Cognitive Quit Smoking

Hi, I’m new here and on day 2 of my quit. this is the new me. the
start of the rest of my life. Day 1 was easy - i wasnt feeling well
anyway so found I didnt crave much.
It’s the evenings that are hardest. I am going to try and keep busy
and keeep going. Smoking isnt an option.Just hdd my first craving of
the day. I always find them realtively short lived, but nasty little
things.
One of the trickiest things is remembering that I dont smoke
anymore…it’d be too easy to just respond to a craving my
going “ahh, ok, now it’s time to smoke..”
I’ve quite a few times bfore, obviously none of them too
successfully. The best was 7 months. That was 2 years ago.
I am excited about getting through the worst first few days / weeks,
but also a bit nervous opbviously. I hate the feeling of depression
the cravings give you…and thats prob the bit i’m most scared of.
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How do you know when you’re tired?
What physical or mental or emotional clues alert you to the fact that
you’re tired?
The reason I ask this is that a few of you are starting the Timer
Exercise and are trying to recognize your body cues, and are having a
difficult time. First of all, that’s perfectly normal. We’re not
wired to be acutely aware of specifics, we just feel ‘tired’. But
tired can be defined by how certain muscles feel, by the state of
your breathing, by mental acuity, by emotional state. All of those
plus ‘context’ tell you that you’re tired rather than bored, excited,
happy, or sad.
However, it takes a bit of practice to begin to recognize specifics.
So I’m tossing this out to the group, (give us a hand here you longer
term cogquitters) what signals does your body send that tell you you’re tired?

I didn’t know that by hitting the reply button to an email I receive
would automatically show up here! How embarrassing!
jules

This is my first post here. I have had two long-ish quits: the first
one lasted one year, the second eight months. I went back to smoking
on both quits b/c of the belief that smoking would help manage the
chronic depression and anxiety I’ve been combatting for years.
I’ve been on more new-generation drugs than I can remember and
Lithium as well, been hospitalized for severe depression five times,
had a series of 6 electroshock treatments, tried DBT meetings (they
end up stopping b/c of lack of people usually, or those there are so
drugged out they can’t participate), and been in therapy for six
years. None of these have offered any lasting improvement. Almost
all drugs have ceased to work within a few months & we’ve tried
numerous combinations of drugs, altering the time of day they’re
taken, etc. ad nasuem.
I understand I must change my perception on smoking, but I can not
convince myself that smoking has not helped in some way to lessen the
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Hi, Steve. I’m fighting the decision to quit or not to quit all over ag
It’s like quitting alcohol. Make a fresh decision every twenty minutes.
I really wanted to go buy some cigarettes today, to have for the tough
times, but I knew I’d just go right through them all.
The decision to stay quit is the toughest.
Fran

Okay, here’s the deal. I bought a carton New Years Eve and decided that
was gonna be it for me. And I flushed the last one down the toilet
about an hour ago. Already I am wondering exactly WHY I decided to do
this. LOL I have been a smoker for over half my life, and this is my
first time to try to give them up. The only time I HAVE NOT smoked in
the last 16 years was during my pregnancies. But I went back to it
before my kids were a week old (a day in the case of my daughter!). So,
any suggestions or tips will be greatly appreciated.

Hi there,
A few days ago Pam sent me this note:
“I’m interested in what makes people go back to smoking after a number
of months/years. Clearly its not about nicotine, so is it about not having
addressed smoking behavior in the first place? Do people who start smoking
again need that ‘hit’ again?”
I asked if she’d mind me posting my thoughts on this to the group, and
with her gracious permission :), here goes.
My guess is that long term quitters who relapse just haven’t learned how
to deal with the behavior. Sure there are lots of associations that seem to
just disappear due to disuse. I’m thinking of associations like starting
the car, or talking on the phone or sitting on the deck. Or, maybe they
don’t really disappear. Maybe they just go dormant or they’re somehow held
at bay. I’ve heard people who have been quit yrs and started smoking again
give as reasons … “I was out with some friends and I just reached across
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This is what we try to show people
BEING HUMAN
Not written by, but passed along by David G. Markham. C.S.W.
1. YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY. You may like it or you may hate it, but it’s
yours.
2. YOU WILL LEARN LESSONS. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school
called “life”. Each day in this school you’ll have the opportunity to learn
lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS. Growth is a process of trial and
error and experimentation. The failed experiments are as much a part of the
process as the experiment that ultimately works.
4. A LESSON IS REPEATED UNTIL LEARNED. A lesson will be repeated to you in
various forms until you have learned it. Once you have learned it, you move on.
5. LEARNING LESSONS DOES NOT END. There is no part of life that does not
contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
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Hi, Steve. I haven’t been free of “substances” since I was 19. Who will
I be? I quit alcohol 8 years ago, now nicotine, next caffeine I
suppose. I don’t know me without that stuff. That’s scary.
Fran

I have a hard time with body cues between 6 and 8 PM. I am hungry,
tired, low blood sugar, don’t want to cook, just want to sit and
smoke. This time period has been a problem for me for years, and I
used to treat it to a cocktail, or several, and stumble around to get
something to eat around 9 PM - 10 PM. I haven’t used that form of self-
medication for over eight years, but the time zone remains a problem
for the cigarettes.
If I can cook early enough, say around 5:30, I can probably bypass this
problem. I’ll try that tomorrow.
Fran