Closing thought of the day

[Gus]

9 hours ago, intoxicated yoda said:

Quick question though...does anybody ever get cravings but then you just can't decide if it's a craving for a cigarette or maybe something else? 

I like to think that these ghost cravings are indicative of a repaired neuropath. The craving generates, but the pathway it was traveling on has healed and can no longer name the crave.

[KEL]

@GusOh I like that! So we could "crave" things that are good for us like broccoli and spinach?

[Gus]

Oh yes, @KEL! It’s like craving lemonade, but your body just has low vitamin C and also there are people who crave clay but their body is just low or lacking some much needed mineral. Name that crave spinach or broccoli! You can’t go wrong with that!

[jillar]

That's part of that listening to your body @Gus, because it knows what it needs. I'm a big believer of that too  

[intoxicated yoda]

If anyone is struggling with cravings like I was, I'm still in awe that I've made it this far, try this breathing technique in the video below.  You won't believe how long you can hold your breath.  It calmed me down and gave me more motivation to see if I can get to 4 minutes. I'm getting more gunk out of my lungs as well.  Enjoy.

 

 

[Kate18]

5 hours ago, intoxicated yoda said:

If anyone is struggling with cravings like I was, I'm still in awe that I've made it this far, try this breathing technique in the video below.  You won't believe how long you can hold your breath.  It calmed me down and gave me more motivation to see if I can get to 4 minutes. I'm getting more gunk out of my lungs as well.  Enjoy.

 

 

Wow. Thank you, this was great. Had a terrible day at work, and left half way through the day, trying to hide tears from being bullied. This made all the difference in regaining my composure.

[Kris]

I will totally say I am glad I do not have to work any more.  That I have to subject myself to a bunch a people who act like they are in junior high.  You would think that now they are adults they could see the damage they make by being selfcentered, selfish and unkind.  That there are people around them that are struggling with real hardships, health, family and just keeping the bills paid and food on the table.  Life as adult shoud not be a popularity contest instead focus on things you can do to make someone else's live better.

[Opah]

Kate 18

you just sparked up the OPAH at 18 just the word Bullied, I was the defender of the Bullied. Many a bully ran home crying under my gentle persuasion, guess you might of called me a Bully of Bully's.

[intoxicated yoda]

I am liking this Wif Hof breathing technique more and more.  I have noticed that my respiration slows down considerably after each session.  I'm going to start monitoring my heart rate next and see if there is any difference over the next 2 weeks.  On the diet and craving fronts I've been doing pretty good with the carnivore diet.  Nothing but steak or fish for the last 10 or so days i think.  I don't feel good after eating fish though so I think I won't eat anymore of that for a while.  Cravings and bloating have been vastly diminished.  I'm beginning to think the bloating is inflammation and by eating only meat I'm eliminating whatever is getting me inflamed.  Cravings have been muted a lot as well.  I swear when I get them my brain can't decide if I want a smoke or Yoplait Strawberry Banana yogurt.  It's weird and hilarious at the same time since I can't do either one.  Anyhow, hope everyone is having a great day 

[intoxicated yoda]

Here I am.  wide awake after 4 hours of sleep.  Still can't figure out how to get more than 2 good nights sleep per week.  I woke up feeling pretty good but then the cravings started to kick in.  I think this is another hurdle I need to clear.  I used to fall asleep early and wake up early.  I felt good when I did that.  I got a lot accomplished.  I also drank a lot of coffee and smoked a hell of a lot of cigarettes.  I can remember a bunch of days waking up at 4 30 am and smoking a half a pack before 10 am.  I rarely smoked more than a pack on days like that but it definitely grooved a habit in my mind.  Filling in those grooves and regrooving a different action is part of the process of quitting I reckon.   One of the things I've been doing which is kind of annoying is that I weigh myself constantly.  Part of that is for the motivation of not giving into the sugar addiction.  I've found that when I give into the sugar it makes the cigarette cravings that much worse.  Seeing the number go down gives me a good feeling and seeing the number go up motivates me to avoid the sugar.  I am going to break the carnivore for dinner and get some chinese.  Chicken and broccoli with a side of chicken fried rice.  After the holidays are over I'm going to do a very strict 30 days of carnivore and one meal a day.  once that is done I may do an extended water fast of 5 to 7 days.  That will be a challenge since I haven't done a fast without smoking.  The last extended fast I did was 6 days but I had the crutch of cigarettes and coffee so does that even count?  I don't know.  anyhow...6 20 here so i guess i need to get up and get the day started.  hope everyone has a wonderful smoke free day and and if you are reading this know that somebody wants you to succeed.

[jillar]

@intoxicated yoda, I don't know if CBN is legal in your state but if it is, even if you have to get it prescribed, I would try it. I tried it by accident when I bought the wrong gummys and man am I glad I did because when I recently had a bought of insomnia I took one and slept so good. I highly (pun intended) recommend them

[intoxicated yoda]

SHIT!!! @jillar I think i have some of those if we are talking about the same thing and totally forgot about them.  thanks for reminding me.  I think they are like 30mg THC.  Let me know if that sounds right.  I'm not up to speed on the edibles and weed I used to smoke is nothing like what's out there today.  LOL

[jillar]

@intoxicated yoda, mine are 10mg THC and 5mg CBN. 30mg sounds like a lot, the most I ever do is 10mg at A time. Its just enough to take the edge off to sleep soundly

Edited December 15, 2021 by jillar

[intoxicated yoda]

@jillar ok.  i got these from my son and he said only take a half or a third at the time so the 30 mg is probably about right.  Thanks again.  

[Doreensfree]

You didn,t smoke today Yoda ....Well done ..your doing just fine

[intoxicated yoda]

@Doreensfreethanks for the encouragement.  I guess there really are only 2 days that I have to worry about not smoking and as long as I don't smoke either of those 2 days I'm good.  So I'll get through today and tomorrow somehow.  

[intoxicated yoda]

Had chinese tonight for dinner.  bad move on my part.  bloated, craving is back off the charts.  back to the ribeye steaks with nothing but salt for seasoning and water.  I'll get rekt again for xmas just cuz then it's back to the grind.  i do wonder if getting my diet straight would have made the quit easier?  More of a rhetorical question for me but something to consider if you're just starting out and happen to stumble across this thread.  And as far as the breathing techniques go, I definitely recommend an empty stomach for practicing that,  tomorrow is a new day and hopefully the i don't have any effects that linger to long.  peace

[intoxicated yoda]

TL;DR

It's story time again, so anyone that wants to view the train wreck that is my conscious mind, welcome aboard...viewer discretion advised.  Disclaimer, I'm not a doctor although I do play one on TV in some of my more carnal fantasies.  Now that we got that out of the way, let's get this party started.  I will be 120 days quit when I wake up tomorrow morning.  That's quite an accomplishment for me since I'm pretty sure I made this whole process as hard as I could possibly make it.  There was nothing glamourous or pleasant about it.  I feel like I fought for every second for the first 3 months.  It was quite the battle...still is although I do get some wonderful times where I don't think about cigarettes or quitting or being quit.  The problem is that inevitably I end up realizing that I'm not thinking about it at all which ends up with me thinking about it.  Of course, the only way to realize how pleasant the moment was is for the moment to end.  It's like that for pretty much everything though.  The positive to come out of all this mental carnage and anguish is the self discovery that has taken place.  I have found that denying myself certain crutches that I felt I needed to maintain the quit actually made the quit go much easier.  Then giving into those desires made the quit go right back to being as hard as the first week...which is where I'm at right now.  So to help me get back on track and maybe you if you're struggling and looking for answers to questions you don't know how to ask is to see where we came from and why.

 

First and most important, we must understand that as a smoker we did get a benefit from smoking.  Now there was one hell of a price to pay for that benefit but nevertheless we need to address it so we can figure out how to get that same benefit without the cigarette and maybe at the same time reverse some of the damage that we did to ourselves.  So what was the benefit.   This is where you need to go back and reread the disclaimer.  I'm winging this off the top of my head from hours and hours of reading different papers and I didn't take any notes so if you want call me out as being full of shit I'm ok with that and won't ask for any citations as I'm not providing any here.  Moving on... Smoking curbs the appetite, raises the acid level in the stomach and increases the glucose level in the blood.  That's in addition to the changes in brain chemistry which is beyond what I'm addressing here.  So how are these 3 such a benefit you might ask?  First is the obvious, weight control.  If you appetite is diminished you eat less,  The various hormonal responses from these reactions make the transport of fat out of the adipose cells into the liver where it can be turned into ketones for energy causes you to have more energy which makes you feel better for a moment.  Increased glucose levels in the blood means that sugar cravings are diminished. Raising the acid level in the stomach can eliminate acid reflux.  There is a sphincter muscle at the bottom of the esophagus that needs a minimal level of acidity in the stomach to work properly, so increased stomach acid closes this sphincter which tells the body that it's full and doesn't need food.  Now think about the benefits of fasting and cellular autophagy and you can begin to piece together the benefits that one could get from smoking.  Shit, smoking is sounding pretty good right about now, eh?  Well settle down cause remember I said those benefits had one hell of a price tag on them.  What is that price tag, you may ask.  In a word, collagen.  You ever look at someone who has smoked since their early teens and they look like they are twice their age?  That's because tobacco smoke strips the body of collagen.  (quick note here, I'm purposefully avoiding the topic of cancer since the only person I knew who died with lung cancer was my sister who never smoked a day in her life.)  Collagen is very important for maintaining the elasticity of the airways in the lungs and in the circulatory system.  I also believe that smoking causes a systemic inflammation that can wreak all kinds of havoc on the body,  But for now, lets just focus on the collagen aspect of it.  And that focus comes down to emphysema.  As the collagen is stripped from the lungs the air sacs cant compress on the exhale and push all the air out and the passages leading up to those air sacs collapse trapping that air making those air sacs useless.  That's a very pedestrian description of the issue but it should be close enough to scare the smoke out of you.  There are other effects in the circulatory system that I didn't even look for since the respiratory problems were enough to give me nightmares for the forseeable future.

 

So those are the three main "beneficial" reactions we get from smoking and our goal is to find out how to get these benefits without the smoke.  Here is the best I can offer.  First, we need to find out if we are addicted to sugar and was the smoking addiction masking the sugar addiction.  In my case it most definitely was and if I don't fix that nothing else will work.  Through experimentation I have found that elimination is the best remedy.  It's pretty much how you quit anything you're addicted to right?  Jus quit putting it in your body.  I found the best way was to replace the sugar with fat.  Coconut oil and ghee in your coffee in the morning and after about a week you won't even care if you get your coffee or not and sugary snacks don't really even invade your thoughts that much.  Of course it's like any other addiction, there are triggers but it's orders of magnitude easier to ignore than smoking triggers.  Which coincidently got much easier to ignore as well.  As far as I can tell the sugar addiction and the nicotine addiction are so intertwined that trying to defeat only one will definitely weaken you to the point of relapse.  Best to bite the bullet and crush them both while your at it.  The next thing to do is heal your gut and get your stomach acid built back up.  Taking a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in some water once or twice a day and a few tablespoons of lemon and/or lime juice will definitely help the bloating and the digestion.  Getting some exercise and doing some breath work will also improve your mood.  The last thing i've tried is going carnivore.  I think there are some real benefits to that.  I believe that the body is more intelligent than we can ever understand and if we give the body the correct ingredients it will heal itself of most diseases.  I have read some anecdotal evidence of emphysema symptoms being vastly improved from eating basically nothing but ruminant animal meat.  i think this has to do with the collagen being replenished in the areas where the smoking had previously stripped it.  I have not found any studies to back this up and it may not have any merit but I know from first hand experience that it lessens the cravings for smoking.  

 

So why all this massive wall of text, yoda?  Well, I needed to remind myself that I had found all the answers to the questions I could think of up to this point, and to prove it I went backwards for the last week and a half so I could document the progress for myself and anyone else who might care.  Starting Sunday morning I begin the real journey.  The Christmas feasting will be done and the road to health and wealth begins.  I will document it here in this thread with some stats and thoughts.  I started my quit almost 4 months ago at 165 pounds.  I'm at 198 pounds and will probably be over 200 by Sunday morning.  In 4 months I'm going to take back my health.  The goal is to not put anything in my mouth and set fire to it and LGN...(look good naked).  I know the LGN part sounds shallow and vain but the purpose is to regain my mental health.  The willpower it has taken to beat this demon has taken it's toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally.  Accomplishing LGN while maintaining the quit, which I've actually proven to myself makes the quit easier, will make all the things I quit smoking for that much better.  Also with spring time only months away I can feel a weakness will creep in with the warmer weather and I need to harden myself for it.  So the journey begins Sunday morning.  Until then Merry Xmas to all.

 

 

[Gus]

Good luck! @intoxicated yodaYou’ve come so far these past few months and although the battle is still on—you’ve got game!

[Doreensfree]

Most folks who travel on the Train ,at some point in there quit focuses more on there weight ,more than the cigs ...it's a different process for each person ...I sense your getting there Yoda....

Remember it's not just cancer ,the whole of your body is effected by smoking ....

I joined this group fighting to hang on to both feet ...

Staying quit before that red  button is pressed is the wisest move ....

I have every faith in you Yoda....and know you can complete this journey .....

Love following your story ....and who knows how many people you are helping ...

Stay Close ....

Merry Smoke Free Xmas

[KEL]

@intoxicated yodaThank you-I appreciate the honesty with which you outlined your "case" and then came to the conclusion we all come to. I think if we hadn't (most of us?) started smoking in our teens, we would have found other ways to deal with the "need" for the smoke's "benefits."

But who cares? That is the past. We are all quit today which is a yuletide blessing. We have today what every smoker wants-to not smoke. 

It was WAY WORSE when we were smoking. Recovery is a process not an event and I thank you for sharing your process with me (us). Merry Christmas everyone!

[intoxicated yoda]

@KEL you are welcome and I'm glad you get something from my rambling.   And you are correct, quitting is a process and not an event.  I wish you the best going through your process.  Have a Merry Christmas 

[intoxicated yoda]

I may have posted this before but I found this video to be the most helpful hypnosis video on youtube.  I used this one a lot.

 

 

[intoxicated yoda]

@Doreensfree thank you so much for the support.  you are an inspiration to me and a lot of others on this board I'm sure.  may your holidays be merry and your feet be safe.  

[intoxicated yoda]

well, christmas has come and almost gone and i really did a number on myself.  I actually didn't eat a ton of stuff but what i did eat has me painfully bloated and the crave for a cig is super strong.  Thank God my last excuse is now over.  All the things that I think I will replace the "enjoyment" of smoking with only make the process 10 times harder, but I told myself I was gonna get rekt for Christmas and now it's over.  I'll feel a little better in the morning then it's 5 to 12 days of sacrifice as avoiding the sugar becomes normal and  life can go on.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and may we all move into the new year with our quits intact.