breath

NOPE 20 Years today.

I have read hundreds and hundreds of newbie introductions. You will "cut the mustard" fom your musings. I did a journal. You should file your posts. Reflect on your progress. You will make a year. Stay focused.

I remember you HAT. Who could forget you?. You pulled your final quit out the hat

In the 90's I did the same thing on my 1 year anniversary. I felt crushed, hated myself and vowed to smoke until I die! 4 years later i came to my senses. We all come back...but like you it took me 4 years and you 3 years.. It is great to have a reason to quit like your new son but only you have the responsibility. What changed it for me was this fact and it was the game changer. I will only be successful when I die. It has to be clean from day one to the my final day on this earth. My dad, uncles, aunties and others did it- and so we come to NOPE, NTAP. Read them slowly and let the words embed in your unconscious. NOPE means NOT one puff EVER.... It does not mean Not one puff EXCEPT.. NEVER take another puff.. I am 4 days shy of 20 years but frankly it is the staying quit that really matters. On the day i quit my mates had been quit for 15 years. 15 years seemed like Mount Everest in time. Well I started on 2nd October 2001. Today my mates are all alive and well. 35 years quit and on the cusp of 60. You know you can do it...

I remember when Babs, jenny, Sarge, Jonny5, Christobal and others were just starting. Literally only a a few weeks. Now they have 9 years and some are a couple of months away from 10 years. It can be done and will be done if you Never take another puff....keep the quit and not one puff ever.

5 Years of NOPE. LUST FOR LIFE

9 years! I remember when you started babs. Like Sarge, Johnny 5. I knew you and others would kTQ. 10 years for Sarge and johnny 5 soon and christobal. Top stuff.

Great stuff Bakon. You have not changed since those days of 2012

One week until 20 years. The life we all live has/had nothing to do with smoking tobacco. It never did! Smoking was incorporated into our lives and only brought weeds. Wastage of time, money, health, addiction. Quitting is/was never a problem. It is only a process we all go through. If someone had told me when I was 39 that I would quit for 20 years I would have raised my cynical eyes more at myself than the statement. Having “giving” up smoking over a thousand times in various increments of time. I deemed myself a weak, spineless jellyfish. My friends had quit for 15 years over a £10 bet; yet I an educated person could not find a logical/spiritual plan. If someone had asked me at 40 that I would quit for 20 years. I would probably have agreed. What made the difference was not a convergence of the planets or meeting a guru. I realised that the problem was right under my nose. I kept smoking! I kept smoking after various holidays from smoking. From a minute until a year.... Why did I keep going back even when I had gone through the initial turmoil of early quitting? My answer was I must not smoke ever again in my life. Eureka! What ever happened I would not smoke until I died. The idea clicked. This was before I had ever heard abut NOPE. I love NOPE and what it means. There is no reason why I can/should/will ever smoke. As the months passed it dawned on me that not only is there a chasm between life and quitting smoking but they are only connected by a memory. Quitting plays no role in heartbreak/love within your life. It is a process that goes along like breathing and your heart beat. You have to stay still to detect it. It gets much harder to detect the “quit” after 2 years. You can even forget the date you quit. Hard to believe after 3 months. For me it felt “normal” not to smoke after 7 months. Life just went on... After 15 months it felt “natural” to be a non smoker. I felt like a non smoker.. Only 15 months and since then I have felt the same way. It does not get better and better. IMO eventually you settle into being a non smoker. The best celebration without a doubt us the first year. So much has happened. 4 seasons and so many things have changed in your conscious/unconscious life. The pinnacle as your so aware of it. Bathe in it..... By now you should have encompassed some extremes in your life. If not remember life and quitting are not entwined. You made your decision to quit and life will throw an extreme event. Once you have traversed this- you are practically there. Last month I carried my mother's coffin into church. 13 years I did the same with my father. Smoking and grief are not compatible to a non smoker. I saw that NOPE means “Never”. YOU>QUIT>LIFE Protect your “quit” from the endless events of life. This board is really for people in the first year and especially the first few weeks. It feels like being in a fog the first few weeks/ months. You must have faith that the fog will clear. It always does.... It is not a cliché, “ if I can do it , anyone can”. Most people looking back feel how fragile the start was. A minute/hour/day is often what matters in the beginning.. The same for me and everyone but it does change and quicker than you think, but the first year is critical. As the years go by you forget but I gave upon my birthday, so a double celebration. 20 years quit and 60 years of age. NOPE

One day I was walking along a lane and I came across 3 stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of stone. Interested to find out what they were working on, I asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. "I am cutting a stone!" Still no wiser I turned to the second stonecutter and asked him what he was doing. “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, and its dimensions are uniform, so that it will fit exactly in its place in a wall." A bit closer to finding out what the stonecutters were working on but still unclear, I turned to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am building a cathedral.” When we first quit, we're like that first stonecutter. We're focused on each cigarette we're NOT smoking, or each craving we're not surrendering to. Behind each stone we see trouble. Little by little, we begin to understand the rhythms of the quit, the ebb and flow - but still, we're focused on the details, not the big picture. It takes time and patience to become like the third stonecutter, and realize that we're not just quitting smoking, but we're building a cathedral. We're not just letting go of a bad habit, we're taking our lives into our very hands, and creating something beautiful.

Whatever your view on cannabis la-di- dah. It still rots your lungs like tobacco. Say "yes" to clean lungs la-di-dah

It would be disingenous to tell people who quit that it is ALL benefits. The benefits are so, so many and should always be shouted from the rooftops but smoking is like an age accelerant. It damages your eyes, ears (hearing loss), skin, arteries, heart, gums, brain, digestive system. People tend to concentrate on the lungs but the picture is far bigger. Women( forgive me) are far more interested in skin than men but look what does to the colour, elasticity, tone. Smoking accelerates the aging process of skin. Quitting and staying quit can rejuvenate your skin. Peoples teeth can start bleeding as the the gums rejuvenate. I think you should have a mindset of all the benefits and improvements in your health..... underscored by "damage limitation" In other words. Im not doing anymore smoking damage to my body for the rest of my life. In the past twenty years the only thing i have been diagnosed with is mild copd: related to smoking. Very lucky. My lungs were going down in a nose dive relative to my age. A steep line down. That is what smoking does. Now the line is much flatter and going down at a normal rate BUT i started at a much lower level on a graph, so my lungs are older. The nurse showed me the lungs of a 100 year old non smoker and how they decline. Every non smoker gradual loses their lung capacity until they have none. Its gradual but stay smoking for decades and your lung capacity drops dramatically. Quitting at 15 months and today feels like deja vu. i know i did it it but it feels other wordly. The best thing above all the analysis is FREEDOM. Life without smoking is fabulous!

A very important proviso on complete recovery from smoking, is how long you smoke. The rule of thumb is 20 x 20. If your at this stage (20 a day for 20 years) it is likely you have permanently damaged your body. Smoking destroys the tiny air sacs, or alveoli, in the lungs that allow oxygen exchange. When you smoke, you are damaging some of those air sacs. Alveoli don't grow back, so when you destroy them, you have permanently destroyed part of your lungs. When enough alveoli are destroyed, the disease emphysema develops. Whilst this is irreparable, the rest of you body benefits enormously from quitting. Many of my friends were 20 x 10 smokers. They quit at the age 25. I became a 20 x 25 and quit at the age of 40. I believe this made a big difference! None of them have suffered from smoking related illnesses. They quit befor it could do lasting damage. The rest of us are in "damage limitation". It is imperative you quit and stay quit! A contrary piece of evidence on the BBC says that some cells in the lung can be undamaged and can replenish the lung https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51279355 However i have never met or heard anybody who is this lucky. Smoking brings emphysema, bronchitis and COPD. Many smokers or quitters don't know they have respiratory damage. Definitely worth doing a spirometry test when you have quit. Especially if you smoked for over 20 years. Quitting 20 years ago ...nearly has definitely saved my lungs from any more damage.

I am 4 months shy of being 20 years quit. I smoked for 25 years and quit at the age of 40 (my birthday). It was only after many, many years quit that COPD was diagnosed. Frankly it did not surprise me. Smoking often pays you back many years later....even when you quit! Luckily my COPD is at a mild level and has been for over 8 years. In fact I can do the tests slightly better than 8 years ago.. Prescibed two inhalers. One for use every day and the other is an asthma inhaler, for limited use. My quality of life and activity levels are very high. I play golf, cycle, swim, gym and walk. COPD can be a progressive disease....if you smoke, breathe bad air and don't exercise. BUT i have 20 years nearly of not inhaling cigarettes. I quit and did not know that i was forestalling COPD. I count myself blessed that at nearly 60, my Copd is merely an inhaler in the morning and forgotten..... Never, ever think that quitting is stopping smoking. It can stop, curtail, diminish the years of damage to your body in the future. Best of luck Jillar. NOPE

Types of Quit. Every quit starts with a seed that is planted...... Abstinence quit: The soil is poor and the thin roots grow deep, seeking nutrients and sustenance. Constantly moving and searching to no avail. Above ground a gnarled stump protrudes. It's only branch produces fruit which never ripens. Month in and year out the tree becomes more twisted and gnarled “Bitterness is an arid emotion. It bears no fruit” Similarly a quit based on abstinence bears no fruit! It is only based on time.....tick tock....and it can end at any time.....tick tock Fair weather quit: The tap root barely goes down a few feet. It quickly feeds on all the surrounding nutrients. Above ground a slender, beautiful sapling grows. Soon it's branches are heavy with fruit.... and then a storm hits! A tree without strong roots will not stand long..... “Hoping without planning is like waiting for the harvest, without planting. Nothing happens!” All weather quit: The ground is rich and the roots grow thick and deep. They consistently feed the new sapling above ground. Early storms are weathered due to strong roots. The tree grows above and below ground. In it's first year it's tender branches bear delicate fruit. Every season it grows stronger! One season the tree produces a mass of flower and fruit and a huge storm hits.... The flowers and fruit are stripped. Branches are torn and a huge bough is split and crashes to the ground. Yet the tree stands! It looks bare and forlorn but true strength is often hidden. Soon the buds appear again and it grows to a wondrous size. The mighty NOPE tree Come and join the forest......