Sleeping...and not...and weird dreams...

[cpk]

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.

[beacon]

I used to dislike having to make friends with whoever was outside smoking. I am a talker so I would strike up conversations with the people I smoked with. Over the years the pool got smaller and I would compare myself to the other smokers. They looked so unhealthy to me, uncaring, addicts. I knew I was one of them too.

[JackiMac]

The smoking dreams are completely normal, I quit last year in January and found the smoking dreams so real, and I used to wake up sometimes crying thinking that I had lost my quit, then feeling elated because it was just a dream, the sleep pattern will settle and you will find your sleep will be much better for you in time.  Adjusting to a life as a non smoker is being able to change your routine and habits, I find its the feeling of missing something and that there is an empty sensation, but knowing a lot of long term quitters here I know that in time I will adapt and learn to live with this feeling .  Be so proud of you, be proud of what you are achieving, you are taking back the control of your life, you are no longer a prisoner to the nicotine, you will in time benefit from feeling fitter, have a better sense of taste, smell, you will no longer smell, your eyes and hair will be brighter, you will be able to walk, run further without being out of breath, have renewed energy enjoy your food, a whole new life awaits you out there, take it by the balls and enjoy it xx

[cpk]

The smoking dreams are completely normal, I quit last year in January and found the smoking dreams so real, and I used to wake up sometimes crying thinking that I had lost my quit, then feeling elated because it was just a dream, the sleep pattern will settle and you will find your sleep will be much better for you in time.  Adjusting to a life as a non smoker is being able to change your routine and habits, I find its the feeling of missing something and that there is an empty sensation, but knowing a lot of long term quitters here I know that in time I will adapt and learn to live with this feeling .  Be so proud of you, be proud of what you are achieving, you are taking back the control of your life, you are no longer a prisoner to the nicotine, you will in time benefit from feeling fitter, have a better sense of taste, smell, you will no longer smell, your eyes and hair will be brighter, you will be able to walk, run further without being out of breath, have renewed energy enjoy your food, a whole new life awaits you out there, take it by the balls and enjoy it xx

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