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G’day NOPE .....Not One Puff Ever.... (replace Ever with Min,Hour, Day as required.)

Nope

NOPE for today!

Nope!

NOPE!

A cat fan, upside down and a Summer 2013 Quitter. Have a nice celebration Pippa.

NOPE

NOPE!

NOPE!!

NOPE…

Congratulations @Pippa!! 12 years is amazing! What a wonderful accomplishment, you are a roll model for all the new quitters!! Have a wonderful day!!

Hey newbies & lurkers & old phartes... No spoilers I promise… if you watch The Bear Season 4 Episode 10 has some very strong smoking triggers. The whole show does but this episode even got this 2016 Buttkicker for just a millisecond. N.O.P.E.! L4L

Congratulations @Pippa on 12 years smoke free Great job

NOPE!

Please don't do it! You will regret it! I still have dreams that I am smoking and I am quit over 2 years. I am glad they are dreams and not reality! You can do this Pilgrim! What I did in the beginning was take cinnamon sticks and pretend I was smoking. I would suck air through the hole and pretend to blow it out. It helped me a lot and it tasted really nice. If you don't like cinnamon, use cut up straws. Just DON'T SMOKE!!! You can beat it!!

Thank you, Minnie Mouse. I think "amen" pretty much covers everything you said! I haven't considered any mantras, but that could be very helpful. I appreciate your thoughts and advice!

Ah yes. The old associations with smoking can really kick our ass. Self-talk about the good 'ole days (in such a colorful positive way too) can do us in. We all get it and have been there. It's a part of the Stay Quit process or stomping out of old associations with smoking. Good recognizing why you are having such a strong pull to the old behavior (smoking at campsite where you previously started smoking again) and knowing that what you are telling yourself (how great smoking was & could be again) is BS. Your rational mind KNOWS that having one would ABSOLUTELY lead to another one and then another one and then welcome to being a smoker again. Was being a smoker all positive? Think instead of the negatives and there are plenty of them. Why did you want to quit smoking? Has those reasons changed? Focus on the negatives and kick the positive stuff you are telling yourself about smoking out of your mind (again & again & again; whatever it takes). Do you have cigarettes with you now? Get rid of them if you do and don't get any more (don't buy 'em, or ask for one from anyone). You've been quit for 3 months. Is 3 months the "usual" milestone when you've started back to smoking? Might be another reason for the strong trigger(s) right now. Being in the situation right now can feel like just one big unending trigger but they really don't last a long time. They are just coming at you one after another in a "loop" pattern in your brain which is where they will stay with your self-talk (which you and only you can change). Change your behavior & thinking (again and again). Learn new associations (we all have to!). Don't escape being present for your kids to "sneak" one. Would you really want to start over again (you know you will never be happy being a smoker again)? This is what we mean by the 'ole "merry-go-round". What we tell ourselves matters. Keep replacing the old smoking thoughts of it having any positives out of your mind (each & every time over & over again) and fill the void/replace those thoughts with new positive ones. Mantras or cliches came in handy for me. Do you have one or two that you can tell yourself that are meaningful to you? You will not always have such strong triggers (give yourself the gift of time). Think how awesome you will feel as a non-smoker when the camping trip is over! Hopefully this long repetitive comment has served as a distraction for you too ! You know you can keep quit! I know you can keep quit! Choose it!

@c9jane29, thanks for your advice. You're absolutely right, it's the romantic memory, more than anything, that's triggering me here... that stinking thinking. Lol. I'm going to stay strong and get through and past it.

Hey @Pilgrim! The only way to quit smoking is to stop putting cigarettes in your mouth. Even when we want to. Even when that old stinking thinking starts romancing the cigarette. It is just a memory, acknowledge and move on friend. Go breathe in that good camp air, make new memories with your kids, that's what life is about...this chapter is for you to write, it doesn't belong to addiction anymore!

Friends, I am really struggling here. I've been "dreaming" about smoking again lately, but it's particularly bad right now. I'm in the middle of a camping trip with my kids. The last time I was here, 2 years ago, I had just started smoking again and was really enjoying the nicotine buzz, as well as the "thrill" of sneaking in a cigarette here and there. Today this place is triggering me so hard. I keep thinking to myself how nice it would be to taste a cigarette again... just allow myself one, as an exception, as a "treat." My rational mind knows if I do have a smoke it could very well lead to the next one. I would ruin my 3 month quit... it would be a damn shame. But despite that, the urge is so strong right now... I don't think anyone could say anything in response to this that I don't already know, but it helps somewhat to write about what I'm going through here. I'm hanging on.

Excellent accomplishment Nancy. Here's to the next 12 years.

Nice job, Nancy! You were one of crew that really supported me early on over at QSMB- I’m so glad you’re thriving and celebrating every day! -L4L

Congratulations @tocevoD

Thank you for the years of support, Nancy. Congratulations!

Nope!

NOPE (but updated ticker isn't active. Not a month; I wish)

MOOE!

NOPE for today!

Nope

I apologize for leaving you all hanging. I have not smoked any nicotine in any form! Thank you for your motivational words and support! Doreensfree, no I don't! And yes, it was definitely the addict talking. My inner addict is addicted to being addicted. QGirl, it would be in my own best interest to keep alcohol out of my life for a while... it honestly doesn't pose much of a threat to my Quit. God knows I've been drunk enough in the last 2 and a half months to reach that conclusion! So yeah, good advice, Q Girl. Johnny5, I appreciate you sharing your experiences with this issue. Very relatable. It would go the same way for be, I'm sure. Minnie Mouse, you said it!

Cigs always travel in packs. 'Nuf said.

My last few years as a smoker, I made several previous attempts to quit. A couple of those quits were lost while drinking. The thought was that it wouldn't really hurt at the time. The next morning I woke up and realized that the addiction had been re-ignited due to consuming nicotine and I was buying cigarettes immediately. I strongly advise against it. My personal experience with previous quit attempts has been that lighting up always awakens the addiction and you''re going to have to start the quit again, if you still want to.

Don't do it @Pilgrim, single cigs lead to 2, 3, 4 and many more!! I know it's difficult when you have drinks to not smoke, but after a while you get over it. If it's a big issue for you, then don't drink until you get your cig addiction under control! I was able to handle it when I had a few drinks, but a lot of people can't, so my advice is DON'T DRINK, IF YOU CAN'T DO IT!! Don't give up your quit because of drinking! Btw, did you actually have a cig?? I am really hoping the answer is No!!!

I have always wondered why the success rate for smoking cessation with NRT was so abysmally low. If nicotine was truly the addictive component then NRT should have a super high rate of efficacy. I've known people who used the patch (me included) and would be desperately trying to recharge it by mid afternoon with a Marlboro Light. I tried the gums as well with similarly spectacular fails. Then a few days ago I ran across a video, which I will link below that described a whole different mechanism of addiction regarding cigarettes. It may not be 100% accurate but it certainly makes a lot more sense to me than the current narrative surrounding cigarette addiction. And please understand, I'm NOT posting this to use as an excuse to keep smoking, on the contrary, it makes quitting cigarettes more important than ever and getting a better understanding of the true enemy and why the path is so difficult and traumatic may help firm up our resolve to stay quit. So what is the real culprit? Surprise, it's not tobacco or nicotine. At least not by themselves, but rather an additive called pyrazines that are added to the tobacco. According to a study put out in 2015 based on the tobacco industries own research, " substantial evidence exists to suggest that nicotine's reinforcing effects alone are not sufficient to account for the intense addictive properties of tobacco smoking and the high relapse rates among smokers after quitting even when provided nicotine in forms other than tobacco." It was also noted that nicotine had a very limited ability to induce self administration in animals. So according to this paper nicotine by itself has a very low potential to induce an addiction. However, with addition of certain pyrazines along with a few other chemicals, and by a few I mean hundreds, they found they could make the nicotine highly addictive. Personally I don't think that nicotine is the culprit at all. I think it's most likely the pyrazines and/or the other hundreds of chemicals and the smoking population were the lab rats in the 50's thru the mid 80's as they refined the formulas. I remember going out to the bars in my younger days and having young attractive females approach me to take a survey and get a free pack of smokes. I was to drunk and stupid to realize I was part of someone else's science experiment. Anyway, if you are struggling to quit, remember that you aren't fighting a natural substance. You are up against a highly weaponized product meant to keep you imprisoned in an addiction that is so subtle when you feed it's hard to see but so relentless when you don't that it is almost unbearable. Don't buy into the 3 days to beat the physical withdrawal. That probably is true for nicotine by itself but that is not what we are fighting. The best case scenario is we are fighting a weaponized version of it and the worst case scenario is it isn't the nicotine at all. We don't know what they've done to it but we do know they push the nicotine replacement therapy as a way to quit so that could be a tell. And I don't know about anyone else but that shit never did anything for me. Quitting is a war so be prepared to fight for your life. The good news is that you have the ultimate weapon if you choose to use it, and be ready to use it a lot. That weapon is that you are always in control. You control when you choose to acknowledge the crave and when to ignore it. You are in control when you choose to maintain the quit or cave to the crave. The physical withdrawal lasted months for me and it was relentless. I still have little skirmishes from time to time but I don't dare entertain the thought of testing those waters. There is a chemical cocktail in todays cigarettes with the addictive power of heroine and getting out of that trap at all is a miracle. Below are links to the video and the paper. Take it for what it's worth. Don't let these unscrupulous bastards beat you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941150/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/QjCmLeoyrcDh/