When you realize that you’ve been smoking for more than half of your life…. The feelings of disappointment, disgust, failure & mostly… Fear… are paralyzing…. It’s too hard to sit in those thoughts.
When you take that first deep inhale, and realize that you reach a point of fullness FAR too soon… the fear is just suffocating.
When you close your eyes and picture raisins in place of lungs…. A long drawn out, painful, too soon death & a family grieving their rock, their mom….. it should be enough.
It should all be enough… so why isn’t it??
Trying to Quit smoking is hard enough… raising a family is hard enough….
Working on yourself … trying to be a better person in every way- every single day , after being a certain way for so long…. Old habits die hard.
Trying to quit bad habits is hard.
Trying to break any habits , is hard.
I began this Journey 4 days ago. 6.21.22. (but whose counting?) If that day had no significance to me already, maybe I wouldn’t have continued on. If I had not seen or felt some type of thing, some shift in my world, in my very own body, as I drove home that night… maybe my thinking would be clearer.
As I struggled to put on the Patch- I told myself I was quitting smoking, Period. I wasn’t going to fall into the fad of E cigs & Vapes again. Heck, if I’m going to smoke, I’m going to smoke a long, tasty, menthol, Newport 100. Something that I unfortunately ENJOYED smoking. This wasn’t my first rodeo, but I do hope it can be my last.
The night before I couldn’t fall and stay asleep. I was having nightmares and instead of going back to them, I sat awake over and over-thinking them.
That was when it was decided.
I threw my legs over the side of my bed and pulled myself up, sitting staring, thinking.
I got up, grabbed and opened a patch, and slapped that baby on my shoulder. This could be it. This could really be it. This should really be it. The end of an era. The beginning of a new, happy life full of lots of calming, medatative, long, deep breaths.
Anyone who says it’s easy to quit smoking, may need to be re-humbled. Although, maybe there are some people whose bodies just do not become physically dependant to anything. Maybe there are people who do not become mentally addicted, to anything at all. Maybe its an unknown medical condition. Being unable to become dependant. Unable to be addicted to one anything. If it were, that would be a disorder I could get with.
I, on the other hand, have what they call an ‘ Addictive Personality’.
In the recent years I’ve been told what I have is a medical “Disorder”. Addictive personality Disorder. In the not so recent years, when I was burying myself in my addictions as deep as I possibly could, no one called it a disorder. It was more of a problem, a burden not only to myself, but to the people around me, and it was treated as such. Figure that🤔
❄️.
I’m on this Journey. I keep pushing forward, trying to do better. Be better. I’m struggling…. There are Farr to many options and alternatives out there. My brain is overstimulated. Between the patch, Nicorette & modern day vapes. Cold Turkey just won’t do this time. . .
What are your thoughts? Are you a former Smoker? A Quitter?
Do you believe in bandaids? Weaning?Vaping ? Nicotine Gum or Patches? Or are you cold stone Cold Turkey ??
Let us know your thoughts, stories & opinions! Share in the comments
