I've avoided watching movies that have a lot of smoking. I admitted on this forum that early on in my quit I CRIED when I watched Tom Hanks hacking away as Walt Disney.

:pioneer: N.O.P.E.

feb 4, 2015

I'm confused.

I love the Shackleton reference. Shacky would have loved FIDO.

Thursday: 40 minute brisk walk, some hills lungs didn't hurt but felt like paper creepy 20 minutes throwing hay (at horse ranch) ...........next time will use nose filter mask.........lungs still feeling vulnerable Friday: Nothing because shins slightly sore from all the walking I started this week................and was feeling lazy Overall: 5 1/2 weeks quit................chest pain and tightness greatly reduced by getting out and exercising this week

I overdosed omelet with horseradish for dinner...painful pleasure!!! :wacko2: :lol2: I think I'm gonna use it next time a crave hits.

Leo Tolstoy wrote "War and Peace" and lived over a hundred years ago in Russia. He had notoriously bad habits... excessive drinking, smoking, womanizing: he even lost his house because he gambled it away in a card game. Smoking was hard for him to give up because he loved it. Guess it fueled him through 7 rewrites of W&P. When he finally gave it up in the final sticky quit, he tried to get all the peasants to throw their tobacco in a big bonfire. They just laughed at him. Tolstoy kept finding new things to give up because it seemed to give him a rush. He gave up meat, the rights to War and Peace, his land, hunting, fancy clothes, shaving, cutting his hair, organized religion, and riding a bike. The bike riding thing was weird - he said it made him feel too silly and euphoric. He didn't give up doing his "dumb-bells" every morning, and in his 70's was stronger than his sons. He didn't give up playing the piano, swimming, and horseback riding. It's said he spent the equivalent of 7 years of his life on a horse. Some things never change. Tolstoy loved smoking, and describes the romance of the addiction in his novels, in lavish detail. He gave it up because he said it caused people to become non-productive and lazy. Also, because he just loved to give up bad habits.

MQ Re: Dopamine. Thanks. Great read. I'll check out the links over the weekend. This is exactly what I was talking about.

When I bought a pack of cigarettes I'd hide the first couple, because I hated running out. The hiding places got more creative with time. Places I have found hidden cigarettes: Inside sewing machine. Inside old pair of hiking boots. Inside dust jacket of old vinyl record. Behind painting. Lock box. Jewelry box. Inside empty frozen spinach box in freezer. Etc, I'm always afraid one of these hidden cigarettes is going to jump out and scare me, "Boo! Gotcha!" on a bad day. From inside the African drum... Back of junk drawer in kitchen... Underneath seat of rocking chair on porch... I think maybe I'll get one dollar or five dollar bills and start hiding them all over the house in all the places where I used to hide skull and crossbones...

Thanks. I link these mental urges with the brain having been used to the shot of dopamine that came with smoking. Is that correct? I find if I set a goal - however small - like walking for 30 minutes, or going to the grocery story to pick up fresh produce...the brain seems satisfied, because dopamine is linked to goal setting-action-and reward. I haven't been thinking in terms of nicotine as much as re-wiring my life to satisfying the dopamine "gotta have it" urge with healthy motivation-action-reward situations. I've read that smoking causes big dopamine rushes...and after quitting the opposite occurs...less dopamine production...so one has to be smart and set up many motivation/action/reward situations. This is working for me although I'm still learning to use it. Does Joel discuss dopamine production/depletion in any of his videos?

:ph34r: N.O.P.E.

What if you get busy or don't feel like noping on the board but nope in your heart....

I really enjoyed reading this. I'm a planner, like you, so your suggestions really work for me. Like in one of your posts to me you said to make a plan to do something when the craving hits. You said - in your case, as an example - if you are making dinner and in kitchen you wipe down all the surfaces. I put a plan in place that I change location. If I'm inside go do something outside. Get involved in something new...some new task. I'm amazed at how well this works. The mind doesn't care about being asked to do something new. It just wants to DO. The mind wants a dopamine fix. There's healthy ways to ----- Do, and get reward. The mind is satisfied. Craving melts away. Bit of a miracle.

My anger isn't only about my issues. It makes me angry that those who are least equipped to deal with the damage caused by smoking, such as those who have minimal access to medical care, are often those most vulnerable to getting hooked. Many of us got hooked in our teens, and didn't have the best role models since many of our parents smoked. Just staying responsible is doing a lot. Because you never know who's watching. And what if...one day a year...anyone who ever smoked even one puff...donated the cost of a pack of cigarettes to their favorite charity? What a grand day that would be!

Here she is... GODDESS OF THE QUIT !!!

Reply post is somewhere on this thread.

Thanks. I'm really enjoying being where I am right here, right now.

And how strong are you today? Pretty strong, Ms. Smarti Pants!!! Congratulations on your sweet victory. But you, wise woman, know what I mean when I say there has been damage and it can't be 100% eradicated, and vigilance will be a natural way to live. This is just part of life's journey. I believe, and have always believed, that the root of addiction is always about the perceived lack of love. Problem is when you're active in your addiction you can't see the door that leads to love and freedom. Actually, the same is true of suicides. People become hopeless because they can't see the door to Life. Addiction is the same. Love cures. Insight cures. Mindfulness cures. Vigilance cures. And you are the lady waving all those banners today. Your story is a happy one. Can you believe that not only have you helped yourself, but you have helped and inspired people all over the globe???? How awesome is that? Shake some booty and have a full-out radically extreme celebratory day. Well done, Goddess of the Quit!

Laughing is just crying backwards. Haha.

Yeah, and this friend Joel describes is really a puppet of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry is pulling the strings. You aren't paying this friend to kill you, you're paying the tobacco industry. The greatest consumers of cigarettes are the poor, the marginalized, and those with mental health issues. When I smoked I knew all this but I didn't want to think about it --- so it created cognitive dissonance - or - simply put, made me feel like a fake and weak and crazy. Now I'm strong enough to feel angry. Sometimes these facts also help teens who smoke to quit, because teens don't like their freedom taken away by Big Brother.