DenaliBlues

nope

Broke the spell

… my cats race up and down the halls of the house like little maniacs. She knew for certain she’d come unhinged when…

Against all Odds (Phil Collins) What do we do now?

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NOPE!

This is an important point. For me, self medicating with alcohol was a non starter. I am an addict trying to get clean. So, personally, I’m not going to toss another mind/mood altering substance into my poor beleaguered brain at this point, while I’m still trying to find my butt and figure out which way is up. Exercise helped, but most of all, hard physical labor was my key. Raking, splitting wood, vacuuming, mopping, beating rugs. Nothing complicated… nothing that would trigger frustration or feelings of failure. Just mindless hard work that made me so sore that I had something entirely different to moan about!

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Wow you all are so creative. The only thing I’ve ever done with wallpaper is to… 8. Cuss furiously while removing it cuz it’s so dingdang ugly

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Hi, @darcy. I’m sorry that you are struggling and feel alone. That sucks. Good on you for being cognizant of HALT and for posting here instead of smoking, that’s the way to protect your quit. This too shall pass. Like a kidney stone maybe, but pass it shall. And until it does, do whatever seems kind and self-soothing (other than smoking). I personally watched a lot of cat videos in the first few months of my quit. Nothing like a dose of Maru to soothe my troubled soul…

Well done, @darcy!! You’ve made it through sone tough spots and are building a really solid quit. I am so very happy that you found us and are riding this train to FREEDOM!!

Way to go, @Brioski!!! I love your honesty, your grit, and your sense of the absurd. So glad you are here walking this road with us. Warmest congrats on your first month down… a BIG achievement.

…the redbud will bloom. “Thump, thump, thump” went the…

NOPE

....deepened her resolve to keep the Sharpie markers away from her toddler. In case of an emergency, always...

Hi, @Angeleek. Thanks for raising this topic. It is something I think about a lot. Like you, I'm not a medical expert, just a recovering nicotine addict who is trying to make sense of my own personal experience. It's especially helpful to hear you talk about your experience of no-man's land. With something as complex as depression, I'm not sure what I think about causal factors. But I can say with certainty that smoking damaged my mental health. I'm still puzzling on this, but some things I am beginning to understand: I believe that smoking diminished my ability to experience pleasure. My brain became trained on one thing: getting a nicotine fix. Other experiences faded into grey, and my ability to feel joy receded... as if my nicotine receptors had cannibalized everything else. There is some science to support this theory, though researchers are still trying to understand exactly how long-term nicotine exposure disrupts production/uptake of dopamine and other neurotransmitters associated with pleasure and contentment. Smoking undermined my sense of self-efficacy. Being in thrall to nicotine (or any other addiction) is degrading and dehumanizing. That affected me more profoundly than I realized. I used nicotine to try and suppress negative emotions, like sadness and anger and grief. Such feelings (and their underlying issues) weren't cured by smoking, of course. Smoking just blunted them. Rather than addressing the root causes of my distress, I was pretending to "soothe" myself while feeding myself poison and ducking my own feelings. Naturally, this kind of self-betrayal was another negative force on my mental health. For me, stopping smoking did not automatically resolve these issues. I did not experience the quitting euphoria that some other people describe. And there's still a lot to untangle about why I smoked in the first place and what my baseline mental health is. Like you, Angeleek, I started smoking really young. I was hooked by age 13, so I don't really know what I'm like without nicotine. For people who got hooked when our brains were still developing, are the effects different? I don't know. But I certainly DO know that the psychological damage that smoking caused was real, and that quitting is the only way to heal the parts of me that were injured by it. Whatever else is present on my internal obstacle course, quitting will simplify it. And since I quit, repair is happening. My progress is slow and herky-jerky, but I am starting to cope better with my feelings, beginning to see glimmers of light and joy breaking through. Quitting will make every other good thing possible.

So sorry that the roller coaster has got you down today. I hope your breathing eases soon. As I was quitting, my emotions were very raw. Negative feelings I was used to suppressing with smoking went haywire for a while. But things evened out. Stick with your quit, definitely get support, be kind to yourself, and keep the faith!