Cognitive Quit Smoking

When does a quit become a routine and normal thing? At what point
does it all fall into place and become part of us? When do we no
longer need to plan out those ABC’s, come up against ‘first times’,
have to think on the fly how to deal with that crave that comes
from ‘nowhere’ and hits us as hard as a truck?
I recently got to thinking about my quit, and commented to Steve
when we were chatting last night just how normal it felt not to
smoke anymore. As he suggested, its almost an anticlimax now to
realise that not smoking any more is a pretty routine thing in the
context of my day to life. If however I look at this state of being
an exsmoker within the context of my personal history its actually
pretty remarkable - I was a smoker for 25+ yrs, after all.
I can’t decide at what point it all became routine. Those first
weeks and months my brain hurt with all the new thinking i was
doing - examining how i was feeling, how to ABC, how to work out

what my body really needed in place of that ‘must have’ cig.
One day I realised smoking was no longer an issue. I could mix with
smokers socially and didn’t have any desire to puff on a cig any
more (and actually disliked the smell of the smoke, and how it
burned my chest and throat). I realised I was no longer missing
that ’something’, that I’d get up and go through the day and hadn’t
even considered the idea of smoking even once.
I suppose the answer is…. the quit evolves gradually. Cognitive
thinking becomes ingrained in every aspect of our lives, and we
realise we’re dealing with life’s events very differently.
Just a few musings in the early hours …….
nite all
Pam

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2003 at 9:45 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.