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I want to have it as a reminder, so that if I ever waver, I can look back and see what I went through and how I don't want to go through it again! I look forward to getting to know you too. :)

But the real question is, why oh why did Noah have to bring two spiders on the ark? Whyyyyy? And did they drink Earl Grey tea too? Would that make them posh spiders then? :huh:

It's so weird how you don't see any of that while you're still a smoker. As soon as you stop, and take a step away from it, it's like the logical part of your brain comes back and you suddenly realize what you've been doing to yourself. Now, I just picture all that tar coating everything and it's like "eww, ewww, ewww...." :angry:

Thank you so much for the warm welcome! :wub: Your posts and stories really inspired me and kept me going these last few weeks and I'm happy to finally meet you. We can do this - the support is so so important to success. Reading posts of people who are ahead of you in the journey, shows you it's possible and motivates you to keep going. It did for me. I agree - the moment when you realize it's an addiction is a real lightbulb moment. I wish someone had put it to me that way years ago. It made such a difference. See, when you think "oh, it's just a bad habit" then you feel weak for not being able to stop doing it. And you feel bad about yourself and that just leads to giving up. "I can't do this. I'm not strong enough. If I was I wouldn't be smoking in the first place. So, there's something wrong with me." When you realize it's an addiction, something shifts in your head. You no longer feel like you are weak in character, like you are defective in some way. You feel like you have, for lack of a better word, an illness, an opponent, and that doesn't reflect on you. It's just a thing that you HAVE, not a thing that you ARE, and so you can fight it and work to get rid of it, without feeling like you're attacking yourself. But you're no longer putting yourself down, or fighting against yourself. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right, but that mental shift really helped me. And staying vigilant is so important, for sure. That sneaky junkie brain has a nasty habit of crashing the party now and again, and it catches me by surprise at the most unexpected moments. When it does, I just take a deep breath and attack it with logic. "NOPE, nicotine, we broke up, remember? You have no power over me. You're outta my life. This relationship is just not right for me. You're too controlling. It's my life, you know. I'm in the driver's seat. Not you. You're now just a fading memory, and I'm just not that into you anymore. Sorry. I've moved on. It's not me - it's you."* And then I go through all the ways I'm feeling better now that I stopped with the smokes. And I follow that by imagining how awful it would feel to smoke one now. The coughing, the dizziness, the nausea. And then to start all over again in quitting. And I read posts here. And I NOPE. *it's that conversation, but with more swear words :D

Nah-uh. Noppity Nope. NOPE.

I was scared of Hell Week. I prepared myself as best I could. I took the week off. I stocked up on junk food, thinking I'd probably just eat my way through my first week. I expected to be gorging on cookies, chips, chocolate - anything and everything that was probably not great for me in abnormally large doses. As long as it kept me from smoking, I was ok with it, figuring I could always ramp up my workouts when I was ready. I was right about one thing. I ate. Though eating is probably a gross understatement of what I did. :lol: I ate constantly. But, what really took me by surprise was, I didn't eat cookies, or chips or chocolate. I had absolutely no desire to touch any of it. I wanted tangerines. And snow peas. And sugar snap peas. And tuna. And chicken soup. Not one or two here or there either. Oh no! I ate three bags of tangerines that week. Three! Two bags of snow peas, three of sugar snap peas, SIX CANS OF TUNA! And bowl after bowl of chicken soup. I thought I would explode. :wacko: But I couldn't stop!! I generally eat a pretty healthy diet, but it's a far more balanced and moderate approach. This was so weird. But I figured my body must have some kind of a need for this stuff, so I went with it. Much of what I ate had a high Vitamin C content or other antioxidants. I also take a cranberry supplement with vitamins c and e, and I kept up with that. At least I wasn't smoking, right? I developed an aversion to my beloved coffee and drank cup after cup of green tea. I drank so much water, I was sure I'd drown. Every time I had a craving, I would grab another handful of sugar snap peas. The crunch of these was somehow super satisfying. I watched a lot of Netflix. I read these forums and I ate. My strongest cravings were near the end of Day 2. I came so close to going to the store to buy a pack. But, honestly, I was feeling way too full and, as a result, lazy, to bother going! I held on and I ate. I figured if I could just make it though three days. Just three. If I couldn't manage past that, I would get a pack. On Day 4, I woke up and I didn't really want a smoke upon waking. Which was so strange to me. I think that was the moment that I really committed to my quit and realized that there could be life after smoking. Also, I really didn't want to go through the first three days again. I wanted to see what came next. From that point on, there were some strong cravings for a cigarette. But none as strong as in the first three days. And they weren't constant. They felt more like "I could really go for some cake" type of thoughts. And, as long as I kept myself distracted, they went away. By day 10, my food cravings went back to normal. I'm back to liking coffee, but I'm down to only one cup a day. Not my usual 5 or 6! I still drink green tea and a variety of different herbal teas, as well as a lot of water. I'm back to eating a normal, for me, diet that includes a wide variety of vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains. Also, chocolate. And cookies. And, while I still love tangerines and peas, I no longer eat double my body weight in them daily. :D Progress.

Longtime lurker, first time poster. :P I've been smoke-free and nicotine-free for 18 days. I've been on the fence about joining the forum and posting, but I've found all of your posts really helpful over the last few weeks, and I'm so grateful for that, so I figured it was time to jump in and participate. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better and learning my way around this forum! I started smoking in my early 20's and have been smoking for approximately 20 years, on average 20 a day. For the last 5 or so, I really, really hated that I smoked. But I kept smoking. A couple of years ago, I read Allen Carr's book - three times. But I kept smoking. Despite that, the book was the first time I framed smoking in terms of the nicotine addiction. For some reason, I never really thought of it like that. That led me to more research. And I found Joel's site, and video library. And I found these boards and forums. And I read. And I learned. And I smoked. And I hated myself for it. But I kept smoking. I was scared of quitting. I was scared of never smoking again, as silly as that may sound. I wasn't sure how to live my life without a smoke in my hand. At the same time, I was tired of beating myself up over smoking day after day after day. I was tired of treating myself so badly. That kind of negative talk really puts a dent in your self esteem. Enough. So, I picked a quit date out of a hat. March 19th. I wrote it on the blackboard in the kitchen. It was about a month into the future at that point. I kept smoking right up until end of day March 18th. But, every day, several times a day, I would see that big date looming. And a funny thing started to happen. The closer it got to March 19th, the less I smoked. Day by day, it felt, mentally, like cigarettes had a weaker hold on my brain. By the time March 19th came, I was ready to go cold turkey. I wiped the board clean, and wrote "Smoke-free days" on it instead. At the end of each day, I make a little mark on that board. And they're adding up. Each day is a victory and a greater freedom. Each struggle is a reminder to keep pushing forward. The nicotine is long gone - now I'm retraining my brain. But I am a nicotine addict. And I always will be. So each day is another pledge to NOPE and a big YES to life. And reading your posts these last few weeks has shown me that it's possible and it's worth it.