Kit Cat

Thanks, everyone! You are all quite right that it is not my husband's fault or responsibility. See, this is the kind of thinking it is so easy for me to get into: "Well, how can I really be expected to hold out when he's smoking right outside . . ." But that is clearly the cravings talking. Marti, today is my quit date! I woke up this morning feeling tough and resolved and decided to make this week my hell week. I don't have any major deadlines and have time in my schedule to go to yoga and get some jogs in so I think this is a good time to start. Pretty soon the deadlines will start up again and it will be good to be through the worst of the withdrawal by then!

Hi, everybody! I think this is the place to introduce myself so here goes. In August of 2013 I successfully quit smoking. Up until that point I was a serious, pack a day or more smoker who couldn't go an hour without a cigarette. Started up in college and it was like I'd found the thing that was missing from my life, and then somehow more than a decade went by and I was still at it. But I managed to quit cold turkey and did really well for a little over a year. And then I went through a stressful time with work and the major backslide began. I think what happened is I had that memory of having been a "serious" smoker and thought as long as I was just having one or two on the weekend, just to unwind, that was totally different. You can all probably guess what happened next. One or two became five or six, and next thing you know I'm smoking a few cigarettes every night. I know now that what they say is true: there really is no such thing as "just one" cigarette. My backslide has not been so bad that it has returned me to my previous level of addiction. I can go all day without smoking. But then it gets to be nine or ten at night and even though I could just go to bed, I want to smoke. It's like smoking is my treat for getting through the day without smoking. Which makes no sense, but there it is. The really crazy thing is that I can still access that memory of how great it felt to have quit. To have genuinely triumphed over the desire to smoke such that it became this distant feeling I could barely understand ever having had. In a way it was like a depression had lifted because when I smoke I feel bad about myself all the time. Like I am weak and pathetic. That is not helped currently by the fact that I am hiding it from everyone I know. Now I'm weak and pathetic and a liar because they all think I am doing so well and they have no idea. I know the key to quitting again and staying quit this time will be finding healthy ways of dealing with stress. The backslide started when I transitioned to a new line of work that is amazing and my lifelong dream, but that is also really difficult and time-consuming. The first time I quit I had a very different kind of career where I worked from home and could just go for a jog if I felt the stress overwhelming me. I can still do that, of course, but I will have to be better about carving out the time for it because my schedule is more complicated. The other major challenge will be my husband, who is also a sort-of smoker and is unfortunately kind of an enabler. I think it would be easier in some ways if he was the type to be furious with me if I smoked, but he's really kind about it because he struggles with it too. It's really sweet but it's also not helpful, if that makes sense. Our marriage is pretty great but this is a thing we have to confront and we haven't done a very good job of it so far. Anyway, thanks for listening. I read a bunch of you guys' posts prior to writing this and it was really nice to hear other people go through the same stuff. I hope being part of this community will help me stay strong.