I first visited this site a year ago yesterday. I had just decided to start a new page in my life and walk away from nicotine. I was nervous, unsteady, unsure, afraid to fail - all the same things you are feeling if you just made your own decision. I was embarrassed to tell anyone, including my immediate family, because I tried and failed four times before. After 36 years addicted to this poison, the one thing I was sure of is this was going to be a lousy experience.
This time a year ago, I had gone through my first 24 hours without a smoke. I was shaky, irrascible, irritated, distracted, no fun to be around. I remember clearly being very close to chucking the whole idea. After all, it's MY life. I had a right to decide how I live it. Who the hell were these do-gooders to tell me I can't enjoy a smoke if I want to? I used the same rationalization we all use to reach for our favorite crutch.
Then a funny thing happened. Call it an epiphany. For the first time, I actually started to LISTEN to my internal dialogue. It's my life. Oh, yeah? How much was it really my life if some marketing genius was using the power of advertising and media solicitation to control my actons? How much was it really my life if I allowed this poison to drag me out of a warm room every half hour to stand outside in the cold and rain like a pariah? How much was it my life if a worldwide business caused me to put family members and grandchildren at risk because I became addicted? No matter how you rationaliize it, a Madison Avenue firm and a highly funded and motivated industry was pulling my strings like a puppet. They were yanking my chain. Bad idea.
Please believe me when I tell you this. That became a turning point in my journey. Once I fully realized and appreciated how much I had been manipulated over the years, I got really, really angry. To this day, when I see some dimwitted Hollywood movie star or pop singer with a cigarette in their mouth, I think of the tens of thousands of impressionable teenagers getting suckled in, just like I was at their age. There is nothing more gullible than a teenager.
From that time onward, I used that anger every time I got a craving. Was the process easy? No, it sucked. Did I backslide? Yes, twice in the first two weeks. I skipped th
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Quit Meter
$149,915.70
Amount Saved
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Quit Meter
Days: 9771
Hours: 0
Minutes: 35
Seconds: 7
Life Gained
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45429
Smoke Free Days
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Quit Meter
999,438
Cigarettes Not Smoked