If I quit will I ever get used to not smoking?

My mind has healed a great deal since I quit. Thank God! Smokes are hardly on my mind anymore, though eternal vigilance is something I'll hold onto til I'm gone. I expect that year by year, whatever remains of the attachment as it stands today, will fade til nearly invisible--as good as gone.

I'm functional in a more positive way today versus three years ago. And it is no longer necessary for me to dwell on cigarettes, or stew, or wonder, or fuss about the mess of quitting. Still there is always something to do to make my quit sturdier and sturdier. I quit with a very narrow margin of yes motivation. I just want to keep working my way to even greater detachment from a once all important habit.

To smoke or not to smoke is not the question

If I was in my right mind when I picked up my first cigarette at age seventeen, well I would not have gotten that far. And neither would most. But at Seventeen life is forever, or at least death is so very far away so that what I knew to be risky behavior just didn't matter. Sickness and suffering were scary stories to me at 17,  just something that may happen if I ever age.

Now I'm 58 and counting. Three and a half years ago I quit smoking--no longer young, not so resilient, weary of heroism and tired of big changes, still,  I gave quitting a second chance. It worked. But it cost me something to change, I lost an illusion of comfort and protection that as a smoker was very real to me. By choosing to quit for good (my best intention), I had to take the discomfort of quitting. That's when I discovered the deep roots of addiction--a bottomless pit of want. But my sincere commitment to quit, uttered when I was smoking, came back to test my addict mind...smoking was what I'd known for most of 37 years. In time, I discovered to my dismay that  there was no going back to my comforting illusion. I had to forge on to see what lay ahead! Lord, did I miss my happy delusion, my smokes, the whole shebang. Couldn't I smoke and quit at the same time, I joked.

 I have to admit that I did not just lose the comfort of a pleasant delusion, I gained something, too, though slowly and very grudgingly at first: an inner strength--something that is innate to most at birth--the ability to learn something new, to adjust, grow and adapt day to day. To that end, inner strength in trade for a delusion? I know I made out O.K. I made it past the addiction.

Here's to another 3.5 years of smobriety. "Eternal vigilance" and willingness to grow are always on my quitting to do list.

Goodness Alert: Not every investment adviser believes in steady-eddie Tobacco

Some investors think investing in tobacco is swell, not this guy...


The link below will bring you to Canada's business news channel BNN and to a video clip of this financial adviser's opinion of the tobacco industry...
Score one for truth!


http://www.bnn.ca/market-call-tonight/david-baskin-discusses-philip-morris-vs-altria-group~1028558

Checking in on the quit over three years later...

Quitter Version 3.3

Three years and three months that is. Age 58 now. 

Well I made it through some pretty tough quit-smoking mental tangles, and am still quit as of today, January 4 2017. The better for it of course. 

But the start of my cigarette quit was not glorious. It could have been with some other version of me (maybe my younger self--20 something) taking the journey. But, I had to quit with the version that was available back in 2013. I could not wait until I was entirely sure that I would quit, or until I was entirely happy about quitting. I had to grab the willingness that came out of the blue one day in September of that year and run with it. And so I did.

Nicotine addiction is a puzzling addiction. I've heard many  say that they just can't stop (some of these folks have serious heart or lung trouble). It isn't the kind of addiction that leaves you plastered as with alcohol or other drugs--so that once you sober up, you realize how overtaken you were by the stuff.  Nicotine works different than that.  It co-opts your person, while at the same time allowing you to stay conscious and even alert. It's kinda like those science fiction tales in which an alien attaches itself to the spine of an individual...and she has no idea of the danger lurking within.

You really discover how you've been preyed upon once you try to quit. Then the evil nature of the alien comes to the forefront making quitting seem like a horror rather than a rescue from horror.

Some may argue that the smoker understands the danger. I argue the opposite; most smokers begin smoking by the age of 18, and have hardly had enough life experience to understand what addiction really means, and so they are overtaken by a force far greater than they can understand. By the time the smoker really wants to quit, the addiction has blossomed and grown in a most grotesque way.

No one deserves this addiction. Maybe, someday society will finally do the right thing and ban the sale of tobacco, leaving it up to the individual alone to grow, dry and smoke the stuff herself, though never allowed to sell it. 

I made it--as of today--but how I wish all smokers would find their way to quitting.