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Pick of the Week

A blog by jillar in General

  • Entries

    215

  • Comments

    197

  • Views

    33659

About this blog

A weekly blog featuring well written posts from members of our community. Each week I'll pick a post and add it to this blog along with the link to the whole thread for anyone wanting to read more. Hope you like it 😊

Entries in this blog

General

The Pattern of the Journey

beacon   Posted March 5, 2015   I was thinking about the first few months of my quit and how I posted on the boards quite alot. I posted about dizziness, stomach aches, craves and anger and and clear lungs and weight gain and feelings of sheer joy. The first month, the first drink, the first vacation, the first taste, the first drs appointment, Each of these were special, unique, important to me, my experience. The old phartes commented, comforted, celebrated, and laughed.
General

Newly Quit? Stay Away From Smokers...

Rain Forest Quit Date: May 13, 2009 Posted April 21, 2014 · IP      When you first quit smoking, the most horrible people to be around are the ones still smoking, and it’s not because they smoke.   It’s because they don’t understand at all, you are making them feel guilty as hell because you are doing what they “wish” they could do, and they are almost worst than the Nicodemon and it’s craves: they try to get you to smoke.   I relapsed a few times bef
General

A CRAVE IS NEVER A COMMAND

Cristóbal Quit Date: 14 October 2012   Posted January 14, 2017  (First Posted 01 April 2014)     A crave can happen because of 2 things:     1. Physical Withdrawl Symptoms.   2. Mental or Emotional Smoking Triggers.     Craves can happen frequently early in our quits, because of physical withdrawl symptoms.   They can also happen simultaneously with physical cravings and then later in our quits, much less frequently, as we continue to confro
General

Executive Assistant

El Bandito Posted April 20, 2014 · IP    The below is a repost of a repost of a repost...   It is a post that I have found invaluable. I posted it somewhere else today - and LB suggested it have a thread of its own....   Triggers: Reminders From Your Executive Assistant  Original post : Kattatonic Gold/ Freedom member.  "It's all in your head" has developed a really bad rap in our culture. What's up with that? The power of the brain is remarkabl
General

Keep the promise you make to yourself

JimHannoonen Quit Date: Feb. 9 2017   Posted June 9, 2017    You've made a choice to not smoke anymore and that's awesome, but remember this. No matter what you do, no matter how many patches you put on your body, how many pills you take or wads of nicotine gum you shove in your mouth, none of these things are going to be a cigarette and none are going to make you feel ok. You're gong to go through some gnarly sh*t over the next few months and you know what? That's
General

Wise words.....'Embrace The Suck'

Soberjulie   Posted November 7, 2015    I dunno if Sarge still posts here but some of his no nonsense, shoot from the hip, tell it like it is words helped me immensely in my first days...weeks...months. The best: Embrace The Suck.   You'll have moments, many moments, where quitting just plain sucks. If you're anything like me, you'll think of throwing the towel in....because...."the way I feel sucks!"   Embrace the suck. Accept it.
General

The true nature of nicotine addiction

Aine Quit Date: 2-26-2014   Posted May 4, 2019    The Law of Addiction   Most quitting literature suggests that it normally takes multiple failed quitting attempts before the user self-discovers the key to success. What they fail to tell you is the lesson eventually learned, or that it can be learned and mastered during the very first try.   Successful recovery isn't about strength or weakness. It's about a mental disorder where by chance our dopamine
General

Allen Carr ..The Easy Way !!!

Doreensfree Quit Date: 7 /8/2013   Posted May 23, 2018      If you havn,t read this book yet...its a must... He has helped millions.... You can download it on the internet ,and read it for free... What have you got to lose.!!!!....nothing.... And could gain freedom !!!   Link to original post: https://www.quittrain.com/topic/10456-allen-carr-the-easy-way/  
General

Summer's Here - Have a Plan

reciprocity   Posted June 30, 2017    Over the next week we have Canada Day on July 1st and Independence Day in the U.S., July 4th. That means lots of parties with friends and relatives. Time to celebrate summer and rightly so!   Just have a plan in advance for how you will handle these get together occasions if they are your first since quitting. You deserve to have a good time but you need to think about what the dangers might be to you so you can avoid them. Ther
General

Quitting Smoking Blues

Sazerac Quit Date: October 23, 2013, A Good Day to be Free.   Posted August 30, 2018    Here is an article I found googling around dealing with the Quitting Smoking Blues. This is from the Very Well Mind website   Depression Related to Quitting Smoking How to Deal With the Temporary Mood Changes By Terry Martin | Reviewed by Sanja Jelic, MD Updated August 29, 2018   Quitting smoking is difficult enough when you're feeling happy.
General

Pack of JACs

Lust4Life Quit Date: Sept 26 2016   Posted January 13, 2021    Newbies and lurkers - rest assured I did not smoke a pack of cigarettes.   Way back in 2016 one of fearless leaders @jillar shared a great tool - the air cig.  Put your  fingers up to your mouth.  Take a drag of air.  I termed it pack of JACs.  Jillar's Air Cigarettes. Hard to do in public these days.  My security blanket was a straw, cut down to the size of a cig.  That did not work for me tonight.  After al
General

World Health Organization Tobacco Facts

Key facts      •Tobacco kills up to half of its users.      •Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct                     tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.      •Over 80% of the world's 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.   Leading cause of death, illness and impoverishment   The tobacco epi
General

Why a Quit Sticks.

El Bandito Quit Date: 27/01/2014   Posted November 5, 2014    Now then, let's be perfectly clear   My only expertise is a little experience in smoking and quitting smoking. I have watched some videos, read some books and shared with some fellow quitters. I have zero medical experience or expertise, in fact I look away when they show operations on medical dramas. No knowledge whatsoever of brain chemistry.    There is some true expertise knocking aroun
General

You know what - you don't want to be a smoker!-Repost by Poprini

Poprini   Posted 20 June 2014    No I'm not trying to hypnotise you or play Jedi mind tricks.  I'm talking about relapsers or quitters who continue to have smoking thoughts and desires.   Nobody WANTS to go back to smoking. They quit because they want to quit (for whatever reason). What they want from time to time is to smoke. And what that means is something else. It means all of the things that people "like" about smoking:   A break in the day Stres
General

Christian99's Story

About Me This is my third quit site, and I was saddened by the loss of my first two.  I was extremely active for about 12 years on the first one, and then it radically changed in ways that made me uncomfortable.  So I left.  The second one simply disappeared into cyberspace after I was on it for a couple of years.  I'm happy to be here, but I'm a bit reluctant to invest as much as I did with those previous sites.   Briefly, I've been quit since late 2001, and I was able to quit by
General

Mind games

babs609 Quit Date: 07/13/2012   Posted December 9, 2014 · IP  wrote this a while ago and just came across it.  Thought I would share it.      As I was driving to work a couple of weeks ago, a song from my past came on the radio.  Instantly put me in a good mood.  I was singing along, bopping in my seat happily as i drove to work.  The song triggered a memory for me...a happy memory.  I was in a good mood all day because of it.   Fast forward 2 weeks l
General

My Cigarette, My friend......

Soberjulie   Posted April 16, 2014    How do you feel about a friend who has to go everywhere with you? Not only does he tag along all the time, but since he is so offensive and vulgar, you become unwelcome when with him. He has a peculiar odor that sticks to you wherever you go. Others think both of you stink. He controls you totally. When he says jump, you jump. Sometimes in the middle of a blizzard or storm, he wants you to come to the store and pick
General

Isolation Of A Widowed Smoker

MarylandQuitter Quit Date: 10/07/2013   Posted August 2, 2014  This is sad, but it hit home for me.  Different circumstances and a generation gap, this was me.  How lonely I really was and smoking was never the friend I had thought it was.  This could be any one of us should we ever take another puff from one of those death sticks.   Life had become a boring routine. She had just been going through the motions of maintaining a normal semblance of existence. Waking u
General

Instead of smoking I will... (Need help)

Fluffyyellowduck Quit Date: 27/12/2020   Posted December 15, 2020    I keep around a lot of index cards because I have ADHD and I forget things. I'm very flippity and kind of all over the place, so I keep them in my pocket to help me get through the day and remember what I need to do.    I'm using 1-2 of these index cards to write down a plan for when something comes up because things will always come up. I was wondering if you guys could help me come up with i
General

How can we replace the Crutch of Nicotine

JackiMac Posted October 17, 2014 · IP      Whenever a smoker feels down, depressed, lost, angry, bitter I could go on with the many emotions that we feel in life, but a smoker will always turn to that one thing "crutch" (excuse as we now know it to be) to make them feel better.  Yes Im talking about the nicotine fix, the cigarette, one cigarette will make everything better.  We all know that one thing that stops many people from finally quitting or attempting to quit is the l
General

The Promise is Real. Wow!

cpk Quit Date: 02/04/2015   Posted July 1, 2015    I don't know if month 5 is like going around a big bend towards magical month 6, but the promise that "it gets better" is not just empty words. I still have anxiety, but not as much. There are actually some days when I don't think about smoking at all. When I go through rough patches of anxiety or a crummy day I remind myself, "Everything isn't always about quitting smoking."   This is a really exciting journey
General

Why N.O.P.E is a must!

Jenny   Quit Date: 05/24/2012   Posted March 30, 2014    I love this article on why you can't have just one.   It Takes Just One Cigarette to Relapse. January 14, 2013 by Cameron Kellett   You will never smoke again. Accepting this is perhaps the most daunting aspect of quitting smoking and nicotine addiction recovery.   The thought of never having another cigarette can be so overwhelming, that smokers will willingly go to the grave an addic
General

Why being part of a Forum helps

JackiMac Quit Date: 1st November 2018   Posted February 9, 2015    I was sitting thinking today, that over the last year I have had two relapses, and this is my 3rd attempt in a year to quit, now I am seriously beginning to realise that way back last year I would not have even attempted to quit if it had not been for finding, joining and taking part in this Forum, being able to see that I am not alone, that there are different ways to quit, that not everyone's quit is th
General

The Power of Detachment

Boo Quit Date: March 9, 2016   Posted December 8, 2019    One of the greatest gifts the process of quitting gave me was the opportunity to practice detachment on a daily basis.  I started thinking about this earlier today after hearing Jocko Willink talk about detachment on a podcast.  In fact, the moment I figured out how to separate myself from whatever emotions and thoughts I was having in the moment was the turning point in my quit.  It was a struggle before I figure
General

HALT

babs609 Quit Date: 07/13/2012   Posted March 29, 2014    Quitting tobacco is a process. It doesn't happen overnight, but compared to the amount of time most of us spent smoking, recovery from nicotine addiction is relatively short. Years of smoking taught us to react to literally everything by lighting a cigarette. When we were happy, we'd celebrate by lighting up. When we got angry, smoking would calm us down, or so we thought. Tired? Smoke a cigarette to stay awake.

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