Over a month now...update

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Let's see if I've got posting a new thread right.

It's been a few days over month now that I've been smoke-free! I am celebrating by trying to get over a sinus infection. Up until then, my sinuses were really happy about me quitting smoking. I think they are still happier as I'm not really sick, just awfully congested.

I think every doctor and dentist not on call at the ER is on vacation until 1/6. I'll have to go to urgent care if it gets bad before that.

Other things I've noticed. 2nd hand smoke makes me hack and cough. No shortage of it up here. You can't walk into any business without having to navigate a gaggle of smokers shivering in the bitter cold. I'm sympathetic, I was one of those people for nearly 40 years.

I finally got done washing everything I own, including summer clothing. Not fun when you have a front-loading washer that does small loads.

I washed all my bedding, but have to get new pillows. The sofa and futon got hosed down with Febreeze, the rest of it will have to wait until spring when I can open my windows and set up the fans to air the place out.

I'm not smelling smoke nearly as strongly now, so it is helping.

I'm noticing that I am still tired and spacey. Too cold to go for a walk outside, but have been walking at WalMart and the little mall attached to the grocery store.

I hope all who celebrate had a good Christmas. I don't celebrate, but I do miss the get-togethers around the holidays.

I did make a special dinner for myself. Lamb loin chops, a big salad, and pesto pasta. It was tasty, but I made too much food. The cats didn't complain a bit about sharing the lamb with me.

We got 8" of snow which added to the snowpack already down is a bit over 2 feet. We already had the makings for a white Christmas, in my opinion, we didn't need any more snow. My poor plow guy had to work this Christmas.

I am up because some nitwit was zooming around on a snowmobile. It's normally very quiet up here at night and I'm a light sleeper even with medications. Certainly one doesn't expect to hear a snowmobile at 3AM.

Since I was up and wanted an early AM cigarette, I popped a nicotine lozenge instead. Gave me heartburn. So now, I get to wait to get sleepy again and for the antacids I took to work their magic.

Squeaky my wheezing/coughing kittie hasn't coughed in 3 weeks. My Jakey, the sorta-Siamese has a leaky eye due to a blocked tear duct from scarring from a corneal ulcer he had as a feral. The eye always ran and looked inflamed. The inflammation is gone now, and his eye isn't watering as much.

Nothing much to do today for me other than putter around the place. The only things open were two gas stations and Walgreen's. Walmart actually closes for this holiday. I ran out to Walgreen's so long as I was up and needed to get out of the house.

It was mobbed. They had wrapping and bows on sale for half price so people left their families home to go buy for next year.

Again, hope all had a good holiday. I hope you all have plans for New Years, even if that's a quiet night at home.

I don't go out on New Year's Eve. This is a heavy drinking town, and I'd as soon leave the roads to the drunks. WI has the highest numbers of drunk drivers in the country and I have the auto insurance bills to prove it.

I have a clean driving record and am over 50, but that seems to mean that I get to join the others in subsidizing the drunks. It "hoovers"!



For some reason that's more of a motivator than the state of my own lungs, though they are doing much better.

I keep waiting for the post=smoking cough where one's lungs clean out. I am coughing right now but that's due to sinus drainage.
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
So glad you are doing so well with quitting smoking!! We hardly ever have gone out on New Year's Eve for the same reason as you (and we live in Wisconsin too). We prefer to be off the roads. This year we will be visiting family in Michigan but my niece is having a party and we are staying there so we will still be off the roads!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
It's hard and I think that one is never really a non-smoker through and through. I think it's like any other addiction. You constantly have to make the decision not to smoke. I make that choice several times a day. I hope that as time goes on, I will be presented with that choice less and less often.

It's all about choices. There are those who enable smokers just like those who enable other addicts. I don't view smoking as a disease, but it is self-medicating in it
s own way.

I know that relapse is only one puff away.

My parents weren't happy that I'd started smoking, but I think that because they both were heavy smokers they felt they couldn't say anything. My psychiatrist told me that BiPolar (BP) folks tend to have addictive personalities and that they are more likely to start smoking and have a harder time quitting. This after he told me he didn't recommend Chantix because he felt it would exacerbate my BiPolar (BP) sx.

I can remember borrowing enough $$ from dad to get a bottomless iced tea and a pack of cigs. I was sixteen at the time and tobacco wasn't the only thing I smoked at that age.

I've skirted other addictions for as long as I can remember. I'm working in therapy to change how I handle the feelings that trigger a desire to smoke...in my case, anxiety for the most part as that is the most debilitating part of my mental illness.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I would agree... I still have a fleeting craving, and it's been nearly 2 years. 2 years! I can remember 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months... LOL! 2 years seems like an eon. But you're right, it never really goes away. I'm so proud of you!
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Congratulations! You should be over the worst part of it by now. I am really proud of you!

I always said that I could never do it but I've been giving it a half-hearted try. My daughter and sister in law haven't smoked in several months and both have been using the little e-cigarettes successfully. They're still using them but now have been using the less strong version and hopefully will eventually be able to stop all together. When we were in S. Carolina with them for Christmas I went with my daughter to the store where she buys the e-cigarette supplies and came out with my own "starter kit". I'm still getting used to it and I'm still not sure I'm doing it right. I'm still smoking but I'm using my little electronic dooie at least half the time, and hope to use it more and more instead of cigarettes.

On our 10-hour trip back home, my son and I were passing this thing back and forth in the car, both of us taking hits off of it ... and got some really strange looks from people in other cars! I wanted to hold up a sign that said, "IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!"
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
You are doing a great job! Of course, you are absolutely right it's possible to "fall off the wagon" if you don't stay vigilant. I think it has been 2.5 years since I quit and last week (and with no apparent reason!) I would have paid fifty bucks for 1 cigarette IF God promised me I could have just one and then go another 2.5 years with-o the craving. Obviously I am not a true NON smoker yet..just a recovering smoker taking one day at a time. Sigh!

Keep up the outstanding work. PS: I think the Nicorette is more effective than the e-cigarette. I started with 4 mg and have been down to 1 mg a couple times a day the past couple of months. DDD
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I once quit for about three months and then fell in to the trap of thinking that I had it beat and surely "just one" wouldn't hurt. And that "one" was terrible! But the one after that wasn't so bad at all ... and pretty soon I was right back in to it again.

My daughter and sister in law have been doing the e-cigarette for several months now and they both say that real cigarettes smell awful to them now and if they tried to smoke a regular cigarette, it would probably make them sick.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Donna, I have to laugh about you and your daughter passing the cig back and forth. Years ago, husband and I rolled our own cigs. We used a small handheld device that took filters and rolling paper, as opposed to the tubes.

I was in the passenger seat and just as I raised the device and newborn cig to my mouth to lick the paper, *boom* flashing lights in the mirrors. Turns out the cop thought we were rolling something other than tobacco!

Took some fancy footwork and a lot of explaining to get the cop to believe us. He also searched the entire car as we figured despite us not having to comply without a warrant, it was best to play nice.

LDH was warning him about the fishing tackle in the back of the car and praying he didn't catch a hook digging around.

He finally let us go, but after that, we took to rolling a couple of packs of cigs in advance. We had fancy little cig cases that we bought at a local tobacconist.

Fun times, that was before the coughing and wheezing an hacking and snorting started.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Good job! Quitting smoking is so hard. I stopped for 6 years -1990 thru 1996. For probably the first 3 years I couldnt even look at packs of cigarettes in stores without wanting to buy one. I never went out with friends who smoked or went into the breakroom at work. Then at about the 5 year mark I started thinking I had it down. I started to hang out in the breakroom where you could actually see the nicotine on the walls and ceilings. It smelled like 200 smokers smoked in there every day and thats probably how many did. I took to holding a cigarette for a friend while they ran for a drink. My office mate smoked. One day I took a puff off a cigarette I was holding and that was all it took. We were under a great deal of stress at work and after that first puff I thought, well I can smoke maybe 2 or 3 a day while at work. Within two weeks I was back to 2 packs a day. I have tried since then and have not been able to do it again. I might have quit smoking when I came home from having been in the coma because I never even craved one while I was in the hospital...heck I dont think I remembered I smoked! However when I came home no one had emptied the ashtrays, thrown away the carton of cigarettes I had in the house or anything else. I came home and remembered immediately and went out as soon as I could to buy a carton. I was so mad at my family for not cleaning the house up.
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Great job GoingNorth.........it's so hard to stop that habit and you did it!! Congratulations! My parents quit smoking (40 years ago) and put all the money they would have spent on cigarettes aside and after awhile, they used that money to go on a trip to Hawaii! They talked about that for years, what a cool reward!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
I'm catching up some holiday bills and then banking the saved $$. Some of it will be going for dental work. I broke two fillings in the past year and couldn't afford to have them fixed properly (front teeth, resin fillings).

My goal is to have a year's living expenses in savings. As of now, I've only got about 4 months. I live off the gov't and with politics being what they are, I don't feel very secure in my SSDI and VA pension (I collect half of husband's disability as dependents' compensation).
 
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