My Quit Smoking Journal - How I Stopped Smoking Cigarettes -Page 2

Stop smoking cigarettes - information and journal

A Quit Smoking Journal
How I Stopped Smoking Cigarettes
Page 2

NicotineLozenges.com

Note from webmaster of NicotineLozenges.com:
This journal, written by a friend of ours, is updated here: My Quit Smoking Cigarettes Journal

It has been 21 days today since I had my last cigarette. Up until this point, I wasn't even able to sit down and write in this journal because sitting at the computer reminds me of smoking.

Today, however, I am very tempted to have just one cigarette. Very, very tempted. It's been a very bad day.

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It's over a month since I smoked my last cigarette. As you can imagine, I'm quite proud of myself.

I want to thank the webmaster of NICOTINE LOZENGES .com for allowing me to publish my quit smoking journal on her pages. Now, back to how I quit smoking, and my journal.

Originally, it was supposed to be a day-by-day, real-time journal. However, I found that I just could not sit long enough at the computer - or even with a pad of paper and a pencil- to put down my thoughts. That's how edgy I was in the first days, and even weeks, of nicotine withdrawal.

"They" say that you are free and clear of nicotine in your "system" within 72 hours of smoking your last cigarette, or having your last dose of nicotine in whatever form. In my case, I used a 21 milligram (mg) nicotine patch for the first three days of my quit smoking attempt. This took the edge - greatly- off the need for a cigarette. However, if you are using a nicotine patch, nicotine gum, or any other sort of nicotine product instead of quitting the nicotine habit cold turkey, then, eventually, you are still going to have to face total withdrawal. Therefore, on the third day, when I'd taken my patch off and was totally without nicotine, the going got very tough.

The fourth day after having my last cigarette was my FIRST day to be totally without nicotine. And it was TOUGH. I remember crying at one point...and telling a family member that life without cigarettes wasn't worth living. Can you believe it? Another two days of up and down mood swings - with lots of eating and very little sleep - and I got past the physical withdrawal from nicotine and cigarettes.

However, what is also true is that the psychological withdrawal from nicotine - and the cigarette smoking habit - takes much longer to get over. I wonder if an ex-smoker is ever really 100 per cent over the urge to have a cigarette? Oh, surely, the need goes dormant for hours, days, months, and even years after that last cigarette. But I've heard of smokers, and known a few, who hadn't had a cigarette for eight or nine years and then returned to the habit after a major crisis knocked them off the nicotine-free wagon.

Right now, I'm worried about the short term battle I face with regards to the cigarette habit. After many years of smoking , having a cigarette has become as much a part of my life as, well, breathing. But you know smoking that cigarette is killing you, even if you don't feel the physical effects of smoking- yet. You know you are pushing your luck as you continue to smoke year after year. Finally, you take that very first step towards quitting the cigarette habit or the nicotine habit. I finally did - and I surprised even myself with my decision to stop smoking.

Shortly after Christmas, my husband came home with a pack of nicotine patches which he'd gotten from a friend. The friend had failed in his attempt to quit smoking. He decided to put off his attempt to quit smoking until some unknown time in the future. In the meantime, he offered the box 21 mg nicotine patches to my husband- for me to try.

Well, I let those suckers sitting on the sideboard for quite awhile. Nicotine patches? Yech.

Then, one day, as I sat in our dank and dark cellar having my clandestine cigarette (I've never smoked in front of the children, and I never smoked in public), I think I "hit bottom", as they like to say in the 12 step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. I realized how ridiculous I was being- sitting in the dark (in case my youngest child should come down the steps) on an old suitcase in an old fruit cellar located behind the main celler. I remember thinking there might even be bugs running under my feet or mice sitting there in the dark, watching me take puffs. It gave me the creeps, and made me think of the nicotine patches sitting up on the old wooden sideboard.

I didn't quit that day. Two days later, on a very, very cold winter's day, I decided to take a nice hot bath in the middle of the afternoon. It was, despite the weather, a wonderful day. The children were all home - they hadn't returned to school from their Christmas vacation yet. My husband was also home. The family was cozily seated around the living room, watching television and waiting for me to come back downstairs after my bath. Then we'd go to the mall to have something to eat and walk around. It was going to be a pleasant family evening.

I took my bath and washed my hair. I remember rubbing cream on my skin, and shaking Johnson & Johnson's lavender and chamomile scented baby powder on my body, and thinking how wonderful I smelled and how clean I felt. But I knew the clean feeling would be ending very soon- with my first after-bath cigarette, which I'd planned on having before we went out for the evening.

In the past, I'd tried various methods to retain the clean feeling. I tried brushing my teeth after each cigarette. For a while, I kept an old bathrobe and shower cap in the cellar to put on before I lit up. But the cigarette smell was not the only reason why I wanted to quit. The most important reason, besides health reasons, to quit was to be a good example to my children. My eldest child already knew I was a smoker and I'd recently discovered that he was a smoker. Even though he swore he'd started because his friends in high school all smoked, I blamed myself. Now, I was afraid that the younger child would also smoke.

I had quit smoking before. And I remembered how proud I was of myself. But mostly, I remembered how sorry I'd felt for other smokers. I could smell them, when they entered a room, from ten feet away.(continued)

Update 2021 - Well, the patches didnt work, but my desire to quit did because of my daughter, who was now in the double digits. Her older brother used to nick a few of my cigarettes daily from the drawer where I kept them "hidden".(Read about him above). So my son stayed home with me for three days in early July 2005 and helped me quit cold turkey. By the third day, I was begging for "just one". He would not relent. Thank God.