More cigarette addiction film recommendations, shorties for mental health

I found the two short films posted below on Youtube. Watching these makes me feel angry that I ever think of smoking --even now--2.5 years later. Alas, addiction is a tricky, tricky, tricky thing.

How Teenagers Get Hooked On Cigarette Smoking

by David Hoffman

Uploaded on Jun 30, 2009

To stop smoking visit https://www.createspace.com/204462 . This helps teenage girls and others quit smoking. You can see my documentaries at www.theHoffmancollection.com. This film was made to get smokers to quit. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society. The girl speaks frankly and reveals about her feelings in part because she is my daughter, videotaped quite a while ago. She doesn't smoke any more and is now a well-respected emergency-room nurse practitioner
David Hoffman -- filmmaker

Another short film by David Hoffman

Published on Dec 10, 2014

To get this entire program - https://www.createspace.com/204460 . I made this film for teenage smokers and those considering smoking. It doesn't look at the health issues. It looks at the industry that makes billions from getting kids to smoke cigarettes. Thousands of schools use this program today.

Once upon a time quitting the smokes was suppose to be fun and exciting said absolutely no-one ever!

The link below will bring you to day #7 of iscahstar's  Youtube Vlog which bravely logs the first difficult days of her quit smoking journey.
I found it very reassuring to listen to iscahstar's story, because she talks in detail about her desire to quit and about the hard side of quitting --in real time. Somehow this makes me feel a little braver about continuing on with my own quitting journey.

Check it out, if your new to quitting or want to freshen your resolve!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VXqBJ4BiwM&list=WL&index=46

I so love the internet highway, I see more good in the world then bad.

How much is that dream in the window

Welp, it's been 2.5 years since I ditched the smokies-- those dear old friends.

These are certainly not the words spawned from an inspiring heroic journey--that of quitting. I really do miss the smokes, and I am not a hero. Yet, I'm also a quitter for 2.5. My dependency on the butts was deeper than I could imagine back in the fall of 2013 when I fell into quitting. Thereafter I got lost. I thought it would take a month or two to come to my senses, then I'd be liberated from my addiction.

I did not smoke, but I was not liberated from my addiction. It turns out that during all of this time, the most important change that occurred is that I've been learning to live without the smokes everyday, right up to today.

I've got my own running joke every time I calculate how long I've been smoke free; basically I say (how ever long it happens to be) the years/months in a growling, grudging monster like way. Then I give a cackle. Because I know it is for the best.

At times, I've felt like a complete nut job. And wondered what in hell is wrong with my mind. I think support would have helped-- maybe. I guess I am in the process of learning coping skills that I had previously assigned to my smokes. They did all the coping, all I had to do was light up. And I road that trick solidly from age 17 or so until I quit 2.5 years ago at the age of almost 55.

Everybody finds their own way in coping, both with the stress of quitting and then the daily stresses that naturally come and go.

I've changed from raging  (for example, such as the time when a printer failed me in 2014) to learning to figure out solutions to problems in a calm manner. The change is real and deep, but, like the quitting, it has taken, and is taking time and repetition to learn this new trick.

I've also coped by walking a lot, and sometimes, I've coped by avoiding problems altogether (especially first 1.5 years) when I did not feel fit enough.

My coping mantra is:
If you can't get through it, go around it. There is a follow up joke to this--Don't worry about what you won't deal with today, because it will come around again and you will have another chance to deal with it.

I'm still dreaming of a full liberation from the addiction, but for now I trust that I stumbled upon a good decision 2.5 years ago.