1st Year Anniversary
Well, it's done. It's been 1 full year since I officially smoked the last cigarette of my life. I haven't posted on this since the six month mark, but I've stayed 100% nicotine free since. Not a single puff or drag off a cigarette, and now that I live in a city without smoke-filled bars, it means my lungs have been clean of second-hand smoke as well. Although I am a believer in personal will-power, I know from prior failed attempts that it's not a will-power over the desire to smoke. Just as you can't make a person do something -- you can only make him want to do something -- you can't make yourself not smoke. But you can make yourself want to stop. Cheap psychology tricks aren't effective. Neither are scare tactics. Those anxiety inducing techniques only give rise to one and the same urge they're trying to quell -- albeit in their own perverted way. No, what's necessarily is to literally reprogram the conditioning that created those urges in the first place.
Following a saying I'm quite fond of, "That looks interesting/I want to try that/I wonder how that works....I think I'll pick up a book on it," the title of this post, just as with every post on the topic, is linked to amazon.com product page for The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by Allen Carr. It looks hokey. It sounds hokey. I'll grant that, at times, it even reads a little hokey. But it's damn intelligent, not preachy, and works with wherever you're at in your attempt to quit. I decided I was being a hypocrite by giving up meat for my health and yet still smoking nearly a pack-a-day. But whatever the reason, it does get better. The first three weeks you think about it, the first few months it crosses your mind, and every now and then it comes up. But Carr talks about a moment when you know it's just done. Well, I had that moment at about the end of the first month, but it's good to say it again at the 1 year anniversary (and every once and awhile, for that matter): it's done.
Namaste' and good health to all.
Following a saying I'm quite fond of, "That looks interesting/I want to try that/I wonder how that works....I think I'll pick up a book on it," the title of this post, just as with every post on the topic, is linked to amazon.com product page for The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by Allen Carr. It looks hokey. It sounds hokey. I'll grant that, at times, it even reads a little hokey. But it's damn intelligent, not preachy, and works with wherever you're at in your attempt to quit. I decided I was being a hypocrite by giving up meat for my health and yet still smoking nearly a pack-a-day. But whatever the reason, it does get better. The first three weeks you think about it, the first few months it crosses your mind, and every now and then it comes up. But Carr talks about a moment when you know it's just done. Well, I had that moment at about the end of the first month, but it's good to say it again at the 1 year anniversary (and every once and awhile, for that matter): it's done.
Namaste' and good health to all.
Labels: Potential
posted by J.B.P. at 8:56 PM
3 Comments:
Good job Jeff.
Congrats, Jeff. I'm in that phase where smoking replaced a more wicked and dangerous habbit which got me on the wrong side of the law. I really can't smoke more than a few cigs a day, and I see a lot of people who do and I just don't understand how one gets there. But addiction is addiction, and through an Anonymous source, I'm learning that it's much like what you said, it's not the substance itself or your body's dependence that will cause a relapse. What leaves room for relapse or failure to quit fully is the lingering of an old mindset. Change your mind, change your surroundings, change the world, and it then changes you. Repeat the cycle.
Still Smokin' and ambivalent about it,
Mike
glad to hear you've been successful jeff. keep it up.
- bakke
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