So sad

[Pjm1297@comcast.net]

I'm on my first full day of quitting. It's the morning and all I want is a cigarette. But I didn't cave. I have felt very confident with myself in my ability to quit. It's my fourth try. But the I realized, I will never get to smoke a cigarette again. And that makes me so sad. I love smoking, I love cigarettes. And the thought of never smoking one again is making me want to to run to the store and just have one more pack to smoke, which inevitably will lead to another and another and another.

[Sunnyside]

I wrote this on another forum. If you can understand this you will stop missing a cigarette.

 

 

I think we all remember our first cigarette.

I remember mine as if it was yesterday. Sitting in an alley way, just over the road from my school, at lunchtime with a group of friends.

I was curious to what smoking was all about. I knew that is wasn't healthy for you, but I was only going to try it. Not smoke for years.

The fact that it tasted disgusting, it made me feel nauseous and dizzy, didn't matter because I thought I was cool for doing it. So I carried on and after awhile it got easier to smoke. I had stopped coughing and started to enjoy it.

So as time goes on, bit by bit one cigarette every so often turns to ten a week, then as time progresses I was smoking a Pack of twenty a day! I couldn't tell you how long that process took to get me to a pack a day. But it did.

Being the amazing machine it is, my brain had to adapt to this foreign poison I was forcing into myself.

Nicotine was releasing a flood of dopamine into my system by mimicking the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. My system became off balance. My brain needed to regulate the amount of dopamine being released, but it couldn't regulate nicotine, as it was a foreign substance (poison). So it had no other choice. My brain started turning down it's own sensitivity to acetylcholine ( What is Acetylcholine? Click here ) Nicotine was literally desensitizing me and impacting my mood. To work for itself.

The more I smoked. The more my brain turned down it's sensitivity to acetylcholine, creating a cycle that would start to make me rely more and more on the cigarette just to feel "normal".

My brain also started rewiring itself to try and integrate nicotine as part of it's normal function.

Nicotine also created another problem for me. As the effects of dopamine wore off. I was left with a "fight or flight feeling." Read more about the fight and flight response here. As I increased my nicotine level. My anxieties started to become more severe as the effects of nicotine wore off.

Yet, my subconscious started to figure out something that I wasn't fully aware of. If I smoked a cigarette, that anxiety would go away.

This was the start of what would become known to me as the AAaaahhhhhh sensation. Romancing a cigarette, remembering the good times, the memories of the few I enjoyed BUT forgetting the thousands of others.

For a fair few years I lived this illusion. As much as I really didn't like to smoke in my later years. I always thought that it must have done something for me. Yet the more I smoked, the more I didn't feel anything anymore. Nothing. I was now smoking just so I could feel "normal". I was smoking just to keep the anxieties of not smoking at bay. There was no pleasure there and I didn't even realize it. I was stuck in the cycle of addiction.

So even when I tried to quit smoking, my subconscious still remembered smoking. It still remembered that if I felt anxiety, for what ever reason caused it. A cigarette would relieve it.

So even when I quit smoking and adjusted to having no nicotine in my system. I still had those AAaaahhhh memories.

Everytime, I would fail and smoke that first cigarette, expecting that AAAaahhhhh feeling to come to me, that feeling of satisfaction. Yet it wasn't there!!

I usually felt like I did the very first time I smoked a cigarette. Dizzy, nauseous, shaky, heart beating too fast and confused. Confused that the cigarette didn't bring me relief like I anticipated it would.

The problem was, that unlike the million memories my mind created during my smoking career. The memories that told to me to expect relief and satisfaction whenever I smoked a cigarette. Now that I didn't smoke, I didn't NEED nicotine anymore. There was nothing missing. There was nothing that needed replenishing. So there was nothing there to relieve.

What I didn't understand at the time is that though the AAaahhhh feeling is real. It is WHY it is real that is the illusion.

Yet, after that first cigarette. I would still look for that AAAaaahhh feeling in the next cigarette and the next.

Again, my brain being the amazing machine that it is would say " Oh, I remember this program and luckily I still have all the rewiring in the hard drive."

So as I smoked that 2nd cigarette and that 3rd cigarette and so on. My brain, once again started to turn down it's own sensitivity to naturally release dopamine. Once again desensitizing me and impacting my mood.

All the extra acetylcholine receptors initially made were still there. Just like a power plant that was shut down and gone out of business. Once again through my brain, it started to open the gates and the power plant would be back up and running. As if it had never closed.

As I increased my nicotine level. The anxiety after effect as the nicotine wore off became more and more intense. This only reinforced my subconscious into saying, " If you feel anxieties, smoke a cigarette and they will go away."

Soon enough the AAaaahhhh sensation was there. Not because cigarettes did something FOR me, but because they did something TO me.

I was once again needing to maintain my nicotine levels just so I could feel so called " normal". I had to smoke again and again just to keep the anxieties from not smoking at bay. I had once again built an artificial sense of normalcy. I was once again in the very place that I didn't want to be..... in the grip of addiction.

If AAaaahhh memories are calling your name. Remember this. "The cigarette never changes. Only your memory of them does. "
 

[BAT]

Keep posting and stay with us or any quit smoking board. Just stay with the board.

[Nancy]

You need to educate yourself about nicotine addiction...lots of information, here.  You must come to the realization that smoking does not do one positive thing for you...it just relieves the withdrawal symptoms that you feel 30 minutes or an hour after your last cigarette.

 

So glad you have joined us...please try to get excited about your quit, instead of feeling sad.  You are giving yourself and your loved ones a wonderful gift!

[bakon]

Nice post sunnyside

[Devil Doll]

Nice Sunnyside!

Stay close to the board because there is a ton of information and support.

[Doreensfree]

A brilliant post Sunnyside...

Don't over think.... Don't think I will never smoke again ever....

Just don't smoke today....take it one day at a time...do our daily pledge...

Allen Carr...the easy way to stop smoking ...is a wonderful book...its helped millions...

Changing the way you see smoking is the answer..its your enemy...that is killing you slowly...

Welcome aboard the train...take a seat and learn all you can..

[beacon]

If you keep your quit, soon you will rejoice that you will not have the monkey on your back.  How are you feeling now?

[Colleen]

I'm on my first full day of quitting. It's the morning and all I want is a cigarette. But I didn't cave. I have felt very confident with myself in my ability to quit. It's my fourth try. But the I realized, I will never get to smoke a cigarette again. And that makes me so sad. I love smoking, I love cigarettes. And the thought of never smoking one again is making me want to to run to the store and just have one more pack to smoke, which inevitably will lead to another and another and another.

Welcome to the QT :) Try not think of it as leaving a friend, smoking is no friend of yours, thats the addiction talking. Think of it as leaving a bad relationship. What friend would put holes in your clothes, steal your money and make you stink like an ashtray? Kick that so called friend to the curb.

 

Instead of focusing on what you will be missing as a non-smoker...tell us what you are looking forward to as a non-smoker.

[Tink]

we 'loved smoking' because we had to get our fix

 

further down the line we dont have to and we hate 'smoking'

 

one step at a time PJ stick close and post

 

welcome to the train :)

[queen greenlover]

All of us have felt what you're feeling, trust me that forever/never having one can scare you off from quitting BUT if you stay CIG FREE for lets say 6 months it will dawn on you that 3" of burning paper was doing jack shit for you.

[sgt.barney]

> I love smoking, I love cigarettes

 

You don't love smoking cigarettes. At all. You just don't know it yet.

 

In time, you will uncover and expose the same Big Lie that we all found for ourselves.

 

 

Easy Peasy

[babs609]

bumping because I love sunnyside's post

 

and as a perk....a post  (one of her last) from greenlover with her famous "jack shit" line...miss her