intoxicated yoda

@Doreensfreethanks for the vote of confidence. I will continue to explore different things and provide updates...for the foreseeable future anyway!!

@Edy 10 days is a great start. Sleep disruption is still a problem for me as well. I'm sure that there is some kind of connection to cigarette addiction and food addiction. I've found that if I don't try to quench a cigarette crave by eating some kind of carbo loaded food then both cravings will go away or at least diminish enough to not bother me after a while. I can see gluten being a problem for that as well. For me cleaning everything up at once wound up being easier to do. Hopefully you find a strategy that works for you and your quit goes smoothly. However difficult or easy it may be it's definitely worth it. Congrats again on your quit and hopefully you get some sleep.

5 months quit today. 153 days of not smoking. Time for a little reflection. In hindsight the first couple of weeks quit was a lot easier than month 2 to month 4. I had a lot of changes going on at that time and the positives of quitting were far out weighed by the negatives I was experiencing. The great equalizer for me was that I knew I had gotten to the point where smoking that next one would only make me want the one after that even more which is what led me to quit in the first place. What's the point of smoking if the crave never goes away? There was always that fear of emphysema in the back of my mind but that was never enough to get me to quit cause my lung function was still pretty good. Yeah, I would get the wheezes occasionally but it was never bad enough to actually scare me. Nope, the quit was mostly about the crave. It annoyed me that smoking that cigarette realistically only gave me about 2 minutes of relief from the crave after I put it out. I can see how some people become chain smokers because that's what I was becoming. Of course through all the struggle I came to the conclusion that the best defense against relapse was to get clean of everything. Trying to quench the crave with Mt. Dew, chips and candy bars was causing me extreme strife and much to my surprise I found out it was only making the craves worse!!! Funny how that happens, almost like there was a demon in my head hell bent on my demise by whatever means. Sugar addiction takes the same neural pathways as nicotine and heroine addiction, or so I've read. Don't take my word for anything about addiction as I'm just firing shit off the top of my head to reinforce my quit, but I digress. My hypothesis was the sugar and carb addiction was keeping the pathway open for the cigarette addiction and if I quit all of it then as the craving for one addiction lessened they would all lessen. And when I beat one I would beat them all because maybe they are really all just the same addiction. Maybe Lord of the Rings was on to something. One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. Or in this case, one addiction to rule them all. Anybody know where Mt. Doom is? I'll go on a quest and throw the addiction back into the fire that made it. Was Mt. Doom even a place in that movie? I can't remember and it doesn't matter. What does matter is that I didn't smoke today. My goal is to destroy this addiction to the point it's not even a memory. I don't know if that is possible but the depth of our minds is inconceivable. We like to think the science of man has it all figured out but when you think about what our subconscious mind does just as a daily routine....I mean think about this, there are about 10 billion cells in our bodies that get destroyed and replaced everyday. Our subconscious controls all of that, in fact, if we had to think about if we would be dead in a matter of seconds because we can't even go to the grocery store and come out with everything we need without a list. So if we can get that kind of power programmed correctly to eliminate the addiction totally it should be able to do it in a matter of seconds...if we allow it. Something to think about, the power of the mind. Anyway, I've gone on long enough. If anybody is suffering through a crave and stumbles across this I hope it kept you occupied long enough for the worst of it to pass. And maybe it sparked an idea in you that could be of use to all of us. Please share it if it did. Peace.

@gum_addictwelcome and good job quitting smoking. it really doesn't matter how you get the job done as long as you get it done. 21 days is a great start. and that ticker is a great motivational tool.

thanks for all the love, guys! it means more than you'll ever really know...

Perhaps the guy in this video knows @jillar

What if.... I read somewhere that the majority of the dna in our bodies isn't ours but is of the microbiome that inhabits our gut. What if there was a fungibiome that was also there that took control of our brains and was doing everything it could to control us in to maintaining the habits that are killing us for it's own purpose. Think that's irrational thinking or that it can't happen? Think that old yoda fell off his rocker and cracked his noggin? Not only is it possible but it happens in other species on this planet all the time so why couldn't it be happening to us now? Think about it and pleasant dreams... here's another interesting one....

@KEL nice work being grateful for finding the will to avoid smoking. Old habits create grooves in our minds that take quite a bit of time to fill in but only one slip and they can be as deep as they ever were. Gratitude is a great tool for filling in those old ruts. Stay strong and have a beautiful restful night.

that is good news Sal. Keep that momentum going.

no, pens hadn't been invented yet do woodchucks chuck wood?

listen with your eyes Why is it called a new moon when it's always the same one?

strippin' the walls

0

-2

Mitch was funny

because the Browns will never get to the Superbowl why do they make toilet paper in those little squares?

@KEL That is fantastic that you can hang out with a friend that smokes and not smoke. I hope that she gets the drive to be where you are one day. When the pain of smoking becomes greater than the pain of quitting she will look to the path you are on and take those first steps. Hope you have a peaceful night as well

@Boo I am slowly learning to embrace the suckage of quitting.

@Kris Incredible job!!!

here I am again at almost 11 pm...with some kind of gnawing crave going on that just won't let up. It's almost like a void in my being that just can't be filled. I want something but I have no idea what it could be. I do know there is no amount of food I could eat, liquid I could drink, cigarettes I could smoke or anything else I could ingest, inject or inhale that would make it go away. It's the damnedest thing. I'll get a few days of peace from it and think it's getting better and then I get blindsided with it...and it always comes back with a vengeance. I can't decide if it's a mental thing or a physical thing. It could be a mental thing manifesting as a physical thing or it could be a physical thing causing some mental strife. I could say "f*** it and go get some snack food and soda but then the bloat would drive me crazy and I would definitely be hating myself, besides, saying "f*** it" is what got me back into this addiction to begin with. Taking deep breaths and doing the air cigarettes isn't really giving me any relief. It is possible this is a side effect of getting my gut healed? I don't know anymore. Nothing to do but keep grinding it out. Anyway, the rain hasn't started here yet so I guess I'll go walk laps around the driveway and hope it goes away enough for me to go to sleep.

4. cover the dome of a home made tesla coil... @jillar (no one ever said these had to be good ideas, right?)

See ya later

2. do origami and make a teradactyl

@Doreensfree I like the looks of Qi Gong. low impact active meditation. I'll give that a try in the morning. Thank you for the suggestion.

@Kristhe quit is the most important thing and you are doing great on yours. Just don't sell yourself short. You can do whatever your spirit moves you to do, advancing this far into quitting smoking is proof of that. Stay strong!!