Cognitive Quit Smoking

Wow, there’s been SO many great posts here the past few days. Congrats
on so many great anniversaries. Yep, the anniversaries are VERY SPECIAL
TODAY!!! Ok, Ok, I hit 10 months today. I didn’t even realize it til
someone (a fellow quitter) sent me an email at work this morning
congratulating me. Now, is that not the best feeling? Well, sure it
was a great feeling that this friend sent me the congrats and that Pam,
who is another special friend, posted congrats here and the follow-ups.
BUT, what I mean is, it was great to realize that I didn’t realize that
I had an anniversary today. It was just another fun-filled day at work,
sweating out the headcount numbers (who’s going to get the axe next?).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad I’m moving on, getting
on back to a ‘normal’ routine. so to speak.
This reminds me of something else. For the first few months of my quit,
I was obsessed (a parculiar trait of mine) with the fact that everytime
I walked into the grocery store, I STILL had to look to the cigarette

counter to see if my brand of smokes were there. I used to write about
this quite a bit in my posts here. I would even feel a bit of annoyance
if my brand was there but not the type that I smoked (ultra-lights
menthol). And this was after I quit smoking!! See how ingrained these
responses are embedded in us? BTW, I still occasionally look over there
at that cigarette counter when I go into that particular store. And it
still annoys me that I do that. But for the past 3 months, I’ve been
doing most of my shopping at a new store and I couldn’t tell you where
the cigarettes are displayed.
Oh, well.
I took zyban for a few weeks before I quit smoking. I was determined to
smoke the same amount of cigarettes and even more before I quit (I’d
never heard of the cogquit method) because I wanted to be sure that I
couldn’t use the excuse that I’d missed out on some smokes. So even
though the zyban took some of the pleasure (or what I perceived to be
pleasure) out of smoking, I sure as heck smoked at least a pack a day up
to my quit date. As it turned out, I do believe that zyban did help
ease the intensity of the cravings for a smoke, except for the second
day which is was the Day from Hell that I will never forget. That day
could possibly be one of many reasons why I will never smoke again. I
don’t want to go through that day again - I had the sweats, the shakes,
I was naseaus. My boss told me to go have a smoke if I couldn’t calm
down. I kept coming into his office and hitting the back of his chairs
with anger and frustration - too bad there were customers in those
chairs. Geez, some people are SO touchy!
But I digress.
The zyban did help to take the edge off in the following month. I did
find that I had sleep pattern problems with zyban. I’ve had a bit of a
problem with insomnia all my life and the zyban brought it out. So I
quit the zyban earlier than planned (a few months early) but I’m glad I
was taking it for the initial stages of my quit.
As far as weight, I understand that the average weight gain is 15
pounds. I also understand that a lot of people who keep their quit lose
most, if not all, of the weight gained from quitting, in the next year
once the body has adjusted to not depending on the nicotine for
stimuli. I had gained weight steadily since I was 40 so I knew I
couldn’t afford to gain any weight during the initial quit. I took
Steve’s advice and started an exercise program. Although I haven’t lost
any weight, I haven’t gained any either, but I am more energized and
more toned than I have been in many years. I would say that exercising
is probably one of the most important things a person can do to offset
weight gain and depression. If you haven’t started exercising yet,
please do. I can almost guarantee you that you will be glad you did.
And please be open-minded about it. I started off walking, got bored
with that. Then I tried Tai-Chi, found that I don’t have the patience
for that yet (that day WILL come), then I started Jazzercise - Bingo!!
That’s the ticket for me. Low impact, yes, but I enjoy the dance-like
moves and music.
I am happy to be able to say that I have not smoked in 10 months. I
have finally gotten to the point that I can barely remember what it was
like to even BE a smoker. Using the cogquit method is the key. I used
to try to understand what in the world Steve meant by his comments that
he felt like he was no longer an addict. I used to bug him when we’d
chat one-on-one about this. Good people on other boards keep saying
“watch out, you’re an addict, you can’t have just one smoke!’ and I
think ‘well, ok, but why would I even want that one smoke? I’ve
disputed every excuse I could think of to smoke.’ So, where does that
leave me? Am I still an addict? An addict to what? If this seems a
bit ambiguious, I’m sorry. I will get back to this in the near future
because at this point in my quit, I am starting to understand it but
it’s still hard for me to explain it.
This is what I do understand: The smoking response just is not an
appropriate response to anything that happens to me anymore.
Happy Cogging,
Cat

This entry was posted on Monday, October 18th, 2004 at 6:34 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.