Hi!

I quit smoking 5 and a half years ago. It hit me one day when I was coming home from the store with 2 cartons of cigarettes. I caught myself off guard, looking at the 2 cartons and instead of seeing cigarettes, I saw $120.00. It hit me that I may as well take a hundred dollar bill, a 20 dollar bill and let it go out the window of the car. That's what I was doing with my money. I then talked to a cousin of mine, Tim, who had quit smoking recently. He and I had basically been smoking for the same amount of time, during our lives. I started asking him questions. How do you feel now that you've quit? Was it hard? How did you get through it? I was lucky and had Tim as my support. He told me how good he felt since he had quit. How he hardly coughed anymore. How he could now smell smoke on people who smoke. How he felt healthier. How he didn't have to go outside and freeze his butt (pun intended) off! The money he saved alone, perked me up!
I went home with all these things buzzing in my mind. Eventually, I thought to myself that I would approach my own quitting, logically. Smoking is a habit was the first piece of logic for me. Secondly, it was addictive. I figured that I would need something to replace the habit of putting a cigarette into my hand, and then to my mouth. I decided to use sunflowers. (I didn't worry about becoming addicted to them because well, I don't know about you but I've never heard of SSA...Sunflower Seeds Anonymous...) So I figured that everytime I felt the urge or the pull to have a cigarette, I would pop 1 sunflower seed at a time, into my mouth. This would not only keep my hands busy, but my mouth too. I thought about the addiction and decided on the patch. My mother offered to help me and being the saviour that she is, bought my first box of nicotine patches. It turned out that I only needed one box. By the time one week had gone by, I found that I didn't need the whole week's worth of patches! I only used 5 out of the 7!!
One very, very important thing that I used to my benefit, was a line from a movie. It was Robin Williams in the movie Dead Again. He plays a psychiatrist. He tells one of the characters in the movie (Kenneth Branaugh) that the key to quitting smoking is to decide whether you are a smoker, or a non-smoker...and then be that!!! For some reason that line stuck in my head and when I would crave a cigarette, I would recite that line to myself and then follow up with "I am a non-smoker!"
I'm honest and I'll tell you, it wasn't easy. I was bitchy as hell that first week. I was nasty and mean but I noticed something too. If I could just ride out the moments where I would crave a smoke, and just keep myself occupied, until they passed, I could keep going. Before you know it, the time has passed and you're ok for that much longer. You CAN do it. It's easier than you think!! It was alot easier than I thought. I surprised myself by quitting. I never thought I could do it but I did. You can too. Give yourself a chance. It's been 5 and a half years for me. I still have cravings every now and again but they are few and far between and instead of lasting 5 minutes, they'll last 5 seconds. If you can just ride out that small piece of time, you can keep doing it.
Anyway, that is my story and I keep telling myself that I am a non-smoker. I still have cravings but I let the time go by and before I know it, I'm distracted and still healthy, feeling great, breathing fantastically, smelling clean and smoke-free!

I wish you all the best of luck and I KNOW you can do it too!!!