It's been a week since I smoked a cigarette.
Congrats Roundy. Did you quit cold turkey or use gimmicks? I need to quit soon.
I gave up about 4 or 5 times before I quit for good. Nicotine gum is useless. I just got hooked on that and still wanted a cigarette all the time. I found chewing regular gum worked best for me. I ended up with a jaw like a breeze block, but I've not smoked in almost 2 years.
Actually, I'm using the nicotine gum. This isn't the first time I've tried to quit, and the last time I had great success with the gum. I managed to ween myself off it and for a period of months (can't remember exactly how long) I didn't smoke or chew anything. It took a majorly stressful situation (I lost my job after nearly a decade) for me to go back to it.
The situation has changed since then. I recently went through pneumonia that I was having a really tough time kicking. I also had pneumonia last year. I felt like my body was seriously trying to tell me something. This last time I just wasn't getting over the cough... then I stopped smoking, and within two days it was gone.
This wasn't an "I'm quitting because of future health risks" situation. It was an "I'm quitting because I think these things are killing me
now" kind of thing, and I feel like that gives me extra incentive to be super-serious about it.
And I just don't have the willpower to do it cold turkey. I know enough about myself to understand that. I figure that with the gum at least I'm cutting out the damage it was doing to my lungs, which right now is what I'm particularly concerned about.
But God... I want a cigarette.
