Giving it another go!

[SarahF1985]

I am giving it another shot to quit smoking...whenever I have tried to quit in the past, drama always came up. I now know most of the drama I created due to withdrawals. I am just going to quit this time. I know it will be hard but life wasn't meant to be easy. This time I have God on my side and when I feel the need to smoke I am going to start reading my bible or pray. I would appreciate advice from those of you that are successfully kicking the habit or those that have done it. Thanks

 

[RuthD]

Yes, it is good to have something to do to replace smoking and I see you are doing that. Good going!

 

[Evie1980]

Congrats! I did my finaly quit March 4 2006. I had tried many times and for some reason I chose the most stressful time to do it! I had just moved to a country where I didn't speak the language, no any one and decided to quit smoking all by myself!
So all I can say is that stressful times will come and the desire will still be there up to about 3 years after you quit. Yes, it is easy to go back to it after a year or 2. My brother just quit for a year and stress brought him back to it. 6 years on I don't struggle anywhere near as I did in the first couple of years. In fact after 3 years I had a puff on a smoke and it nearly killed me! That was when I knew I was never going back.
Anyway the best thing I can say is to reason through the moments you want to smoke. There were plenty times I just had to say to myself "why do you want it? do you really need it?" I would talk through it all in my head (people don't usually want strangers talking to themselves in the middle of the street) because I would find myself in a lot of situations that I just wanted one. It was more than replacing it with other things. It was being my own friend and reminding myself that smoking for boredon, anger, happiness, joy, anxiety etc was not the best way to deal with the situations. And it worked. I made it through all those times of desperation and made it through the other side. If I could do it, anyone can.

 

[Evie1980]

Oh and I kept a track of all those things that got better for my body along the way to motivate me by reminding how good I was being to my body. I celebrated my yearly annniversary of my quit date with dinner out with friends or a nice gift. That was good.

 

[santacruzchristlova]

I've always felt exercising is a great way to aid in quitting