intoxicated yoda

@Brioski i got along pretty well until I was about 6 weeks in and then everything went to hell and stayed that way for months. couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't stop eating, couldn't poo, drank enough water to float a battleship and got cramps in the damnedest places you could imagine and I put on 40 lbs in 4 months. Long story short, my experience is that no matter how bad it gets it will get worse and then it gets better and then your addiction is cured...kind of. ok, maybe not cured but the memory of the blistering hell I went through will be stuck in my mind for a long long time. anyway, good luck and stay the course. it is so worth it.

@darcy congrats on your first month quit. that is a huge accomplishment. sorry to be so late so I'll congratulate you on 1 month and 9 days. you are doing fantastic

congrats Jordan7. that's how you quit and stay quit.

Congrats @DenaliBlues not sure how I missed your big day though. Anyhoo...it's always nice to see a quitter win!! these might not be the right monkees for this occasion.

yep, quitting isn't glamourous fer sure. you don't quit because it's easy though. you quit because it's necessary.

congrats ace. fantastic quit.

fantastic quit @overcome way to go!!

you are doing just fine @Kerry it's so good to see you succeeding in your quit.

-5

Congrats on 5 years @catlover that's a quit to be proud of.

congrats reciprocity. awesome quit

3

If your mind is imprisoned does it really matter what happens to your ass? You are only ever one decision away from being a non smoker or a smoker, the key is understanding that you have to make that decision over and over again, sometimes multiple times a minute until your ass gets it. You can get there and when it seems like all hope is lost just view the GIF below and keep watching until you realize that you CAN be happy without cigarettes. Then they will lose there grip on you.

@darcydon't condemn yourself just yet. this is a big change and there will be some failures along the way. I can't even count how many times I failed until I didn't. I'm sure most here had their failures as well. It's not how many times you get knocked down that matters, it's how many times you get back up.

Great job @Kerry 2 weeks is YUGE!! You can't get to the first year without getting through those first weeks and months. Keep it going

congrats @DenaliBluesjust 1 small step left til the Lido Deck. Spoil urself for a bit tonite.

Hello @Kerry you'll have good days and bad days, just focus on the goal which is to breathe without vaping. My first 6 weeks were manageable and then shit got real. Just keep managing your quit one day at the time until it becomes natural and realize you are doing great even when it feels like you aren't.

@overcome here's a little taste of what's waiting for you...

congrats @overcome half way to the lido deck. stay with it. your doing great.

@DenaliBlues I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling and for the loss of a family member. What got me past that lingering romance with smoke was to tackle the other addictions I had that were riding shotgun with the cigarettes. Junk food and coffee. Once I realized that I actually was addicted to those things as well and eliminated them my thought processes actually started changing. I still thought about smoking but it was in a different way and it was much easier to distract myself from it. And when the thought was gone, it was totally gone, which didn't normally happen for me. It was always simmering on the back burner, just waiting for the opportunity to ambush me. Then, I found a solution to my muscle cramping episodes. Turns out taking a healthy dose of sea salt a few times a day and no more cramps. Guess what else I didn't have anymore? That tightness in the back of my throat that was always there and gave me that panicky feeling in my stomach that I always would get when I was jonesing for a smoke but couldn't. Turns out ingesting more salt solved a lot of little minor problems I had like headaches, the late morning nausea I would get. All these things tied into the routine I had spent years building around smoking. Then trying to fix something totally unrelated and all these other things resolved and snap, craves don't even register. Funny how you can just stumble over things sometimes. Let me clarify, I still think about smoking from time to time. There are still triggers, but I don't get blindsided with those random gnawing craves to smoke. Anyway, none of this will stop the trials of life from happening. The roof will have leaks, the cars won't start at times and loved ones will leave us far to soon, but maybe not all of the grief and stress we feel is just in our heads. Maybe there is a physical component to it as well. Maybe we are driven to smoke or eat bad food because our body is deficient in something but we trained our brains to react to the deficiency in the wrong way and if we figure out what the body is really wanting the craves will lose their sting and we can better deal with the traumas of life. All I can do really though is offer my condolences and hope that you can find something of value in my experience.

@Linda hope you are staying strong. you know that giving in will only make withdrawal that much harder. You opened that rut back up in your mind and it will take a bit to fill it back in. You know what to do. I have faith in you.

Golf is my hobby. I used to do the sporting clays but there isn't a sporting clay range anywhere near me now. That looks like a lot of fun but that ammo has got to be getting expensive these days. @overcomedo you do your own reloads?

nice job @DenaliBlues that's a pretty awesome quit you got going.

a little change of pace. a little motown always makes you feel like moving.