cpk

Finishing up third sticky quit week. I don't normally eat pasta but this week ate it almost every night. Now am all pasta-satiated. I'm starting to enjoy the journey, thanks to the fabulous support from the Quit Train peeps. :wub: cpk

Yeah, creepy. Too right! But the members here are really inspiring me to enjoy all the stuff that happens in the sticky quit because it's like being on a train going through new territory...and if I stay on the train...it's SAFE. I think there is a lot of fear and anxiety about going on this journey...so I'm grateful as all hell for this site, I read your fiercely well written piece in which you said 'Relapse doesn't happen without romancing or allowing junkie thinking to creep in." I really like this so much! The final quit is so much about unhooking from junkie thinking, and romancing bull****. I think my creepy dreams are about clearing away a lot of stupid thinking and emotional crap. :wub: cpk

I'm laughing at this! Dummies! :wub: cpk

Okay. I have always confused myself about quit dates. I smoked my last on Feb. 4th, 2015, so I had to change my banner because originally I had put Feb. 5th, which was my first full non smoking day. Which means tomorrow it will be a full 3 weeks. Thanks.

What is up with the weird dreams??? Last night's was epic...it was so complex it could have had Chapter Headings. I read this is due to increased REMS...and lighter sleep. I miss my "dead-to-the-world" sleep, and not remembering dreams. Is there anything I can do to lessen all this nighttime intensity? I sincerely hope this isn't the new normal. cpk

Great post. Thanks for this. I can't believe how hyper-sensitive I am post-smoking. Maybe this is what "normal" feels like??? Everything is brighter, and more intense. I think I will just try to relax on the ride. :wub: cpk

I hesitate to speak about what I did, it sounds so insane...but I knew if I was going to keep to quitting...I had to do whatever I needed the first week. At home, especially after meals, I used pacifiers!!! I'd curl up, read a book, and suck on a pacifier. I did this because I had "mouth hunger" --- and gum, mints, tea etc. just weren't satisfying it. I also used the pacifer as a powerful symbol of the level of my addiction. After the first week I stopped with the pacifiers, but it did the trick. It got me through. Now, when I'm out and see people smoking, they just look like big babies sucking on pacifiers! So much for how sophisticated this habit really is! :wub: cpk

Twenty days in and my place has never been cleaner, or more organized. :wub: cpk

Oh my God, 12????? Did you know other girls your age who smoked?

..............My father smoked. I have four brothers and none of them smoke. I don't think we can 100% blame smoking parents, although they do "normalize" something that is abnormal.

Thank you, Doreen. Getting back to swimming and B-R-E-A-T-H-I-N-G are big rewards! Thanks for the encouragement! :wub: cpk

Thanks. Swimming is my love. Smoking took it away because I just didn't feel motivated to exercise. So getting swimming back is a big reward. Thanks for the tips. All good. I'm breathing in all this good stuff, and loving it. :wub:

Thank you for this. Stress is a biggie. I was a stress smoker. I'll pledge every day to fortify myself. Good tips, here. Well done. Thanks! :wub:

Love your humor. Didn't you post the chicken video? :wub: I laughed out loud...probably the first time since I quit, so it felt good. :lol:

Love all your identifers, and affirmations.

Sticky quit! First time I heard that! I like taking vows so the daily pledge is really meaningful for me. Thanks! I love breathing in all the good stuff!

Cool. I guess it's easy to see things in terms of addiction. I'd like to think I am BREATHING IN all the good stuff I was missing. Truly, just breathing deep has become a new "addiction" --- I love love love breathing, now!!!

"Take it by the balls and enjoy it." Love that!!!

Stay quit. Forever. That will help. Be happy! :wub: cpk

So dizzy almost passed out.

Reading a lot of posts...it seems that most people are steady smokers...a certain number every day for a certain number of years. My smoking patterns have been very different, according to whether I was living alone, living with a non-smoker, what kind of job, whether or not I was in a party culture, had young children or pets at home etc. Frankly, I've now lost track of where you can't smoke in public because it seems like everywhere. It isn't just that. You can't go to church, or on a job interview smelling like smoke. If you cough in the movie theater, or the grocery store, you get stares. There is a lot more pressure. Because of the way I smoked, this is positive pressure. I think I may have been a social smoker, even though lately I smoked alone a lot. I didn't like the way smoking had become so isolating. No doubt, many young people won't start because there is a lot of social pressure. However, that being said, the message isn't yet fully out. I read an article where this American museum hired some big-shot curator. She's a smoker, so they built special ashtrays into the balcony off her office! Obviously, this museum had not yet gotten the message that smoking ain't cool. And...the curator was in her 50's! How much fruitful work are they going to get out of her? This is the "Walt Disney" syndrome... It's lonely at the top. And dangerous. The tobacco industry is working very hard to come up with new ways to deliver nicotine...without the smoke. Let's hope the next chapter of this story isn't about nicotine addicts sucking on all sorts of delivery systems. The emphasis has to be on the addiction. That was the topic of the long, glorious post by Markus. (See "Reality - Quitting is a Mind Game") I think my only chance at keeping to a final quit is a complete lifestyle revamp. We have to ask...what makes us happy? And do more of that. Coming off smoking is realizing that cigarettes took away my happiness. Maybe when you are young you can maintain happiness while still smoking...but it gets harder and harder. Any age, and any time is a good time to quit. That's happiness...a big Starter's Kit. PS I wouldn't let a smoker do my hair even before I quit. Not on my high horse...as the present person who cuts my hair is on medication for seizures! I always ask her, as a joke, "Took your seizure medication today, right?" and she laughs and waves about a very sharp pair of scizzors!

Sometimes I have such a hard time sleeping...light sleep...waking up...can't get back to sleep...this pattern continues until the weekend when I sleep like the dead for 10 hours at a stretch. Weird dreams. I was trying to remember them but I stopped that as they are too crazy. Often think I dream of other smokers who look like skeletons saying, "You want to smoke. Come on," and things like that. I've been using herbals. Hot baths. I think it's time to start exercising myself into a state of complete physical exhaustion. I have been posting A LOT. But have addressed my main things...wondering why I haven't been coughing, increased emotions, feeling a bit lost, and this sleep thing. Also, am just getting used to the identity of being a not smoker. I used to smoke on my porch in the evening. I could tell neighbors didn't like it. It feels good to not be polluting the air like I was doing. I always felt guilty....almost criminal. I hated how this addiction was so public. I am a very private person. I like to just mind my own business. I'm very quiet. So smoking outside (which I always did) was of itself, very stressful. I live in an urban area, and if you smoke people are always bumming. I'm generous, and don't mind sharing stuff...but it was always very stressful to have strangers come up to me to bum cigarettes, or hand me fifty cents to "buy" one smoke from me. And then they would start talking, and I'd get stressed out, because I would feel like saying, "Look, just leave me alone. I just want to smoke in peace." I think, in the end, I was very stressed out about smoking, very irritable, and isolated. Being approached by strangers really stressed me out. I hated the whole idea of being seen as a member of a fraternity of addicts. Besides being such a trashy, toxic habit...I hated how smoking took away my privacy, and made me feel like I should have a sign around my neck that said, "Mental Case." I was really mentally primed to quit, but I hung out at the station, not getting aboard, for years. Okay. That's all for now. Thanks.

Nope. :wub:

Thank you, everyone, for your input on the coughing, no-coughing thing. As I was writing this I remembered that I quit once about ten years ago, and had no coughing. In fact, no really bad after effects. Or maybe I can't remember. I think before --- when I'd quit --- I'd have a memory lapse about how bad smoking was as an addiction...and so I would take it up again. Also, I still hung around with smokers. I even let them smoke inside Little Red Rider (My Bat-Mobile!) --- so, now, it's different. I'm keeping a journal so I remember every little twist and turn in the road. (Like how I felt physically so bad the first week I constantly wondered if I should go to the hospital...) Also, how I would go out in the middle-of-the-night in a dangerous blizzard to buy smokes. And how addicts who were so-called friends kept "generously" pushing cigarettes in my hands. It's a new life. If I start coughing, I'll deal with it...if and when. That's not now. Now I am okay, and feel good about my quit birthday. Thanks again, all.

I love this post. Maybe this is going to sound terrible, but for me smokers are all inhabiting "The Land of the Crazies" -- and with them, insanity abounds. I kept trying to quit over the past few years, and I had one so-called-friend, a smoker, who kept saying, "You know you aren't going to quit forever, so, here, take one of mine..." and it was then and there I realized the land of the crazies was just where all the addicts were hanging out. I have only been smoke free for a few weeks, but it was around the holidays and the new year that I realized I could no longer be influenced by crazies. That is the important message for me in this post. I always allowed a lot of unnecessary stress in my life. Now that I am not smoking I can't afford to take on extra stress. Whatever makes me feel like smoking...if I have the power to let it go...it has to go. This isn't hard. This is heaven on earth! PS For the first time in my life I have no smoker friends! That means, a lot less friends. Haha. But I am sure, in time, that will change. Today I met a bunch of Quit Train people and I feel already that you are friends, and kindred souls, on this beautiful journey! Blessings, all!